Digital Maturity: keys to business success

On many occasions, companies have real problems in responding to the changing market and customer needs. Although we know that adaptability is not the only secret, productivity and anticipation are often necessary. Increasingly, digitalisation is a necessary step for positioning, but it is not enough. That is why we refer to digital maturity when we believe that the company is capable of taking advantage of digital technologies to improve in all possible aspects, from economic performance to customer relations, including business processes, production processes, internal relations and so on. Digital maturity concept is closely related to digital transformation. If we understand this as the process that companies carry out in order to incorporate and take advantage of the use of digital technologies, digital maturity would be a sort of goal to reach, a place where you can look back and think “we have done a good job”.

How to measure the digital maturity of our company?

We must measure the digital transformation of the company according to some determining factors:

• Digital Adaptation : this concept is closely related to the business culture. Without a company culture on analytics, without a fast adaptation to customer demands, and without a climate that favours innovation by the members of the organisation, our company will not be able to meet the challenges of digital maturity. Even if we have tools such as dashboards or analytics systems, we need a quick and agile analysis response where we can extract concrete data, so our analysis won’t be decaffeinated.
• Analytical culture : the important thing is not the strategy, but the people who have to execute it, and these people behave according to what we call ‘organisational culture’, understood as the set of experiences, habits, customs, beliefs and values that characterise an organisation. The role of organisational culture is fundamental to create an analytical culture in the organisation that will help us to achieve digital transformation.
• Scalability : a concept that can lead to a mistaken analysis, the key to scalability is that it is in line with the company’s situation, i.e. that it is not oversized to incur in costs. And, above all, that it can be upgraded as easily and quickly as possible. With regard to scalability, it is very important to automate the deployment of systems, for example, the use of AWS, Docker and Kubernetes can facilitate the assembly of the infrastructure with cost savings.
• Value chain : we must start from an individualised knowledge of the client. Technology must help us make each customer value experience unique and memorable. It must help us leverage every touch point. Every opportunity should help us to continually exceed our customer’s expectations. The company must be able to offer highly personalised services and, on many occasions, anticipate needs that even the customer does not know they have.
• Organisation : the digitalisation of the company is inexorable and therefore must be part of everyone, both employees and collaborators must be able to share information, convert it into knowledge, generating new products and services and maintaining a competitive advantage in our market. The ideal model to achieve this objective is a horizontal organisation, without silos, which facilitates decision-making and favours innovation. From the manager to the intern, EVERYONE must be able to have their say when it comes to proposing, reflecting and executing.
• Analytical model : the type of analytics we should select is that which allows us to describe the company’s situation, provide information on the past and current situation through KPIs, which allows us to get to know the customer and anticipate their wishes. We are talking about predictions, A/B testing, algorithms & customization.

Companies approach their digitalisation journey through stages that allow them to achieve a degree of digital maturity. The difference between these stages is not linear, but exponential. That is why digital native startups are able to compete with fewer resources with traditional companies that are well positioned in the market.

To ensure that the digital transformation process is tackled, we must take into account that our company complies with 3 pillars:

1. Customer Centric: the customer is at the centre of the business. This means total adaptation to the customer throughout the organisation.
2. Omnichannel: offering services through all possible channels. For this we must have a centralised data platform and a unified strategy to support it.
3. Data Intelligence: decisions must be based on data or knowledge acquired through data.

At Apiumhub we have a service oriented towards data-based projects with the aim of helping companies to achieve the degree of digitisation that provides them with an analytical culture in their organisation that allows them to offer an omnichannel experience focused on the needs of their customers.

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