Month: January 2023

What are we talking about?

As a business leader, you’re likely too familiar with the challenges that come with digitalization. Investing in digital technologies is crucial to staying competitive in today’s fast-paced business environment. To make sure that your organization is making the most of the digital investment, you need to look into your organization’s digital maturity.

When managing the ITSM landscape, it’s easy to get caught up in day-to-day operations and lose sight of the bigger picture. But as a leader, it’s essential to take a step back and evaluate your organization’s overall digital maturity. While you may have some strong areas in your ITSM, there may also be parts where you need certain implementations or solutions. The key to identifying these areas is conducting a comprehensive and integrated assessment of digital capabilities.

Overcoming digital technology challenges in the digitalization process

Digital maturity measures an organization’s proficiency and sophistication in utilizing digital technologies to support its business objectives. Assessment of digital maturity provides a clear understanding of your organization’s current digital state and identifies improvement opportunities. With this knowledge, you can make informed decisions about where to invest and how to achieve the most significant business impact.

But why is it so important to have a good understanding of your organization’s digital maturity? For one, it’s vital for making progress. Without a clear understanding of where your organization stands in terms of digital maturity, it’s difficult to set goals and measure progress. To identify areas for business improvement and stay competitive in the digital future, companies must assess their digital maturity and implement a broad range of new technologies in their digital strategy. An assessment provides a benchmark for tracking that progress and measuring the success of digitalization initiatives. There are several primary challenges that you may face when trying to implement digitalization across your company. Some of these include: 

• Silos within the organization: It is hard to break down silos within the organization, which can impede the flow of information and hinder the implementation of digitalization initiatives. 
• Costs: You may struggle with the costs associated with digitalization, such as new technology, training, and hiring specialized personnel. 
• Problems with information sharing: You can see a lack of standardization and data silos, which can make it challenging to implement digitalization initiatives. 
• Lack of equal level of digitalization across the organization: You may need help ensuring that all parts of the organization are at the same level of digitalization. 
• Focusing on resolving current problems rather than on long-term goals: You may need help with resolving current issues rather than on long-term goals. 
• Chaos: You can face challenges in navigating chaos within the organization, making it difficult to push forward. 
• Difficulties with planning a budget when there are differences in digitalization: You may need help with planning a budget when there are differences in digitalization across the organization, which can make it difficult to allocate resources. 
• Low or no engagement from the employees: You may struggle to get engagement from employees, which is another obstacle in implementing digitalization initiatives.

Digital transformation and digital maturity assessment

The first step is to understand your organization’s digital maturity and how to achieve it. You can use the insights from such an assessment to make informed decisions and drive real change within your organization. The ability to navigate chaos is admirable, but it’s not necessary. You can take control and lead the organization towards true digital transformation with the right approach and evaluation.

Being part of a company can make it more difficult to ensure that a digital maturity assessment is objective. This is because employees may have a vested interest in the outcome and may be less likely to identify and address areas of weakness or inefficiency. Additionally, employees may be less likely to speak out or raise concerns if they feel that doing so could negatively impact their job or their relationships with their colleagues or superiors.

An external digital maturity assessment can provide valuable benefits such as objectivity, expertise, experience, and fresh perspective. It can help your organization to make sure that the assessment is unbiased and that the results are reliable and actionable.

Adam Bernas, Chief Product Officer with the highest ServiceNow certificate (Master Architect), is experienced in guiding organizations through complex digital transformations. 

One way to mitigate these risks is to hire an external consultant or company to conduct the digital maturity assessment. A third-party assessor is less likely to be influenced by internal politics or biases and can provide an objective perspective on the organization’s digital maturity. Additionally, it can bring expertise and experience from other companies and industries, providing valuable insights and best practices to your organization.

How to address the digitalization challenges

To really make sure that you have the right picture of what is needed to be done, you still need a digital maturity assessment, and that is where you should start. After mapping your organization’s challenges, you can take the following actions:

1. Break down silos: Encourage cross-functional collaboration by setting up cross-functional teams, promoting open communication, and breaking down physical and organizational barriers.
2. Control costs: Develop a detailed digitalization initiatives budget and closely monitor expenses. Prioritise projects based on their potential business value, and be prepared to adjust plans and cut costs if necessary.
3. Achieve digital maturity across the organization: Develop a digital maturity model that can be used to benchmark different parts of the organization. This helps identify areas that need improvement and prioritize resources accordingly.
4. Long-term vision: Develop a long-term vision for digitalization and align digital initiatives with overall business objectives to ensure that all parts of the organization are on the same page and working towards the same goals.
5. Navigate chaos: Implement a project management framework to help keep digital initiatives on track and manage priorities.
6. Plan budgets: Develop a flexible budgeting process that allows for adjustments as digitalization initiatives evolve. This will help to ensure that resources are allocated to the most critical projects.
7. Engage employees: Involve them in digitalization by providing training, promoting open communication, and recognizing and rewarding their contributions.
8. Communicate progress and success: Communicate the progress and success of digital initiatives to employees, stakeholders and the board to keep them informed and engaged.

