How Digitally Mature is Your Organisation? 5 Questions to Shape Digital Transformation.

Digitally mature organisations can transform with minimal disruption, but you can’t know where to go if you don’t know where you’ve been. Ask these 5 questions to assess your organisation’s digital maturity, and set yourself up for digital transformation success.

Digital transformation strategy can be influenced by many things, including how digitally mature an organisation is to begin with. Putting the right steps in place can ensure your future adaptability and agility.

In this blog we’ll take a look at how existing maturity levels shape digital transformation strategies, and how getting the best advice helps get this right before you dive in.

The importance of assessment

You don’t know where to go if you don’t know where you’ve been, so the saying goes. Having a regular interlude to pause and see what is working well and what could be improved upon is key.

The right audits and assessments will help to inform where resources are best invested. If you are a “1 in 5” in some areas and a “4 in 5” in others, where is the best place to spend your effort? There might be a much bigger impact rounding out capabilities than simply focusing on one area.

Change is inevitable

Keep in mind that since the market is maturing so quickly, if you are on a multi-year strategy you are probably already out of date.

Whether your focus is on the immediate short-term outcomes or longevity, we have seen that many organisations may not think they require transformation, as the business is doing well and the same old things are working.

However, digital transformation is a marathon rather than a sprint. The longer things are left to become obsolete, the more challenging it can become to implement changes as an afterthought.

Importantly, you don’t want to wait to be disrupted or wait until the industry changes around you. In every example of disruption where a business model has been destroyed, it has usually had apathy tied to it.

It’s a dangerous thing to be a successful business and stop innovating, so don’t take a “she’ll be right” attitude to digital.

Let’s consider five important questions you need to ask yourself to properly assess your digital maturity.

1. Is there clarity of strategy or vision? Many people carry out digital transformation simply because it’s a buzzword, but clarity of vision is really important. Some organisations will talk about digital transformation for a complete overhaul, and others will think they are finished the process when they’ve moved to the cloud for email. Digital transformation means different things to different people, but with measurements you can clearly set some goals. Ask yourself: What does the business case look like? What are the commercial wins of progressing your digital maturity? There might be many efficiencies to be gained as well as improvements in customer experience.
2. Do you have physical process freedom? How much have you freed the organisation from technical debt? And how much have you freed the organisation to be truly mobile? If you have transformed to the point where you’re no longer reliant on physical processes to achieve business processes, this is a major point of maturity. The COVID-19 pandemic has crystallised the need to have business processes and technology working from any device and has brought home much of the rhetoric in the IT industry over the past 20 years.
3. Do you have a strong approach to security? You could digitally transform and have no thought for security, or have a strong and balanced approach to security. Some organisations have gone through their architecture and even though they don’t have an office anymore, their cyber posture is strong. A less mature organisation would say, “Everyone go and work from home” and let them break every security policy in the book. Workplace transformation must have security considerations. If you have doubts, an IT risk assessment can be an ideal place to begin.
4. How quickly can you adapt to change? One of the biggest hallmarks of a digitally mature organisation is how fast it can respond to developments in the technology market. If you can capitalise and take advantage of technology in practical terms, that means having a modern architecture to support API integration, microservices, and having systems integrated with ESB so you can change core systems easily.
5. Do you have a continuous, agile approach? A continuous integration and continuous development (CI/CD) approach to developing your systems is another sign of digital maturity. With agility, you can take advantage of highly developed analytics, BI platforms and even create R&D and innovation functions to continuously improve.

Go beyond self-assessment

When assessing digital maturity, it is good practice to not solely rely on in-house review processes. With self-assessment, you may not have anything good to compare against and you may be constraining yourself to what you already know.

As one example, experienced IT security assessment companies make it their business to understand the latest threats on an ongoing basis. As such, their cyber security assessments are likely to be more rigorous and actively identify potential weak spots.

Engaging a highly skilled third party can bring a depth of experience for a range of projects, together with the refinement you might need for these types of projects.

A key benefit of the MSP model is that new ideas are brought in from outside your industry. For example, in insurance you are likely to bring good ideas from the industry, but not get clear insights from your competitors.

With an MSP by your side, you can be challenged with new ideas and gain a competitive edge with access to cross-industry experience.

Engage a digital navigator

The role of a good MSP will be as a technology navigator or steward.

This is so important when it comes to digital transformation, as consultants often don’t have practical experience with the technology they’re consulting about. On the flip side, vendors engage with a one-sided view.

An MSP has real-world experience operating technology to bring insights to potential problems. We work with multiple vendors, and offer a fit-for-purpose solution.

Tecala can guide you through the entire process from detailed assessment, to strategy as a service, to comprehensive IT management as a service. What makes us different is that we work to understand your unique business needs, and only then begin to talk technology. The result is a technology partner that’s truly aligned with you and your objectives. As you develop your digital maturity, you’ll be equipped to tackle future market shifts and industry changes with agility and minimal disruption.