- Dr. Luis (Luigi) Amendola, PhD.
- Journal Magazine, Vol. 31
Now that most organizations have been on their digital transformation journeys for several years, many are looking to measure progress, assess maturity, and compare themselves with their peers in their industry. The key questions are: How to evaluate this maturity? What are the pillars and key elements of maturity? And what capabilities are new and different compared to business as usual? Digital transformation is a broad topic that requires competence in strategy and vision, people, culture, processes, governance, technology, and capabilities, as shown in Figure 1.
While there are perennial capabilities and skills required for business success (e.g., investment, leadership, culture, change management, and governance), digital transformation requires new capabilities that organizations need to acquire and develop. These include capabilities related to disruptive technology enablers, platform architectures and business models, digital services mastery, and innovation.
To become a digital enterprise, it is necessary to shift from inside-out thinking to outside-in thinking where the customer is an obsession, and adapting products and services to customer needs does not begin by considering internal constraints but by focusing on the market and your customers. Therefore, at PMM CIEx Innovation University www.pmmciex.com, we are confident that digital transformation maturity requires the ability to step back at all times and look at what is happening everywhere simultaneously in the organization, asking whether it makes sense from a holistic perspective, whether it leads to real change across the board (including culture, ways of working, and above all, medium- and long-term objectives), and whether it helps achieve the digital transformation strategy in addition to solving immediate needs and problems, generating quick returns with easy wins, or experimenting with customer experience optimization tools and processes only to see later that customers want people to help them, depending on the context, as well, and that empowering customer service representatives is very important. PMM CIEx Innovation University has a tool to perform maturity level analysis in your organization and develop the roadmap for its implementation with sustainability and profitability (7 Dimensions for Digital Transformation & Maturity, which PMM . Figure 1).
Digital strategy
Element description: By digital strategy we refer to the digital business strategy, which involves using technology to create new value on business models, both at the level of customer experiences and internal capabilities that support the core of operations. Thus, the strategy must demonstrate that there is a pattern of deliberate competitive actions undertaken by a company while competing by offering digitally enabled businesses, processes, products, or services. This strategy must be connected to the business strategy and objectives and must consider the external and internal context of the organization (business risks). The organization must demonstrate a clear strategic vision and have a roadmap for transformation. The organization must have clear decision criteria that allow prioritization of digital transformation initiatives, examples of these criteria may be: return on investment, process maturity level, development of a critical process, covers a regulated process, tool interoperability.
Digital organization
Element description: Digital organization refers to how an organization organizes and applies its competencies to adapt to digital transformation and more effectively integrate digital business development throughout the organization. This element involves aspects related to Leadership, which involves developing digital culture (culture required for transformation), defining roles and responsibilities, involves clear definition of data governance (data owner, RACI, digital architecture), ensuring that the necessary resources are available for plan implementation.
Digital technology
Element description: Digital technology refers to the various combinations of digital technologies (e.g., IIoT, Machine Learning, digital twin, Blockchain, artificial intelligence, virtual/augmented reality, etc.) that companies include in their businesses, processes, products, and services as part of their digital business development. It involves the level of knowledge the organization has regarding available technology and its connection to existing needs. For example, the organization should have defined for each of its processes what the main functionalities and/or required capabilities are, which of them are covered and which are not, and the identification of which tools can productively cover those functionalities.
Digital business development. It involves the level of knowledge the organization has regarding available technology and its connection to existing needs. For example, the organization should have defined for each of its processes what the main functionalities and/or required capabilities are, which of them are covered and which are not, and the identification of which tools can productively cover those functionalities.
Digital culture
Element description: Digital culture can be seen as an emerging set of values, practices, and expectations regarding how people act and interact digitally. It is a concept that describes how technology and the Internet are shaping the way we interact as human beings. It is the way we behave, think, and communicate within society. This involves evaluating how people and technology relate in the organization. It involves aspects related to analyzing digital gaps regarding staff knowledge and skills, and searching for new talent (recruitment). This element is clearly important to ensure that the company has the roles and profiles necessary to compete digitally.
Digital processes
Element description: Digital processes refer to the existing and new routines and processes developed by the company to collect, analyze, and apply data more effectively throughout the business and organizational processes. It also involves the degree of maturity in the processes; that is, whether the current processes document inputs and outputs, define information attributes, have a level of detail that allows them to be transferred to digital tools, whether there is clarity about roles and responsibilities in the processes.
Customers and partners
Element description: Customers and partners in this digital maturity assessment refer to the planned ways and activities carried out to engage customers, suppliers, other partners, and stakeholders in digital business development throughout the company’s value chain and ecosystem.
Innovation
Element description: questions are addressed about how well the portfolio of new ideas is managed, how well innovation and creativity are supported, which guides establishing whether innovation is a policy and/or principle that is encouraged, continuous, and rewarded in the organization and provides a competitive advantage. The opposite would be that the company is chasing the latest trends of the competition.
On the other hand, it involves the organization being able to show results in the company’s front-line performance and ensuring a significant budget for innovation (e.g., experiments, pilots, and tests). An organization with a high maturity level demonstrates that good ideas are prioritized through the development of thorough analyses.