Addressing the digitalization challenges may require a combination of different approaches and continuous adaptation. Also, it’s essential to remember that digitalization is an ongoing process, and it’s vital to evaluate and adapt the plan as the digital landscape and the organization’s needs are changing. 

Light-keeper or business influencer? Become digital transformation!

In today’s fast-paced business environment, the decision-makers must choose whether to be an orchestrator of chaos and a light-keeper or a business influencer. By investing in a digital maturity assessment, you have the power to become a business influencer, make informed decisions and drive real change within your organization. 

When all parts of a company are digitalized at the same level, it enables the organization to work more efficiently, collaborate more effectively, be more agile, make better decisions, improve governance and compliance and be more scalable. All of which are key factors for organizations to achieve their business goals and stay competitive in today’s digital landscape. By taking a holistic approach to digitalization, you can ensure that all aspects of the organization are aligned with the overall business objectives and that digital transformation is driven by your organization’s needs. 

READ MORE ABOUT Holistic approach here: Digitalization done right – how to enable a holistic approach for your organization.

Remember, you are not alone, you can always get help in evaluating your situation – we’re here to help. Contact us or join us during our webinar about digital maturity. We will discuss how you can measure your organization’s digital maturity and why it is important. The webinar will be held by:

Leaders should regularly check their company’s digital maturity to ensure that they have a holistic view of their organization’s digital capabilities. Through digital assessment, they can identify areas of strength and weakness and ensure that all parts of the company are on the same page regarding digitalization. Thanks to such a deep understanding, aligning digital initiatives with overall business objectives and achieving true digital transformation is easier.’

Adam Bernas – Chief Product Officer with the highest ServiceNow certificate (Master Architect), experienced in guiding organizations through complex digital transformations. 

Digital maturity assessment provides a bird’s-eye view of the company, enabling stakeholders to identify areas of adequate digitization and those with great potential for development. It allows decision-makers to prioritize future investments based on clear evidence and expert recommendations for processes with the biggest business impact

Piotr Górnikiewicz – Senior Account Executive

How to start?

Are you struggling to fully leverage the capabilities of your ITSM platform despite its wide range of possibilities? If so, you’re not alone. Many organizations find themselves in the same boat, facing challenges in effectively utilizing the platform to support their business objectives. The root cause of this can often be traced back to a lack of understanding of their current state of digital maturity. But how can you overcome this challenge and achieve better results while improving your ROI? 

The answer lies in adopting a holistic approach to digitalization. You can do it by conducting a digital maturity assessment to comprehensively understand your organization’s digital maturity and identify areas for improvement in your systems landscape. We will guide you on how to effectively leverage the ServiceNow platform to drive business value and achieve your organization’s goals.

Digitalization with a holistic approach

It means taking a comprehensive and integrated approach to digital transformation. A holistic approach involves considering all aspects of the organization, including its culture, processes, and technologies, and aligning them with its overall business objectives. It recognizes that digital transformation is not just about technology but also about people and how they work.

You want your organization to improve constantly, at the same pace, ensuring that all parts of the company are on the same page. When each part is digitalized at the same level, it allows for a more efficient flow of information and resources across the organization. This can improve service delivery, cost savings, and customer experience. It also influences positive way collaboration across departments and teams.

When all parts of a company are digitalized holistically, it enables employees to share information and resources more efficiently, leading to improved teamwork and increased productivity. The same level of digitalization allows for greater scalability, enabling the organization to expand into new markets or services more easily.

How to check your digital maturity?

Digital maturity assessment is becoming increasingly important for organizations looking to stay competitive in today’s digital landscape. You can use different tools, e.g., ServiceNow DMA, to evaluate your company’s proficiency in utilizing digital technologies to support its business objectives.

A digital maturity assessment can help you understand how your company is currently using the ITSM platform and identify opportunities for improvement that will enable you to leverage your solutions to drive business value in a better way. The assessment covers service management, automation, integrations, governance, and analytics.

What does it mean in practice? The assessment might reveal that the organization effectively uses ITSM to manage incidents but is far from fully leveraging the automation capabilities. In this case, the organization could develop a roadmap with the help of an experienced ServiceNow partner. The goal: enhancing the use of your systems landscape to automate more processes, which would ultimately lead to more efficient service delivery and cost savings.

