Regional base Hub Sites versus Functional base hub sites

Question

I am reading this official MS documentation about planning hub sites @ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/planning-hub-sites, and the link mentioned this:-

A good practice is to start with a consistent approach for all functions that have a pattern, such as Sales. If you align region-specific functions to the regional hub, do that for all functions. Either approach is valid, but from a usability perspective, it helps to be consistent.

so in other word the paragraph is saying, we need to structure our hub sites either regional bases (so we will have separate hub site for each region) or Functional bases (so we will have separate hub site for each functional area).. but in our case we have a hybrid approach .. For example our organization has 2 offices in the UK and in the US and at the same time some functional areas are the same for the 2 regions, while others are different based on the region. for example the HR site covers both Uk & US, while operation department are different in the 2 regions.. so the above paragraph will not be valid in our case? is this correct?

Second question, is it wrong if we have the below structure for the hub sites (hybrid between regional and functional hub sites):-

UK (Hub site):-

• Operation UK (team site)

US (Hub Site):-

• Operation US (team site)

HR (Hub site):-

• HR Manual (team site)
• HR Staff (team site)

so we will be mixing hub sites to the regional specific for certain area and functional specific for others .. is our architecture valid?

Thanks

Answer 1

The documentation says it's "good practice". It doesn't say at all that you HAVE to do it that way. If you don't want to separate by EITHER region OR function, then don't.

The idea here is that you make a plan and allow for your company's structure to be reflected in your hub site architecture. As opposed to just creating a bunch of hub sites and adding sites to them without any rhyme or reason.

Of course you can have a few hubs that are organised by region and then have other hubs that link sites by function.

The thing to keep in mind is that hubs and their associated sites can share the navigation and the news, so for the end user everything appears to be in one place and connected.

Combine that with a central portal or home page where you provide navigation to the different hubs and everything is just a few clicks away, be it UK Operations or HR manuals.