Digital Maturity Explained: All About Business Performance

Digital is just a means to an end. And that end is “business success”. To ensure staying on track, you must measure where you are. We call this “digital maturity”. This is a holistic approach to your digital journey. In six dimensions, you get a comprehensive picture of the whole organization. From customers to operations, from technology to innovation, and from people to governance. This helps you to align all stakeholders, establish a guiding coalition and determine a shared vision and objectives.

Digital transformation is a long journey. Maturing from very basic levels to rather integrated levels will take several years. Moving ahead to optimized levels will be even harder, and requires strategic focus, solid investments, strong leadership, and capable teams. Patience and persistence will become very important differentiators between success and failure.

During transformational projects, sometimes the target may get out of sight and out of mind. You should adopt a balanced approach between investments, returns, maturing and execution. Not all investments will yield immediately, but they may be essential fundamentals to build on top of. Some projects may put you on the cover of a magazine, however, may not benefit your business. But it will increase your brand recognition and may attract talent and the ecosystem to work with you.

In short, digital is inevitable. The change we live through is unprecedented. Face it, embrace it. Make digital your superpower to succeed in a world of flux. Only fluid enterprises will survive.

Ignite your digital journey. Now!

Dive Deeper: Digital Maturity Explained, even deeper…

We are all used to scorecards. Our children get scorecards from their schools. Thereby we understand their situation. Professionals have their performance scorecards, as individuals or teams or companies. Some of us get paid by these scorecards. Golfers have scorecards, tennis players have scores, and even boxers have their performance measures.

Almost every company is measured in some way. The least the person in charge looks at incomes and expenses. Otherwise one may run into trouble, or even run out of business. The more mature a business gets, the better metrics and KPIs they develop. NPS for the customer, OE for operations, ROI for technology, engagement index for people and so forth.

What about your digital maturity? Do you have a score for it? Do you have considered that digital maturity is something essential or even possible to measure? Yes, it is important. And yes, it can be measured. That is exactly what our “Digital Maturity Index” service does. We provide you with a tool for moderated self-assessment, to understand how digitally mature you are.

An organization is a whole, being a company or a public agency or an NGO. Digital maturity is a company-wide phenomenon, which needs to be analysed in the broadest sense. Everything is connected to everything, and many subjects impact many other things. In terms of digital maturity, we don’t just talk about a few technology projects, a new digital customer channel, or some analytic solutions. No! Digital maturity is a combination of many different things, ranging from process improvements to governance style, from corporate culture to technology and analytics, and from leadership to ecosystems.

After many years of intensive research, detailed modelling, and testing in various customer and industry setups, we distilled the most comprehensive, the most applicable, and the most business-relevant “digital maturity” model commercially available.

We call it “Digital Maturity Index“, in short DMI. And, we really love it…

By design, it has six dimensions. There are mutually exclusive as best as possible. There are complementing each other as best as possible. And they cover any given organization, any size, any industry, as comprehensive as possible. See the six dimensions in the figure below:

We created maturity scales for every dimension. In years of consulting and digital transformation engagements, we observed the various stages, of the organisation walkthrough. And, of course, the combination and blend of all six dimensions, results in the overall digital maturity score of the organization. Please find summarized descriptions for these five digital maturity levels below:

Why should you, sorry, must you bother with digital maturity? You can’t manage, what you can’t measure! You also can’t improve, what you can’t measure or manage. So, that’s the first obvious reason. But there is one more important reason. From our interviews with hundreds of executives, we realized that many executives and companies wonder where they are on their journey to digital heaven (or hell). And similarly important, everybody wants to know, how they compare against their peers. Digitopia’s “Digital Maturity Index” service resolves all questions you might have on your mind, and even more. Here is a summary of some of the key benefits:

Last but not least, probably the most important is, that “digital maturity” is a means to an end, and the ultimate goal is to succeed as an organization. Let’s call that measure “business performance”. So “digital maturity” definitely must contribute, serve, excel, improve, or accelerate business performance, ideally, in all dimensions.

Sometimes you may go off the track. How will you know? The risk of underinvestment, due to economic crisis or uncertainty like the days we are just experiencing. Or the contrary, overinvestment, due to short-term customer excitement, a peak in e-commerce or another round of funding.

We define “the balanced vision” as the middle way, the approach that balances investments in digital and the resulting business performance. Our “Digital Maturity Index” will help you ensure you stay on track, all spending delivers tangible business value, and you digitally mature as an organization.

Last of all, digital transformation is mandatory. You do it, or it will be done to you. Digital is affecting every business, every function, every industry, no matter where you are, no matter how big or small you are, no matter how strong you are. Only the most adaptive will survive. The pressure on you is unprecedented. Digital can make you or break you. Embrace it. Make it your friend. Make it your superpower and reach your goals. We are your companion along the journey to digital success.

Ignite your digital journey. Now!

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