What impact do process and data standards have on business process performance? This paper shows that process and data standards have a positive combined impact on business process performance measured in business process time, cost and quality. This combined impact of process and data standards on business process performance is empirically confirmed using data from an annual study of the recruitment process among Germanys Fortune 1,000 companies1 . Building on the confirmed positive combined impact of process and data standards, the paper provides actionable managerial recommendations on how to achieve this impact.