Start here · Essential guide
Centralization for Small Businesses and Large Enterprises
How the case for central systems shifts with headcount, locations and complexity, from a ten-person firm to a multi-division enterprise, with trade-offs for each.
Foundations and Reference
Small Business and Enterprise
How centralization choices change with the size of an organization.
Enterprise Complexity: Coordinating Many Business Units
Coordination mechanisms large organizations use when business units have different needs, from shared standards and forums to negotiated exceptions, with trade-offs.
Franchise and Network Models
How franchise-style networks balance central brand standards with independent operators, covering what is set centrally, what stays local and where tensions arise.
Mergers and Acquisitions: Integrating Systems
General considerations for combining systems and teams after a merger or acquisition, including sequencing, data, access and people, and why not everything should merge.
Multi-Site Businesses: What to Share and What to Keep Local
How organizations with several branches can decide which practices to share across sites and which to leave local, with criteria, examples and trade-offs.
Running IT Without a Dedicated IT Team
How small organizations can assign IT duties, document their setups and use outside help sensibly when nobody is employed full time to look after technology.
Spreadsheets as Business Systems: Limits and Good Practice
When spreadsheets work well as business systems, where they become risky as an organization grows, and simple controls that reduce errors and key-person dependence.
When a Growing Business Should Formalize Its Systems
Signs that a growing business has outgrown informal tools and habits, what to formalize first, and how to avoid adding bureaucracy before it is needed.
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