Insights

Four Hallmarks of a Digitally Mature Organization

David Breitling, UST

If the events of the past year have proved anything, it is this — to be a resilient and successful enterprise in the 21st century means embracing digital transformation initiatives to become digitally mature.

But it can be a challenge to understand where to start, what to focus on, and how to evaluate your organization’s digital maturity.

A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of UST recently surveyed 406 global enterprise decision-makers to evaluate organizations’ digital transformation maturity. Only 20% of respondents responded in a way that demonstrated advanced digital capabilities, whereas most companies are towards the middle of their digital journey.

Advanced respondents said they prioritize these four hallmarks of digitally mature organizations. How many have you addressed by now?

#1: Excellent customer and employee experience. Digitally mature organizations not only excel at both, but they also understand the sum of the whole is greater than the two parts. They also highlight a misunderstood aspect of digital transformation. It is more about the human component than the technological one. Digitally mature organizations place employees and customers at the center of all decisions. For example, 98% of all high maturity organizations have measured their customer’s perception of value through digital touchpoint analysis and feedback surveys for over a year, and 97% of these organizations said they use technology to increase employee retention. A recent Harvard Business Review article discussed how agile fails when it focuses on speed and product iteration versus thinking first of its customer needs. Agile thinking without considering the customer is doomed to fail.

#2: Optimization of business processes for resiliency and agility. A digitally mature enterprise embraces resilience and agility. This goes hand-in-hand with prioritizing customer and employee experience. Agile organizations can more quickly respond and adapt to customers, employees, and other stakeholders' changing needs. Agility also often refers to embracing new technologies, like cloud services and AI. Most importantly, digitally mature organizations make sure their technology strategy aligns with their business strategy. High maturity organizations have a full business agility strategy at nearly double the rate of low maturity organizations.

#3: Technology strategy adaptability to future changes. Maturity in this category requires that organizations orchestrate a dynamic ecosystem of technology and business capabilities while simultaneously creating adaptable technology capabilities to deliver on future customer needs. Only 50% of low maturity organizations said they had constantly been using technology to improve business processes in at least the past year and versus 98% of high maturity organizations.

#4: Creation of value through a partner ecosystem. Digitally mature organizations create opportunities to collaborate more closely with partners, such as suppliers, OEMs, and other companies. By prioritizing the building out of APIs, legacy modernization, and sharing information with the partners, organizations receive greater transparency, more efficient process implementations, and smoother pivots if a crisis hits. High maturity organizations are more than five times more likely to tap into ecosystem partners to help them achieve operational agility than low maturity partners.

Achieving digital maturity takes work, but the journey produces many insights along the way, especially if you have the right partner guiding you.

Click here to download the full report today to learn about digital maturity and its impact on your organization.