20 Feb, 2023
Digital_Transformation
Traditional businesses focused on tracking employees, enforcing rules, and ensuring compliance. This process has evolved significantly. By employing the digital model, companies can maximize business results and optimize workforce productivity. To accomplish this, organizations must prioritize reaching digital maturity.
Let’s look at what we mean by digital maturity, how it’s measured, and why it’s important to your company.
Digital maturity refers to the extent an organization has adopted and integrated digital technologies and processes into its business operations and culture. A digitally maturing organization effectively leverage digital technologies to align their business strategy, culture, technology, innovation, improve efficiency, and continuously meet digital expectation of customers, employees, and partners.
Digital maturity isn’t a “you-have-it-or-you-don’t” concept. Companies may be digitally mature in some facets of their operations, and lacking maturity in others. For example, an organization may be quite digitally mature regarding its customers while not mature at all in its innovation processes.
Since digital maturity impacts just about every corner of an organization, there’s more than one component that goes into measuring it. Companies can evaluate their digital maturity in numerous ways, like:
Accurately measuring digital maturity is essential for building and reaching digital transformation. There 5 main dimensions that need to be evaluated to understand and create a holistic view of the company. There are sub areas under each dimension that areas a company needs to measure.
Companies can aspire to reach Level 5 of digital maturity. Establishing a baseline is crucial to the journey. Let’s look at the defining aspects of each level.
Level 0: Chaotic This stage is ground zero for any company. There’s no strategy, few goals, sparse data, and limited tools in place to facilitate organizational processes. Most processes are handled manually, with most employees working in silos. The company handles issues as they hit with no proactive planning.
Level 1: Reactive There are still only a few processes in place at this level. There may be a few tools available to employees but little strategy for using them. In addition, the customer journey is most likely disjointed, and manual ways of doing things are still how most tasks get completed. Leadership only adds innovation when the market demands it.
Level 2: Limited At this level, leadership is becoming aware of the gaps and some of the process needs, but innovation is still focused mostly on a case-by-case basis. Portions of the customer experience are digitized, and some basic automation has been added to operations.
Level 3: Efficient This is the stage where organizations have integrated many of their processes and standardized their operations across departments. They have key performance indicators (KPIs) in place and strive for a top-down digital experience. Innovation is present, but not all-encompassing.
Level 4: Predictive Companies at Level 4 are functioning with well-optimized operations. Teams are interconnected with strategies and processes are aligned with business outcomes. It is a data-driven organization, with innovation driving the digital experience.
Level 5: Future-Ready This is the top stage of digital maturity. With an agile, proactive company culture, the initiatives forge a digital-first strategy of process excellence. There’s widespread automation, a frictionless CX, and leaders are disruptive users of digital technology. Consistently measuring and adjusting company performance is deeply embedded in the fabric of the culture.
Companies focused on improving their levels of digital maturity must collect the information, coordinate it, and execute the results before moving forward toward the next level. By recognizing and understanding the importance of digital maturity and its role in business success, organizations can take the necessary steps to transform their operations to achieve higher levels. The efforts will be worth it in terms of a higher-performing, better-aligned, and more cohesive company.
Do you want to learn more about how you can get started on your company’s digital maturity. Engage with our Digital Transformation Specialist today!
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