“Why is this digital maturity important to me, what do I need this digital readiness assessment for, anyway?”
My client was angry. Really angry.

We just came out of a sales pitch with one of the big consultancies. The company had been peddling their digital maturity tool as if it was the best things since sliced bread.
Needless to say, sliced bread still is better.

Read on if you want to learn what to watch out for in your own digital maturity assessment..
…or looking for something different?

7 essentials for a successful Digital Maturity Assessment

Table of Contents

Digital Maturity Assessment – why bother?

Doing a Digital Maturity assessment will help you get your bearings in the digital age – plain and simple. As one of my favourite Chinese proverbs goes: “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single (first) step”.

This holds true for many situations in our personal lives. It is equally true for companies and organisations embarking on a digital transformation ? journey. In a nutshell, as a company embarking on a digital transformation journey you will initially face two main questions:

  • Where do I currently stand in my digital transformation and digital agenda, and
  • What direction do I want to take?

Finding answers to these questions may not sound like rocket science. And it rarely is. However, the main problem for many organisations and companies is a lack of understanding what digital transformation actually means for them. They will often ponder what realistic options they have to improve their business towards the digital age.

Not your cup of tea?

“Digital” has simply NOT been the core business of many companies. Even organisations which are seen as technologically advanced are often way off the mark.

If you happen to find yourself in this position the good news is: you are in good company. Open your eyes and you will see a lot of companies and government agencies lacking. In other words, many of them do not even have the slightest clue about how they could jump onto the digital transformation bandwagon.

Bad news is, rather sooner than later, you will have to fix these problems and start becoming more digital. What will happen if you fail to transform your business towards a more digitally orientated organisation? Your company will most likely be pushed out of the market by your competitors.

This is where a digital maturity assessment or a digital readiness assessment comes in, We use these different terms very loosely in this post as they are pretty much inter-exchangeable.

But then, what does digital maturity mean?

Maturity tests as cornerstone of your transformation

It is in fact one of the first steps of your digital transformation journey. An assessment can  give you an indication where you stand in your own digital business maturity. The results will tell you what direction to head off to. In addition, digital maturity also describes a state of flux in your business, which you will hopefully improve on over time.

When assessing your digital maturity keep in mind this will differ from one company to another. There is no one-fits-all, which makes assessing and benchmarking digital maturity tricky. Of course, you will be able to find and identify “good practice” approaches and behaviours. For a start, just look at what and how your closest competitor goes about in the “digital” space.

However, in the end of the day, you will need to adapt your digital transformation to your own specific environment, and therefore adapt your digital maturity assessment as well. Still many companies struggle with this first step, or ignore it all together. Skipping a proper assessment is a bad idea. And why take the risk?

Therefore, we have collated some nuggets of wisdom to help you get over the initial hurdle as swiftly as possible. Through our own work at unleash.digital we believe you should focus on (at least) seven aspects helping you boost the success of your digital maturity assessment:

#1 – Your digital maturity assessment objectives

Failing to define the objectives of your digital readiness assessment will only lead to scope creep. In addition,  a lack of objectives will most likely lead to  unsatisfactory results of your maturity studies.

Setting the digital transformation tone early

Get together with your fellow employees, colleagues and management to openly discuss the intended goals. Only thereafter unpack your tools and the comprehensive assessment catalogues.

Ask yourself: what questions do I need to get answers to as a matter of urgency? Will the results of the digital maturity assessment be used for: just for a high-level overview of the “state-of-the-union” or a vehicle to inform your digital business strategy?

If you need to inform your digital business strategy: to what level of detail do you need to go?

Above all, one of the biggest mistakes is to blindly go through a digital maturity questionnaire of sort, unable to put these questions into the context of your own business and organisation. Ensure you arrive at a common understanding of what the questions in the big assessment catalogues mean for you first, and what objectives you want to cover.

Looking at your digital objectives in context

For instance, asking a CTO: “Does your team has expertise in artificial intelligence?” may well be answered with an emphatic “no, not really”. Your CTO may have interpreted the question as “could we build a product using and integrating AI”. The intended objective, on the other hand,  may have been to find out whether anybody in your organisation knows about AI principles. Do you have the right contacts into the AI supplier community? Would be able to come up with a high level design proposal for your next generation digital product or service?

In other words, ensure you complement your digital maturity assessments with a description of the underlying objectives of the question. But also substantiate your assessments, and avoid the results becoming just a superficial opinion piece.

Because opinion pieces are merely somebody’s point-of-view. They are not particularly helpful.

#2 – Envision your industry in 5…20 years

Even though you may initially struggle with a view of where your company and organisation is on your digital transformation agenda you must also deal with another important aspect: regardless of how digitally mature you are already you have to understand the likely target situation of your industry in the future.

This can be difficult. No doubt. Big companies such as Nokia and Kodak have failed to spot future developments early enough to change course.

But this view is vital to establish. Don’t be worried. If you are wrong in your forecasts at the start you should be able to correct them in subsequent iterations. That is, as long as you perform maturity assessment and the setting of your digital business strategy regularly.

