06.05.2024
Digital Maturity
- Identifying the base line as starting point for the digital transformation journey in your professional context.
What is Digital Maturity?
How to assess Digital Maturity?
Where to find expertise and support?
First insights and takeaways for embracing change, unlocking sustainable value creation and new business development in the (digital) transformation era in your professional context:
What is Digital Maturity?
Digital Maturity refers to the actual fitness of an organization to thrive in the 21st century, hence, its ability to quickly respond to developments and shifting technology trends,
The focus is on creating sustainable value via these capabilities and it differs depending on sectors and organizations.
The journey towards Digital Maturity requires human resources and investment in people, processes, technology and infrastructure that can best leverage the transformative era.
Deloitte reports that digital transformation has progressed significantly in 2023 compared with their first assessment in 2019, representing over 800 decision makers across different sectors mainly in manufacturing.
In brief:
>70% develop new value creation and business models in the course of digitalization
33% work in ecosystems fostering cross-company value creation
44% have developed a digital mindset among workforce
How to assess Digital Maturity?
A digital maturity assessment helps to capture diverse views from across your organization outlining the status of the organizational journey towards digital maturity with the following purpose:
Setting the baseline as starting point for the (digital) transformation journey
Defining the starting point and prioritizing the most important changes your organization needs to make across people, technology/systems and processes. From that baseline, you can evaluate progress over time.
Fostering communication and participation
Using an assessment tool puts communication and participation of employees/ teams in the center of the digital transformation journey. By discussing different viewpoints and experiences, you can find solutions and establish priorities as a team.
Focusing on a human-centric digitalization
Digital Maturity doesn’t refer to technology updates only. It is to a great extend about how people in your organization adapt in terms of leadership, corporate culture, upskilling of employees, utilization of the new technology in the most effective, ethical, responsible and reliable way.
Navigating organizational transformation
The journey towards Digital Maturity is supported by significant organizational changes including
- People/teams (culture, mindset, ways of working, upskilling),
- Processes (planning, business processes),
- Technology (data, technology, systems, infrastructure).
Enabling an agile approach
highlights ‚change dynamics‘ required to make an organization thriving in a complex context.
Digital Maturity assessment tools, expertise and support?
Digital Maturity assessment tools are used to
- evaluating where is what, why happening and to which extend and whether it is related to culture, leadership, collaboration, ways of working, upskilling, business processes, data management, responsible technology use or data driven decision making
- setting the baseline for the actual Digital Maturity of your organization,
- identifying areas where support is required,
- defining prioritized actions on how to grow towards Digital Maturity
- monitoring progress
Two references to assess your digital maturity
1
The digital speed test issued by the European digital hub platform addresses following dimensions with related scoring criteria: Roadmap, People, Data, Machines, Green. It is designed to help map out the digital journey of the organization and accelerate its transformation into the digital transformation era, towards the organization desired destination!
2
The framework of the digitalmaturity.org identifies seventeen competencies as key aspects of digital maturity with related scoring levels for each of these competencies. The framework is designed to evaluate the actual Digital Maturity level of your organization and to map out an individual digital journey towards the best use of digital technology and its associated culture and networks.
Assessment limits
- Increasing digital maturity does not necessarily result in a healthy and sustainable business development and value creation.
- Cannot replace a strategic framework and roadmap with prioritized initiatives and agile approaches that will guide an organization into the future.
- Cannot tell decision-makers how to read trends, create sustainable value with reasonable business models, develop a human-centric digital mindset, culture and leadership, allocate resources and where to invest first. For making those essential decisions a strategic framework with a related roadmap is needed.
Where to find expertise and support?
One way is to try the European Digital Innovation Hub (EDIH) Network.
The network’s core mission is to build up the digital capacities of companies and public sector organizations and comprises of 228 EDIHs across EU.
Click here to find the one nearest to your location.
TAKEAWAYS
Digital maturity doesn’t refer to technology updates only. It is also - to a great extend - related to how people in your organization adapt in terms of leadership, corporate culture, upskilling of employees, utilization of the new technology in the most effective, ethical, responsible and reliable way.
Digital Maturity assessment tools support organizations in evaluating their existing digital capabilities and to determine their digital maturity level.
The main reason for digital transformation initiatives to fail is that the transformation journey in organizations are launched without knowing the current digital maturity level. Hence, without knowing where, why and how to support first.
Digital Maturity assessment is not the same as digital transformation. No digital maturity concept or tool will tell decision- makers and creative people how to read trends, create sustainable value and new business models, develop a human-centric digital mindset and culture, allocate resources and where to significantly invest first. For making those essential decisions you need an agile strategy and roadmap.