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:
- Break down silos: Encourage cross-functional collaboration by setting up cross-functional teams, promoting open communication, and breaking down physical and organizational barriers.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Navigate chaos: Implement a project management framework to help keep digital initiatives on track and manage priorities.
- 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.
- Engage employees: Involve them in digitalization by providing training, promoting open communication, and recognizing and rewarding their contributions.
- 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
