There is no disputing the fact that it is time for digital transformation and many companies are at a point in their digital transformation journey where they have to move on. However, the challenge is that to move on, you have to determine your digital maturity, and this is where companies and senior managers get stuck and unable to move to the next step.

A Fitch survey on behalf of the Telkom Group indicated that industries, such as transport and logistics, financial services, consumer and retail, pharmaceuticals and healthcare, technology and communication, manufacturing and heavy industries are mostly planning to implement the fourth industrial revolution, but are lagging behind on implementation.

According to insights from the country’s top technologists, who completed the annual ITWeb Brainstorm CIO Survey, on how IT intersects with business, 54% described their organisations’ digital maturity as basic, while only 6% said it is fully mature and 38% describing it as advanced. It is clear that the digital maturity of South African enterprises need attention.

Recent surveys have also shown that only one in four enterprises have active implementation plans and smaller enterprises are less likely to have one in place. While an increasing number of enterprises are spending most of their IT budgets on digital transformation technologies, many are not. With the high speed of digital transformation that is reshaping industries, some will be left behind. The important question is, will they be able to catch up?

While there is no shortage of digital maturity models and frameworks to determine how far enterprises are in their digital transformation journeys, many enterprises have become stuck in that their ambition is set too high, and not in line with their actual maturity to achieve the ambition.  They have therefore failed to meet the pre-requisite steps, before being able to achieve the overall goal.

This is where BCX partners with enterprises to help them to determine the missing steps in their digital transformation journey. During this journey, BCX evaluates the way the enterprise works, communicates, connects and collaborates to assess its digital maturity and current technology initiatives. This assessment is then used to build a digital strategy and design a roadmap for the journey, including the necessary pre-requisites for the more ambitious goals.

This digital strategy forms a bridge between an enterprise’s business and IT strategies, articulating the organisation’s ambition for its digital business model, while the roadmap offers a prioritised view of business initiatives needed to reach your digital goals.  The roadmap can also be enhanced with additional automated interrogations, using tools that can scan your systems and application landscape.  The strategic layers around customer experience, workforce experience, as well as digital operations touch every element in the organisation and leads to the solution layers namely; business strategy, process optimisation, application modernisation and underlying infrastructure layers (cloud, always-on connectivity, devices, mobility and security).

Through digital transformation consulting we not only assist clients to understand where in the transformation journey they are but also guide them along their maturity life cycle. This includes consulting or workshops to uncover clients’ digital transformation strategies and possible barriers and readiness assessments for aspects such as customer experience and digital transformation.

We use the BCX Digital Readiness Assessments (DRA), a structured approach to evaluate the digital maturity of our clients by following four steps: preparation, where we immerse our consultants into an enterprise to see the full picture, an assessment to prepare a readiness report, development of the strategy based on the feedback received from the customers and the industry drivers evaluated, s and a roadmap of the client’s journey towards digital transformation.

The benefits of this readiness assessment are that it jumpstarts the maturity journey of the enterprise, provides awareness of digital maturity and its implications for certain baseline activities that would be required, and highlights digitalisation focus areas.

According to IDC research, digitally oriented businesses are outgrowing their peers’ revenue and gross profit growth.  Companies that don’t make these investments will be disintermediated and will not be around in 10 years’ time.  Enterprises cannot wait with determining their digital maturity if they want to successfully move ahead on the journey to digital transformation.

Get in touch with BCX and we will help you understand your digital maturity and how it can benefit your business. To speak to an expert, click on the link below.