How can you improve your organization's digital maturity?

In this tech renaissance avoidance isn’t an option – legacy systems that aren’t interoperable, tech that limits the inclusion of other emerging tech, and proprietary software that doesn’t reflect the new tools simply won’t cut it. Maybe organizations get deeper and deeper into tech-debt due to stubbornness and an unwillingness to embrace change. UNDERSTAND WHERE YOU ARE AND WHERE YOU WILL NEED TO BE. Don’t be afraid to scrap legacy solutions, sometimes even paying to get out of lengthy contracts will save money in the long run. Consult with your technologists or external technologists to ensure that your tech stack (from CRM to HR to payroll to AI etc etc) will allow you to stay relevant and competitive in your market/industry.

Assessing your current state in regards to technology, human resources, and business processes is a critical initial step. Once there is a firm understanding of the present status, begin developing an incremental vision focused on near-term milestones that support overarching business goals. Acknowledging and evaluating any technical debt is important to map out an IT roadmap aligned with business priorities and objectives. Consistently review and update this as needs evolve. A mature digital environment places the customer at the forefront. Build adaptive products that can respond to emerging user behaviors and needs while delivering ongoing value.

Once you understand your organization's current state, the next step is defining a vision for digital maturity. This should outline where you want your organization to be in terms of digital capabilities, how this will support your business objectives, and what value it will provide to customers or stakeholders.

It's definitely not about having solutions and finding problems that can be solved by them, but, digital maturity is a new way of thinking about the customer experience, where real problems are the starting point, where hypotheses are tested and then validated, and only after that, it scales as a solution. Customers, and not technology, need to be the center. And it starts inside the companies. Only by having fluid and automated journeys can employees think and deliver an excellent digital experience to customers. Companies need to invest in employees experience.

Certainly! Improving an organization's digital maturity is vital in the contemporary business environment. Leaders must assess their current digital state using tools like the Digital Maturity Model to understand where they stand. Identifying gaps, fostering the right mindset, and instilling a culture of collaboration and learning are keys to leveraging digital capabilities. It's not merely about technology but aligning it with organizational goals, people, and processes, which is integral to sustaining growth and remaining competitive.

A lot of people get stuck on this step. They think they need BHAG..( Big Hairy Audicious Goals) when in fact they don't. Sometimes there are clear strategic goals or process goals based on clear problems or inefficiencies...but sometimes the goal is simply to improve. Through mapping your processes and identifying specific issues & opportunities you will have a better idea of what your goals should be. So just move on and revisit this step later if you are unsure about goals.

Defining a vision and setting SMART goals for digital transformation is a foundational aspect of organizational development. Aligning the digital strategy with the overall business strategy ensures coherence and direction. This step emphasizes a goal-driven approach, making the journey towards digital maturity measurable and focused. By incorporating specific and time-bound goals with relevant KPIs, organizations can better track progress, making adjustments as needed. This approach facilitates not just adaptation to technological changes but also aligns with the larger organizational mission and values.

Don’t “be relevant for the sake of being relevant”, but do embrace that virtually all goals and outcomes can now be automated/enhanced/leveled-up using all the available new tools like A.I. and many others. Knowing what KPIs to track and what digital tools are available to help achieve them with lowest effort and resources is the way to stay ahead of the competition.

It's said that if you're aiming at nothing, you'll hit it every time. A robust digital strategy isn't just a roadmap; it's a lighthouse, guiding endeavors and keeping you digital irrelevance. Remember, SMART goals aren't just smart, they're essential.

I believe that defining a clear and inspiring vision and goals is crucial for improving your organization's digital maturity. By aligning your digital strategy with your overall business strategy and effectively communicating the benefits of digital transformation in achieving your mission, vision, and values, you can gain buy-in from stakeholders and foster a culture of innovation. Furthermore, setting SMART goals and KPIs enables you to track progress and measure the impact of your digital initiatives, ensuring a successful and impactful transformation journey.

Providing training, making implementations are easy and stress free as possible, and generally setting your org up for success is imperative in these rapidly changing times. Don’t assume people will “just get it” as many things are so nascent that seasoned professionals haven’t been trained on them previously. Knowledge is power and you want to ensure that your team is powerful.

Build a brave space for your team, where failures are acknowledged as stepping stones. Create an environment where it's okay to face break points, enabling the team to support each other and pivot swiftly. In the journey of driving digital change, empowering your people is paramount. Cultivate a culture of innovation and experimentation, encouraging idea sharing and solution testing. Embrace failures as learning opportunities, fostering growth. In this nurturing environment, your team becomes a driving force, propelling digital transformation forward while embracing the lessons learned from failures.

Digital expertise can vary within the organization. The topic can be scary for some who would definitely need hand holding to come up to speed with the newer generations. This support structure would not alienate people who have a slower adaptation curve. Also gamification of adoption of new tools and skills could help people get there quickly.

I would like to borrow from Carol Dweck here. If on a constant and consistent basis, if one is exposed to adapt Growth Mindset, the power of adding an “yet” for any “I-don’t-knows” will do the magic. Stacking this habit in one form or the other in our daily life is the first step and rest will fall in place. Additionally the elbow space for the failures of testing something new helps with a rider that the same mistake cannot be repeated twice!

It can be hard to empower your people when it comes to digital change. You need to support them but you also need to be clear that there isn't a back up option. I have so many business owners that run the old system/software and the new one as well. Staff then know if they moan about the new system they can go back to the old way straight away.

Streamlining processes is a vital step in improving an organization's digital maturity. By eliminating silos, redundancies, and bottlenecks, and leveraging digital tools for automation and integration, organizations can significantly enhance efficiency. Approaches like lean, agile, or design thinking foster a culture of continuous improvement. Such optimization not only simplifies operations but also improves collaboration, communication, and decision-making. This step is crucial in creating a digitally mature environment, aligning technology with operational needs, and positioning the organization for sustained success.