Visioning – move on from the idle talk

The important point, though, is to understand your future vision lays the groundwork to perform a gap analysis between your current and the likely future target states. Identify and plug these gaps as soon as this is feasible in your environment.

You can then use your knowledge (or the hypotheses) to inform your digital roadmaps and strategy. In addition, envisioning the future will help you detail your implementation plans going forward.

#3 – Talk to the right people and collect evidence

If you have been talking to your suppliers or perhaps to different departments in your own organisation, they have probably given you their own digital transformation spiel. Most likely, they will have told you their story from their specific angle. This is not too unusual. We have rarely seen, for example, suppliers painting a full, objective picture.

Let me spell it out crystal clear: suppliers’ views are almost always biased.

And so are your employees’ views.

Help – there are digital sirens everywhere

Software package suppliers in particular have hijacked “digital transformation” and “digital maturity” to portray their respective solutions as the holy grail of solving your problems. You will hear different flavours of digital transformation stories from them.

There are the CRM suppliers who will tell you sales is the most important aspect of digital maturity. ERP folks are all in for streamlined, digital logistics. After all, Amazon cannot be wrong, or can they?

Furthermore, so called independent research organisations often look at digital maturity as a topic for the COO or CIO of an organisation. Hence, they will be getting responses which are rather tilted towards digital maturity around IT and infrastructure.

Above all, these parties have specific interests and therefore will make you “believe” their respective area is the most important. And this may well be true. However, don’t fall for this. You don’t want to rely of singularly biased opinions or viewpoints when laying the groundwork for your digital business strategy.

Holistic and inclusive – your digital company and organisation

Digital transformation warrants a more holistic view across your entire organisation and company. Operate digital maturity assessments in light of the impacts it has on your environment in its entirety.

What we suggest you do, instead of being led by biased players, is to allow for a wider range of (independent) opinions from within your own company and organisation to break ice.

This approach serves two purposes: your staff will be discussing “digital” amongst themselves and exchange ideas (which is always a good thing) and you pass on part of the responsibilities to think about and enact your organisation’s digital future to the most appropriate place.

In other words, through a process of inclusion you will be able to collect precious information and let these data drive your digital maturity assessment project before you start your assessment workshops in earnest. Use the knowledge from the upfront investigations extensively in your preparations.

#4 – Run digital readiness in group workshops

Remember the good old ivory towers? Or the smoked-filled secret decision chambers where inner circles decided about every little aspect of the next product release.

Ok, granted. I am going a little over board, though you might be surprised how big the chasm between your management and the “working class” still is today in aspects surrounding digital transformation.

The shocking perception chasm

Back in 2018, the Financial Times in cooperation with Cap Gemini issued results of a research on digital transformation, evaluating the gaps in perception between managers of a company and employees sitting in the trenches in their daily grind.

Rather strikingly, the management of many of the interviewed companies had an extremely positive self assessment of their business compared to their staff.

Digital Maturity Perception Chasm

The FT didn’t give any compelling reasons for these wide gaps in perception. However, our own observations suggest management is often far removed from the realities on the ground. In some other cases, they wouldn’t want to admit they are doing a dodgy job with their digital transformation programmes they claim to have delivered.

Utilise your own collective wisdom

When you do your digital maturity and readiness assessments apply a pragmatic way to avoid coming up with skewed results. Bring in key staff who intimately know about the situation in the concerned departments and functions. Lock them up in a room and wait for the white smoke to come out. Simple as that.

This may lead to an increase in – what many would call – unproductive time. However, believe me, you will work wonders by  letting your employees discuss your maturity controversially. You will also increase inter-departmental traction across the “digital” space.

For instance, we have run these kind of workshops using our Digital Maturity Pro tool ?. The tool deep-dives into details of digital maturity and takes about a working day to complete.

Whilst this approach inevitably triggers emerging discussions, gaining a common understanding across your organisation is invaluable.

#5 – External support to mitigate internal politics

When you run multi-disciplinary workshops or discussion rounds with participants from different areas of your business be mindful of politics.

Politics can kill the most well-intended session. Putting politics aside is also a good idea because digitally transformed companies shun politics like Dracula shuns garlic and a silver bullet.

Easier said than done? Of course, politics will always be in play, you will say.

Your Marketing may want to look clever claiming they are doing “all things customer” themselves and your techies are particularly unhelpful.

The Finance guys will want to argue they cannot change their budgeting processes because of conflicts with reporting obligations. They are optimised up to the hilt already anyway, you will hear..

Your people – the biggest asset and deterrent

What you mustn’t forget is the hidden agenda behind these behaviours. People in your workshop might fear their jobs are on the line if this “new way of doing business” materialises. For instance, as a result people will act strangely. They may become protective of their own positions or responsibilities.

To take politics and personal discomforts off the table you may want to entertain an approach of introducing the intention and goals of your workshop in an objective, thus trustworthy, yet positive way. Put yourself in the shoes of your workshop participants and address their potential concerns upfront.

…and where all things fail consider bringing in an external mediator or facilitator. Appropriately positioned as independent support who is only acting in the best interest of the company (and its employees), external workshop leaders can sometimes do magic.

