The benefits of digital maturity

Before we start mapping out what a digitally mature organisation is like, we need to define what we mean by digital maturity.

Digital maturity relates to how effectively an organisation embraces digital technologies throughout its operations. True digital maturity depends primarily on organisational culture and employee capabilities. It encompasses how effectively digital tools are woven into daily workflows, how readily employees adopt new technologies, and whether digital thinking is embedded in the organisation's processes and decision-making. An organisation only achieves digital maturity when it extends beyond the executive level to include widespread adoption and engagement at all levels of the workforce.

There’s ample evidence that digitally mature organisations are more effective. A report by Salesforce, which surveyed over 1,600 managers and leaders at non-profits, shows that digitally mature charities are four times more likely to report achieving their goals.

The benefits of being digitally mature appear at all levels of the organisation, from the ability to achieve its mission, right down to employees being more fulfilled and productive. We’re highlighting several of the most important benefits here to showcase how crucial it is to become digitally mature.

One of the key benefits of digital maturity is the ability to make better, data-informed decisions. Rather than being siloed across teams, data is collated in live dashboards that give a single clear view of how the organisation is performing. Leaders can make decisions based on data from users, rather than making assumptions about what users want.

Just as importantly, data-based decision making isn’t just the purview of senior leaders. Access to dashboards is distributed across the organisation, with teams being able to get the data they need to inform their work. Crucially, teams possess the ability to interpret that data and are empowered to act upon it.

Digitally mature organisations have a far better understanding of their users, through surveys, interviews, feedback, and analytics. Rather than commissioning new products in a top-down fashion and then trying to get users to adopt them, a digitally mature organisation involves users much earlier on in the process.

Early prototypes (MVPs) are put into the hands of users as quickly as possible to understand how they are used and if they address users’ problems. This means projects are commissioned and designed around the true needs of users, avoiding making assumptions about what users want that turn out to be wrong, wasting time and money.

For more information on successfully designing for users, see our article on principles of user-centred design. 

Top talent wants to work in effective, well-run organisations where their skills can have a big impact. They are highly attuned to how roles are presented and can spot if an organisation is digitally mature or not.

For example, a great UX designer might be considering a position at your organisation. If you are digitally mature, your job spec will feature the right mix of skills, and they’ll know you understand their role and how to utilise their skills effectively. Conversely, if your organisation is digitally immature, it will lack the knowledge to precisely specify all the skills a UX designer would need. It might use the wrong terminology or ask for irrelevant skills in its job description. These are red flags for talented jobseekers, who can spot the signs that an organisation doesn’t fully understand what they need.

A digitally mature organisation has the requisite knowledge of digital methodologies, skills and platforms to hire the right people and advertise these roles in the right way.

Digital maturity is all about your workforce having the skills and processes in place to make the best use of digital tools. This investment in skills allows your employees to learn and progress, and improving processes with digital tools removes tedious administrative work. This frees up employees to focus on more valuable and creative tasks, which are more fulfilling for them and more useful for the organisation.

Digitally mature non-profits are 3.5 times more likely to report having highly motivated employees and are less likely to report employee burnout. Investment in digital maturity can therefore help you retain your best employees and keep them motivated.

For more guidance on retaining digital talent, see our article on building happy and effective digital teams. 

Just as digital maturity helps you make better hiring decisions, it can also help you procure more effectively. It lets you choose the right tools for the job at hand, saving costs and increasing efficiency.

When digital systems, such as websites or CRMs, are procured by organisations which lack a strong grasp of their requirements, then they are more likely to be swayed by vendor sales teams or unnecessary ‘bells and whistles’ that they don’t really need.

Digitally mature teams procure well-understood tools to fulfil specific roles. They are confident that they know what they need and therefore are willing to use even a free tool if that’s all that is needed for the specific task.

When more complex and expensive tools are needed, digitally mature teams use prototypes and conduct testing with teams to ensure that they really meet the needs of the teams using them before embarking on costly adoption programs.

Digital maturity not only allows you to procure more effectively, by choosing the right systems, it also lets you build a better relationship with your suppliers.

A digitally mature organisation has the confidence to know when to delegate effectively to agencies and utilise the expertise they can bring. They also have the skills in place to brief well, action recommendations and utilise new tools effectively, allowing them to get more from the relationship and making them a great client to work with.

Digital immaturity paralyses decision making because teams and leaders lack the confidence to take risks and provide clear direction. Innovation is impossible when leadership is very risk-averse, because trying something new requires doing something that might fail.

Digitally mature leaders establish a culture that embraces failure as part of the learning process, cultivating a ‘fail fast’ mindset that enables rapid cycles of testing and learning. This facilitates innovation, and lets teams learn much faster by quickly learning from what works and what doesn’t.

When an organisation is digitally mature, the KPIs and metrics used to track how projects perform are all closely aligned with the overall goals and mission of the organisation.

This is empowering for teams, as they can see that what they’re working on contributes to the bigger picture, and it allows more effective decisions to be made about the project. Well-defined KPIs also drive accountability across the project’s lifecycle. Rather than projects being launched and then left by the wayside, projects are continually reviewed and improved after they’ve gone live to ensure they drive the results that matter.

Creating accessible digital projects requires an understanding of the rules and requirements around accessibility, so your team can ensure your digital projects are highly accessible for users with different needs. Digitally mature teams understand what is needed for digital outputs to meet crucial standards such as having an AA WCAG rating.

They also have the confidence to know what level to select. For example, the AAA WCAG rating (the highest level) isn’t suitable for all projects, but a digitally immature team might seek to reach it without understanding the trade-offs involved.

Digital sustainability involves minimising the carbon footprint of an organisation’s digital activities. Digitally mature teams have a greater understanding of the factors that contribute to an organisation’s digital carbon footprint and therefore can make more effective decisions to shrink it. Just as with accessibility, having the right level of knowledge and confidence on this issue enables teams to make well-informed trade-offs, and focus their attention on the areas where they can have the greatest impact.

A great example is how selecting where to host your website has a huge impact on its carbon footprint. Selecting a low-carbon hosting region like France or Sweden can reduce its carbon footprint tenfold, a relatively easy change that has a huge carbon impact. A team that lacked knowledge of digital sustainability might miss this big potential win and waste time on small optimisations that have a drastically smaller impact.

We’ve painted a picture of what happens when your organisation is digitally mature. It’s more confident and making better decisions, with more effective projects and happier teams.

But how do you reach this point? The vast majority of digital transformation projects fail to meet their stated objectives. So clearly embarking on digital transformation is no silver bullet.

We recommend taking a pragmatic approach which focuses on upskilling your teams and empowering them to introduce new tools and ways of working that suit their needs.

The best place to start is our digital maturity assessment. Taking this will allow you to understand your strengths and weaknesses and focus your efforts where they will have the biggest impact.

We’ll be expounding our pragmatic approach to digital transformation and giving away loads of useful takeaways for helping your organisation become more digitally mature in our upcoming webinar: Digital Transformation you can start next week.

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