Don't take the fool's gold road to digital maturity

There are many things that mature with age: wines, cheese, even people. However, it's fair to say that in the world of IT and in particular the internet, age doesn't mean maturity, it means old, out-of-date and those dreaded three words we hate to hear: no longer relevant.

Achieving digital maturity within your organisation is not just about spending a lot of money on the latest products then sitting back and waiting for the magic to happen. Approaching things this way will mean you have lots of fantastic, cutting edge systems...that won't talk to each other, people won't know how to use correctly and will be hindering your business.

It's a bit like having a football club and a whole heap of cash. Sure you can go and buy the best players in the world, but getting them to work together is a completely different matter.

A recent Forrester study revealed some very interesting findings about organisations and their attitudes to digital maturity.

• Businesses with a mature digital strategy are rare. Just 11% of companies surveyed assessed their digital strategy as "excellent." Businesses with the highest maturity are typically from retail (35%) or financial services and insurance (FSI) (33%)

Isn't that fascinating? We live in the digital age; we have done for a good few years now. Yet the majority of organisations openly admit that their digital strategy isn't as good as it should be. When the whole world is becoming more and more connected, surely this has to change.

• The CEO sets the overall digital vision and strategy for 41% of organizations with a mature digital strategy. This is in contrast with less mature organizations, where the CIO tends to be in charge of the digital vision and strategy.

I believe this is all about strong leadership. Setting the goals and targets and steering everyone on the path to a digital future.

• The top three digital transformation drivers for mature businesses involve improving their customers' experience, increasing the speed of innovation, and improving-time-to market. In contrast, the drivers for less mature businesses focus mainly on profitability improvements and cost reduction.

I don't think this will come as a major surprise to anyone who has worked for a business whose digital offerings are on the 'light' side. When your focus is purely on profit and costs, the best you can hope for is slightly improved profit and slightly reduced costs. When you focus on the customers, making their lives better and easier and getting your products to them quicker; profit will quickly follow.

• Cultural and organisational issues are key transformation challenges even for mature firms. Forty-three percent of firms with a mature digital strategy see competing departments wanting to own digital as the most significant barrier to effective digital transformation in their organization.

It's amazing that still, in 2016, organisations struggle with cultural challenges. One single department doesn't 'own' digital. The whole business has to be digital, has to own digital. Each department is responsible for delivering the transformation necessary to be that connected digital mature business.

• Digital is not a destination; it is a journey that requires businesses to be agile. Ninety-four percent of mature businesses plan to address the threat of digital disruption through transforming systems and processes to be more agile in the digital world. Agility is also seen as one of the top five metrics to measure the success of digital programs. In contrast, less mature businesses plan to address the threat by developing "shiny objects" such as connected products and services, while key success metrics include tactical indicators such as the number of customer orders handled.

Digital isn't about 'the latest thing', a new app or virtual reality or wearable. It used to be, though should never have been, but now times have changed. Digital is a way of thinking, of transforming your organisation for the better. Digital should work for you; you shouldn't be a slave to it.

Here at yCNC we help organisations, large and small, achieve digital maturity, transforming their business and way of thinking to put them at the forefront of their class. We love 'shiny objects' and 'the latest things' as much as the next person but we also know that's the fool's gold way to try and reach digital maturity.