#6 – Rinse and repeat your maturity assessments

I occasionally have the pleasure of being called back into former clients for follow-up or entirely new projects. I am hugely grateful for these situations as they allow me to get a sense of how a company has evolved and applied their digital transformation agenda.

Fortunately, the sentiment of “we are on a good tangent” can be heard far more often than the panicky version of “everything has gone up in smoke”. What I have seen over the years, though, is a situation where companies rarely repeat an exercise of assessing their digital maturity on a regular basis.

Spotting digital transformation tell tales

This can be fatal and may ultimately lead to a wrong conclusion of your business still being on the right track. The digital world around you moves on swiftly. For instance, take Blockchain. Up to a couple of years ago only a small group of interested tech nerds knew this technology existed. They had a vision of what could be done with the new Blockchain capabilities.

If you had run a digital maturity assessment prior to this time you probably would have ignored Blockchain. In other words, it might have been too novel a technology to be applicable or useful for your business at the time.

Fast forward, and many industry players, specifically across finance, telecom and governments, have started embracing Blockchain. Blockchain has become one of the most promising platforms for their future services.

The digital world around you constantly evolves. You will find new approaches to solving a problem. Customer expectations and consumer trends change, Improved deployment platforms emerge and business models are thrown off course.

Your task is to stay on top of these developments. However, you don’t need to become an expert in every single new fad popping up. Just strive to become competent enough to judge the potential and possible importance new developments have on your business.

One way of staying ahead of your competitors and markets is to do digital maturity assessments in a more structured way, and do them regularly.

Go, rinse and repeat.

#7 – Communicate results in a way your employees understand

A common mistake often made when assessing your digital readiness is the lack of communication with your employees and staff. Remember that proper communication is actually a tremendous opportunity to build your digitally aware workforce.

Put yourself into the shoes of an engineer, a marketeer, a sales rep working for your company. They may have been drawn into assessment workshops at some point. Above all, their contributions may have been required for their expert judgment. Maybe your employees even have had 1-to-1 sessions with your digital “inquisitors”.

And then, what? The organisation goes back into a black hole. You can surely do better for a good start to your digital transformation journey.

Your launch pad for successful digital transformation

Try to set up your digital maturity assessment as a launch pad to engage your employees. Bring them around to the idea of your business’ needs to transform digitally. Keep communication channels open throughout the assessment phase and beyond.

Also, avoid obvious conclusions or generalities when communicating with your audience. Nobody will want to read glossy, big reports packed with acronyms or tech babble. Nobody wants to read blatant phrase such as “we are becoming a strong digital player”.

These phrases don’t mean anything. Throw them out and convert them into something more impactful in your environment.

When you finally communicate be mindful to pack your communication with powerful and convincing content,  demonstrating the relevance of your digital maturity assessment results and agenda to the future of your company.

This has to be relevant to your business. Your employees need to be able to  relate to the goals expressed. Furthermore, other stakeholders such as shareholders, ecosystem partners, suppliers and all parties who contribute one way or the other to your success have to give their buy-in.

You will be surprised how proper communication will help you start your wider digital transformation programme. In other words, this is your first step towards mobilisation and implementation.

Digital Maturity Assessment – practical steps

It’s easy. No scientists required. Honest. And that’s how it works. The compact version:

  • Get access and download our Quickscan Digital Maturity tool ?
    (no worry, no money involved)
  • Set your objectives, break down digital maturity into several dimensions e.g.:
    • improvements of existing into digital products and services
    • new digital products and services
    • ground-breaking innovations – pushing the envelope
  • Familiarise yourself with the assessment areas for digital maturity:
    • map the areas to functions/departments in your business
    • identify people in these departments who can help you
    • put the assessment questions in context with your company
  • Consider ALL departments or functional units – think holistically
  • Consider drawing up a your “company specific digital SWOT” independently to substantiate your assessment scores
  • Using the Quickscan Digital Maturity tool, look at maturity from different angles:
    • general maturity and how this is applied in day-to-day work
    • the digital methodologies, tools, technologies you are using already
    • familiarity of your staff with digital products, platforms and approaches
  • Compare your digital maturity against your vision and target state
  • Identify the gaps you have against your desired target state

Still stuck with your Digital Maturity Assessment?

Just ping us an email on contact@unleash.digital or get in touch through our Contact Page and we can have a chat and get you sorted.

You don’t have the required resources to do an assessment DIY style?

No problem.
We are happy to discuss how we can help and roll up our own sleeves. Depending on the size of your company a thorough digital maturity assessment can take anything from 2 to 5 weeks.

 

Some further reading you may find useful:

Achieving digital maturity (Deloitte)
The Sloane view: Digital Maturity, Not Digital Transformation (Sloane)
Boston Consulting – Digital Maturity is Paying Off (BCG)
Digital Maturity – Focus on Telco (TMForum)
Digital Maturity Framework (Digital Leadership)
The Four Stages Of Digital Maturity (Forbes)
Assessing your organization’s digital transformation maturity (CIO)
Digital Transformation Toolkit (Government Australia)
Digital Transformation of Cities (EU)

 

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