Streamline any process will provide benefits. The main thing you been to think about is how simple can it be. You want the system to be super simple. If it is simple everyone can understand it. You process will work better than ever and if there is an issue it become very simple to fix.

Ever tried making your favorite smoothie with a clunky old blender? It's messy, loud, and let's be honest, the results are... meh. Now, imagine your business processes as that blender. ???? Streamlining is like upgrading to that swanky new blender with one-touch settings. It's about making operations smoother, faster, and more efficient. Ditch the unnecessary, embrace the essential, and make way for some operational magic! ??? While you're at it, don’t forget to involve your team. They're often the best detectives to spot those pesky inefficiencies. Remember, a well-oiled machine not only delivers stellar results but also brings joy in the process. Here's to a smoother, happier, and more efficient tomorrow! ??????

You can only improve what you see. Use Process Discovery techniques including interviews, workshops and process mining technology to determine the current state of your processes end-to-end and to re-imagine processes completely. Digital Transformation is a unique opportunity to break barriers and realign process & tech debt.

Once your organization has a thorough understanding of the existing environment, a key milestone of a digital maturity roadmap is implementing / remediating your Data Estate. Depending on your organizations requirements this might take the form of a Database, a Data Mart, a Data Lake, a Data Warehouse, or hybrid models like "OneLake". This central repository will provide a consistent mechanism for cleansing, normalizing, integrating, and centralizing data for reporting and analytics. With greater visibility, it becomes significantly easier to identify areas for improvement. We can then streamline with tools like: -iPaas, -RPA, -IDP, -low code, -general productivity suites, -application specific software -custom software & more

Engaging customers through digital channels is essential in the contemporary business landscape. Understanding customers' needs and preferences allows organizations to create personalized experiences, building trust and satisfaction. Utilizing data and analytics for segmentation and targeting enhances the effectiveness of digital interactions. Techniques like customer journey mapping, user feedback, or A/B testing provide valuable insights for continuous improvement. This step aligns with a customer-centric approach, vital for maintaining competitiveness and offering value propositions that resonate with the evolving needs and expectations of the digital-age customer.

Your customers need to understand where your are when it comes to digital maturity. If they can see you have digital systems in place it will provide confidence to them. They understand there is a process and you not making it up as you go along.

Customers don't just consume products; they experience them. And these experiences aren't just transactional; they're emotional. The magic happens at the intersection of data-driven insights and human-centric design.

Firstly know your current state of digital infrastructure, resource & skills usage and then understand where your organization currently stands in terms of digital maturity. Define your goals and ROI clearly with a specific strategy and timeline. Then ensure your team has the skills and training they need to use technology effectively and to embrace digital transformation. Understand your customers needs and what infrastructure can help them have a seamless experience engaging with your brand. Design digital technologies in a way that will help you to create new products/services which meet the ever-evolving needs of your customers. Finally, monitor your processes to see whether these are adding value to your business and society.

Improving customer engagement is of course crucial, but it is hard to know what to do without really understanding their reality. We hired some experiences leaders that dived into the customer dialogue and realized we weren't developing products based on their needs, but our opinions. We took a step back and based in our new insights restarted our roadmap to prioritize services and functions that actually gives value for the customer. Sounds so obvious, but easier said than done.

Forget all the frameworks. What in your business is the biggest pain or time drain. Can it be digitally systemised? If it can do it? If not move to the next pain point. And keep going a small chance can make a large difference

Digital differentiation isn't a one-time achievement but an ongoing commitment. Having an ear on the ground, being attuned to industry whispers, and sometimes, being the one to shout disruptively.

With quality data management and a sound data estate, you can begin to drive advanced data analytics. Prescriptive and cognitive analytics yield future oriented insights with greater trustworthiness. We can understand our organization and our customers more intimately to identify friction points and provide a better customer and employee experience. Customer and employee feedback, combined with advanced analytics can provide insight needed to build better and entirely new products and services. With good data management, we're also poised to adopt emerging disruptive technologies like AI, 3D printing, robotics, IOT, etc. With this approach we can produce innovative and entirely new revenue streams.

Make sure to report regularly on post project benefits after go live. There can be a tendency to slip back into old ways of working and not really realise all the benefits that were planned, especially if they require subsequent projects that stand alone might not appear to stack up against new projects but are part of the larger strategic shift for the organisation.

Underlying all the aforementioned solutions and providing even more vital insights and fuel for improvement in every stage of an organization's digital transformation journey is data, the lifeblood of digital maturity. It not only helps the organisation assess its current state, it informs strategy and decision-making and drive innovation and continuous improvement. An organisation can push its digital maturity further by leveraging both internal and external data to personalize customer experiences and target its services, optimise its processes and refine internal skills and talent. External data can help identify partnerships that will boost its growth and external training bring a boost to local expertise.

1. Understand the Current State: The first step in improving your organization's digital maturity is understanding where you currently stand. This involves evaluating your existing digital technologies, capabilities, and processes, as well as the mindset and culture of your organization. 2. Define a Digital Vision: Once you understand your organization's current state, the next step is defining a vision for digital maturity. This should outline where you want your organization to be in terms of digital capabilities, how this will support your business objectives, and what value it will provide to customers or stakeholders. 3. Develop a Digital Strategy: With a clear vision in place, you can now develop a strategy to achieve this vision.

Digital transformation, like any journey, has its own serendipities. The offbeat trails, the unexpected encounters, the lessons from unforeseen challenges - these are what make the journey memorable and unique.