Governance is not the slide with the boxes. Governance is the answer to the question of who may sign, bindingly, at three in the morning.
A group, too, consists of distinct companies that may not automatically represent one another. In the official context, where legal reporting obligations must be met, that goes double. Without a power-of-attorney framework, the central service unit simply cannot register the individual company with a host-country authority. The same applies to the external delivery partner: without authorization, every local management would have to register its employees itself in every host-country portal. With 23 countries that is no longer a governance question, but a question of whether the program can deliver at all.
One process, one source, one way
Across 23 countries, only radical standardization and centralization works: one specialist process, one requirements framework, one documentation source, one support channel. Anything else leads into overkill. That is never easy, because every company has its special requirement and central departments, too, reluctantly give up their cherished silo products. At this scale it is nonetheless without alternative. A startup would vehemently disagree with me here, rightly, because that is a different scale.
The one rule that made the difference was consistency over quick-and-dirty. In a program like this you turn a blind eye in many places, so the thing gets through the door at all and does not die just before, in endless discussions. Does a country really need the complete contract history? Rather not, but you weigh it up. What if the client calls and millions are at stake because there is no time for a report? You weigh it up, and document it to the manager.
The soft sign-off
The framework I always insisted on, without exception. Management has to be on board, which through reluctance or personnel changes often costs more contact points than planned. All powers of attorney must be in place. And the sign-off must be documented. Even when everyone knows that no one looked into the detail, the soft sign-off must be on record by email, that no critical faults prevent the go-live. Otherwise exactly this gap tears you apart again years later.
Test your governance against a single question: for every binding action, is it clear who may sign it, and is their power of attorney on file? Where that answer is missing, you have an org chart, but no governance.