The great value of such an assessment lies in understanding how the digital landscape is being used by employees, which may be different from the intended use. This can help your organization optimize the tool and make it more user-friendly, increasing employee engagement and productivity.

Business advantages of using DMA

Conducting a Digital Maturity Assessment (DMA) with a holistic approach can provide many business advantages. By identifying areas for improvement, you can develop a roadmap for enhancing its use of digital technologies to drive greater business value. This can lead to more efficient service delivery, cost savings, and improved customer experience.

“Being aware of your organization’s digital maturity level is vital for leaders who want to make informed investment and optimization decisions that align with their organization’s strategy. Maturity level awareness helps leaders with making decisions on which areas to focus first so that they best suit their organization’s current needs.”

Krzysztof Patyk – ServiceNow Solution Consultant

A DMA helps you identify new opportunities for digital transformation that lead to gaining a competitive advantage. For example, you can improve your ability to innovate and respond to changing market conditions by automating manual processes or integrating new technologies. You may count on improved performance. DMA ensures that you focus on the right initiatives and invest in the right areas. It can lead to enhanced performance and a better return on investment.

Other advantages are better governance and risk management by identifying compliance and security risks, and improved employee engagement and decision-making. DMA provides a benchmark of your digital maturity, which you can use to track the company’s progress over time and compare the performance to that of other organizations in your industry. 

How to digitalize equally

To ensure that all the different parts of the company are digitalized with Digital Maturity Assessment equally, there are a few key steps you can take:

– Involve key stakeholders – to get comprehensive and accurate results, involve key stakeholders from across the organization. This might include representatives from IT, operations, finance, marketing, and other departments.

– Define clear goals and objectives – before conducting the DMA, define clear goals and objectives for the assessment. This will help to focus on the areas that are most important to the organization and will enable your organization to measure the success of the assessment.

– Use a standardized framework – ensure that all areas of the organization are assessed in the same way and that the results of the assessment can be compared across different departments.

– Focus on the business processes – all areas of the organization should be assessed in terms of their digital capabilities, and the assessment results can be used to develop a roadmap for improvement.

– Communicate and share the results – after conducting the DMA, communicate and share the results with all relevant stakeholders to ensure that everyone in the organization understands the current state of digital maturity and that the assessment results are used to develop a roadmap for improvement.

– Create an action plan with specific tasks and owners –  once the DMA is completed, create an action plan that includes specific tasks and owners to ensure that the recommendations from the DMA are implemented in a timely manner and that progress is tracked.

– Regularly review progress – conduct regular reviews of progress to help identify any areas where your organization is falling behind, allowing you to make adjustments as necessary.

Get support to check your digital maturity

Conducting a digital maturity assessment allows organizations to comprehensively understand their digital maturity, identify areas for improvement, and develop a roadmap for enhancing their use of digital technologies to drive greater business value.

With maturity assessment, you can optimise the tool’s use and get more out of the platform investment, as well as accelerate the transformation process and save time in making strategic decisions in the future. Strategic investment plans should be based on “well-informed decisions” rather than solely focused on “risk and uncertainty management.

To apply such an analysis and make sure that it is done from top to bottom,  allowing you to follow the holistic approach – you might want to use a knowledgeable ServiceNow partner. 

At SPOC, we have over ten years of experience as a ServiceNow partner. We’re focused on helping organizations get the most out of their ServiceNow platform at competitive prices. We follow a holistic approach with a solid and ambitious goal to help companies reach equal digitalization internally. 

Our strategic consulting services focus on the overall system landscape and architecture. As a framework, we utilize the ServiceNow DMA in conjunction with other tools to evaluate your organisation’s digital maturity. With a clear and comprehensive assessment, we can create a roadmap for digitalizing the entire organization and track the progress regularly to ensure all the company divisions are moving in the same direction.

If you want to know more, reach out to us or join us during our . We will discuss how you can measure your organization’s digital maturity and why it is important. The webinar will be held by:

Digital maturity assessment provides a bird’s-eye view of the company, enabling stakeholders to identify areas of adequate digitization and those with great potential for development. It allows decision-makers to prioritize future investments based on clear evidence and expert recommendations for processes with the biggest business impact.

Piotr Górnikiewicz – Senior Account Executive

Leaders should regularly check their company’s digital maturity to ensure that they have a holistic view of their organization’s digital capabilities. Through digital assessment, they can identify areas of strength and weakness and ensure that all parts of the company are on the same page regarding digitalization. Thanks to such a deep understanding, aligning digital initiatives with overall business objectives and achieving true digital transformation is easier.’

Adam Bernas – Chief Product Officer with the highest ServiceNow certificate (Master Architect), experienced in guiding organizations through complex digital transformations.