Digital maturity – the key to digital transformation

Digital transformation has become one of the key focus points for businesses seeking a competitive edge in today’s markets. It’s the concept driving widespread adoption of emerging technologies, as well as significant investment in information technology and systems.

However, digital transformation needs to be much more than just deploying the latest tools in your organization. True digital transformation occurs when you can ensure the business is ready and capable of utilizing those new technologies effectively. In order to do that, you first need to look at your organization’s digital maturity.

What is digital maturity?

Digital maturity is both the degree of technical capabilities currently employed by the business, and the structures and supports the organization has in place to use those tools to their best effect. This includes the state of the business processes, from their degree of documentation and automation, to the platforms and tools used to communicate and manage them.

Everything that touches and influences process management and execution contributes to the overall digital maturity of the business, including risk and compliance management and the overall agility of the company in the face of rapidly shifting market conditions.

It’s easy to get a feel for a business’ overall digital maturity with a quick glance at its process management approach. Organizations with low digital maturity tend to be reactive to change, shifting with the whims of popular opinion. These companies will take on emerging technologies because they’re what everyone else is using, regardless of the suitability to their operations.

The emergence of RPA and AI

We saw this with the emergence of robotic process automation (RPA) not so long ago. It’s a great tool with some very effective use cases, but many companies rushed to adopt it without considering whether it was the right solution for their needs, or whether their data and processes were in a fit state to effectively use it.

The explosion of artificial intelligence (AI) products in recent times could potentially suffer the same treatment, leading to organizations embracing the technology without doing the hard work of ensuring that their processes and systems are mature enough to leverage it to the best effect. 

Data is key

In contrast, a company well on the path to digital maturity is proactive in how it approaches new technologies and the data it deploys them to. Effectively managing the data that sits at the heart of any business is key to the success of a digital transformation strategy, and so a business with greater digital maturity will have strong alignment between the operations and IT teams. 

Business alignment supports transformation by building understanding of the needs, purposes and applications of both the tools and the data that they will manage. This ensures that the right tools are deployed, and to the best effect. 
This isn’t possible without sound business process management in place.

Good business process management (BPM) establishes an ecosystem that can sustain digital transformation initiatives throughout the deployment and implementation phases and emphasizes the effective management of vital business data.

Well defined processes provide a framework for tools like AI to build upon and create safeguards that ensure data is handled responsibly. That includes ensuring that the data held has been sourced appropriately and is free from bias or inaccuracies, secured against improper use and with clear boundaries defining how new tools can and cannot access it.

Good processes, well documented and optimized for automation, support agile business practices, creating an environment where new technologies are able to be adopted with confidence and set up to succeed.

This is a vital part of managing the risks of integrating emerging technologies. Numerous businesses have discovered that while AI tools can be powerful assets, they can also be a liability.

Last year Samsung made headlines when they banned staff from using AI tools after sensitive code submitted for improvement to an AI model was found to be available to other users outside the organization.

Digital maturity recognizes and accounts for how data will be handled and protected and understands where something like AI will interface with it. For instance, publicly available AI platforms typically utilize user interactions to modify and expand their models, making submitted content available to the engine for future users to benefit from.

By contrast, a business-centric tool like BIC by GBTEC ensures that the tool only ever pulls data from the model, never feeding sensitive customer content back into the engine. 

Digital maturity is the best driver and foundation for successful digital transformation. It’s the best approach to effectively building new technologies like AI into your organization, helping you identify the right solutions proactively.

GBTEC prides itself on offering a platform with market leading AI capabilities that supports great process management and encourages digital maturity so the tools in your hands can be used to the best effect for true digital transformation.

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