Critical KPIs not where they need to be? Feel like you’re falling behind your competitors in terms of sales, innovation or employee retention? These are all signs that it may be time for your company to initiate a digital maturity assessment to look for ways technology can improve your company’s processes and produce better outcomes.
A digital maturity assessment appraises how technology could help your business improve. Many times, companies stick with what works until customer or employee expectations rise. Manual processes, outdated technology and “what we’ve always done” can hinder growth in any company, especially in today’s digital world, where innovation is the currency of success.
With such a wide range of business technology solutions available today, nearly any problem can be solved or improved with tech, such as automating processes, new software capabilities and more. A digital maturity assessment shows you where technology can solve your business’ headaches and help you grow.
Every winning team needs a great coach. Your company’s digital maturity assessment will need a leader to manage the process, organize interviews, research possible solutions and present findings to leadership.
If you have someone on your staff who has led a digital maturity assessment at another company, you may be able to create a digital transformation team in-house. If not, it’s a good idea to hire an independent company to perform your assessment. A third-party vendor will look at your company and its processes not only with an unbiased eye but can also bring a wealth of insights from industry best practices to help calibrate your digital maturity versus other companies’.
Attempting to do a digital maturity assessment across your entire organization at once would be overwhelming. It’s best to start in an area that has obvious potential for wins.
If your customer service scores are down, focus on that department and see if there are ways technology could quell common customer issues. Could replacing manual processes with automated ones speed up response times? Would creating a customer self-service portal eliminate phone calls and wait times? Find the areas that are easiest to remedy and work from there.
Once you’ve addressed the problems in one department, move on to the next. With each new success, you’ll learn lessons you can take into the following department’s assessment. Practice makes progress.
