Is your organisation prepared for digital transformation and is it capable of adapting its activities to gain best possible benefit from it? Do you understand the full scope of digitalisation’s impact?
There is much talk about digitalisation and digital transformation. However, they often remain high-level concepts, or the issue is viewed from a particular perspective. According to a survey published in January 2017 (Vatanen 2017: Digikyvykkyyskysely 2016 – “Digital capability survey 2016”, the respondents consisted of more than 250 CEOs and board members), while Finnish companies are aware of the threats and opportunities presented by digitalisation, they do not fully recognise the significance of such threats and opportunities for their own business. In particular, the concrete measures are missing. Is the current situation unclear, both within organisations and in relation to others? Is the vision of target state missing? Or, is it question about development resources required by reforms whose impacts are difficult to determine?
In order to address all the perspectives and impacts of digitalisation, the topic needs to be understood broadly. A Digimaturity model developed by VTT helps decision-makers to understand digitalisation, providing a comprehensive framework on the issue. An online tool based on this model helps, in turn, to determine the digimaturity level of an organisation.
Digimaturity refers firstly to an organisation’s readiness for digitalisation: its motivation to change, and its ability to adopt new technologies and new operations models. Secondly, it refers to an organisation’s performance based on digital technology. In other words, digimaturity is a combination of business, technology and social activities – and is not limited to just own organisation.
Digitalisation permeates all activities of organisations
Digitalisation acts as an enabler for the development of activities, supporting the operations of the company itself and its stakeholders. Digitalisation normally refers to exploiting new technology, providing organisations with the opportunity to use information gathered in various ways to develop its business. In other words, it enables entirely new services and business models in addition to process development.
Those who have given thought to digitalisation know that it involves a number of perspectives which, ultimately, affect the strategy and operations of an entire organisation. Under VTT’s Digimaturity model, aspects selected as the principal dimensions of digitalisation include the following six: strategy, business model, customer interface, organisation and processes, people and culture, and information technology. The selections are based both on widely used maturity models presented in the literature and VTT’s empirical experiences of development projects. (Leino & al. 2017)
Where to start?
Starting can be compared to orienteering: you need to know where you are, where you aim to go, and to find a route and means of getting there. As this involves competition, you should also know where the others stand. In particular, if the company’s own industry segment is lagging behind other segments, an operator outside the traditional segment may unexpectedly enter the market, revolutionising the entire segment’s business logic. This is currently known as disruptive change, but only twenty years ago the phenomenon would have been termed structural change.
The Digimaturity tool helps in determining the current situation
Using VTT’s Digimaturity tool, an organisation can review its current situation and development needs with regard to digitalisation. It can be used by a single person who wants to develop a better understanding of the situation of his/her organisation, possibly comparing it to other organisations or, alternatively, it can be used to provide a visual representation of the various viewpoints in an organisation , in order to provide a baseline for analysing the current situation.
Based on the responses provided by the online tool, an organisation’s digimaturity can be visualised in a diagram. The tool enables the interpretation on which areas the digimaturity is already in good shape as well as those that lag behind, or identifying differences in organisation’s digimaturity levels. The tool also enables a comparison of the organisation’s digimaturity using a control group based on segment, turnover and/or headcount, as well as all organisations that have responded, answering the question “Are the others ahead of us and, if so, in what areas?”
Blogikirjoitus perustuu For Industry -ohjelman Digikypsyys-hankkeeseen.
References
Leino, Simo-Pekka; Kuusisto, Olli; Paasi, Jaakko; Tihinen, Maarit. 2017. VTT Model of Digimaturity. In: Towards a new era in manufacturing. Final report of VTT's For Industry spearhead programme. VTT, pp. 41–46. http://www.vtt.fi/inf/pdf/technology/2017/T288.pdf
Vatanen, Eira. 2017. Digital capability survey (Digikyvykkyyskysely) 2016. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/hallitusty%C3%B6-ei-ole-muuttunut-digitaajuudelle-peiliin-aika-vatanen
