Digital Maturity: Is Your Organization Where it Needs to Be?

Digital maturity is a concept that’s been gaining a lot of traction in popular thought and discussion recently within freight and supply chain management. You may even consider digital transformation and digital maturity to mean the same thing (understandably, as they’re extremely similar).?

But while digital transformation refers to the process of incorporating digital technologies to augment or modify existing business processes, workflow operations and customer experiences, digital maturity refers to the level of digitalization and digital advancement a company has reached.?

It’s, in essence, a measure of how well a freight and logistics or supply chain management organization has integrated digital technologies and solutions into its processes and services, and how efficiently it uses data and analytics to enhance its operations.?

The freight and logistics industry, along with supply chain management, have traditionally been a bit slower to adopt digital transformation processes compared to other industries. It was always happening, just at a rate not fast enough.?

All of this, of course, changed over the last 3 years which saw unprecedented disruptions to shipping and exposed the blatant vulnerabilities of relying on outdated, manual processes and siloed digital systems that limit essential visibility.?

How does digital maturity relate to operational efficiency within freight and logistics? And how can you assess your organization’s digital maturity??

The problem with legacy systems

The problem with existing legacy systems within freight and supply chain organizations is that they’re unable to meet current needs. Sure, they might have been optimal years ago, but the freight and logistics landscape, as well as the complexity of the global supply chain, also looked very different back then.

Shipping routes and lanes, complexity of customer orders, and shipper’s expectations have drastically changed, especially over the last three years. Supply chain organizations up and down the supply chain that haven’t pivoted with these changes are now experiencing costly, inefficient setbacks, limiting their growth and revenue potential.?

Freight forwarders, for instance, can’t respond to shipper’s requests fast enough, because they have to manually process each incoming shipping request, costing them time and increasing their chance of errors.?

Carriers who are also manually processing shipping requests passed on by forwarders also struggle, slowed down by inefficient, manual research and margin processing. By the time the buy prices come back to the freight forwarder for final proposal creation, the shipper has long since moved on.?

Customs brokers also struggle with processing incoming commercial invoices, trying to turn them into clearance forms for customs officials to vet and approve. Once again, manual processing limits their accuracy, output and scalability.?

Because the supply chain is so interconnected and organizations are so dependent on each other for success, the fact of the matter is: when one organization uses legacy systems, everyone along the supply chain feels the negative effects.?

Manual data management, a lack of standardized automation and limited operational visibility all result in errors, inaccuracies, omissions and missed opportunities. This is precisely why it’s so important to assess your level of digital maturity.?

The digital maturity checklist

When assessing the current state of your digital maturity, it’s important to remember that there’s no one correct way to measure it. There are a number of existing models you can use as a benchmark for measuring, such as the Digital Maturity Model and the Generic Maturity Model.?

However, at a high level, you can use a few key points to guide you towards an initial understanding of your current digital maturity level. These revolve around: data, operations, visibility and insight.

When it comes to your data, does it arrive unstructured and unusable, meaning your team has to spend hours extracting, enriching, correcting and formatting it before using it? If so, this urgently needs to be addressed through digital intervention.?

From an operational perspective, how efficiently is your team managing and completing their tasks? Do they have repetitive processes running on autopilot, or do they have to spend time completing these manually, each and every time??

In terms of visibility, how much of a high-level view do you have of your internal and external operations? And is this visibility centralized on one platform or do you need to access multiple, disconnected platforms and systems to get an overview of current processes?

Finally, do you have the granular, data-driven insights you need to take swift action and respond to unpredictable changes or last-minute shipping requests? The faster you can respond, the more likely you’re able to solve complex challenges and deliver a better customer experience.?

Digital maturity starts with better data

The foundation of good digital maturity starts with investing in a digital solution that improves your data management. Stargo, for instance, structures and enriches your incoming unstructured data in seconds, allowing you to generate multi-lane buy prices and create faster, more agile shipping proposals.?

Our advanced BI analytics help you leverage your data to identify opportunities and make better strategic decisions for growth. StarDox delivers the visibility you need across your operations and makes it easier to take action to become ESG compliant. Best of all, our platform enhances, not replaces, your team, helping them deliver greater value within their roles.?