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When Industry Standards Don’t Fit Your Business

Best practice is only helpful when it matches your commercial reality. Here is how to recognise when the playbook is wrong and what to do instead.

5 Jan 20247 min read

When “best practice” misfires

Industry frameworks, vendor maturity models, and analyst scorecards are designed for an average company that does not exist. They are helpful context, but when followed blindly they create spend, complexity, and governance that offers little advantage to your customers.

The organisations we work with often find that the standard template ignores their actual constraints. Maybe margins are thin, maybe customer experience demands something bespoke, maybe regulation is tighter than the global norm. Whatever the driver, the playbook fails because it was built for somebody else.

Signs the standard is wrong for you

  • Performance is plateauing despite “compliant” tooling and processes.
  • Teams are bypassing the approved solution because it slows them down.
  • Customers feel the friction—even though audits say you are healthy.
  • The cost-to-serve keeps rising faster than revenue or productivity gains.

If these feel familiar, it is time to pause the next “best practice” initiative and focus on what your business actually needs to win.

Where to go instead

Start with evidence, not doctrine

Benchmark your own data before you lean on vendor or analyst reports. Understand where you are over- or under-indexing.

Design for the constraint that matters

If customer experience is the choke point, optimise for that—even if it means breaking away from industry templates.

Build optionality into your architecture

Avoid standards that force a single supplier. Modularity keeps leverage on your side.

Standards and certifications still have a place—they keep teams aligned and reassure stakeholders—but they should support your strategy, not dictate it.

Practical next steps

Run an independent baseline: utilisation, cost, risk, and customer impact.
Compare “compliant” processes with how high performers actually work day to day.
Prototype alternatives on a contained scope, measuring value before scaling.

The aim is not to reject the standard outright, but to bend it to the realities of your market, customers, and economic model.

Need proof before you pivot away from the standard?

We validate where the “accepted” approach helps and where it hurts—quantifying the upside of doing something different, and designing a roadmap your board can sign off with confidence.

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