In order for an organization to mature digitally, it must first know its current maturity level. Keep in mind that all parts of a business may not be at the same maturity level.
This article is based on the digital maturity model created by Google and Boston Consulting Group (see this introduction from Seer). Their model consists of 4 levels: Nascent, Emerging, Connected and Multi-level.
We have made two adjustments. We felt that the step up to the last level was too steep, so we introduced two new levels; Orchestrated and Choreographed. So, in our model there are a total of 6 levels: Nascent, Emerging, Connected, Orchestrated, Choreographed and Omniscient.
Level 1 - Nascent
The distinctive feature for this level is that we have data silos. Each department has its own IT system and data is stored in a variety of ways. The same data is often manually entered in several systems and any integration between systems is implemented with arbitrary technologies.
Benefits
Individual departments may have systems that fits their needs but aren't connected to any other systems. They are free to modify their systems without affecting any other.
Concerns
Any integration efforts often end in corrupt data. Consequently departments don't trust each other's data quality or professionalism. Due to isolated systems and siloed data, the cross department processes are ad-hoc and very dependent on individual employees insider knowledge.
Level 2 - Emerging
The distinctive feature from a business perspective is consolidation. Departments start to agree on common definitions and make efforts to consolidate their master data. The distinct feature from a technology perspective is one way data sharing; data is sent daily between systems.
Important processes are being documented. An integration tool such as Biztalk is often introduced to handle the need of sending data from one system to another. Analytics is introduced as data is extracted, consolidated and understood at a deeper level.
Benefits
Essential processes run smoother thanks to daily data transfers between the system. The departments have started to trust each other.
Concerns
The IT department struggles with the increasing demand for integration and master data synchronization. Every need for data exchange requires a new point-to-point integration, with little or no reuse of existing integrations. The integration tools are highly specialized and require resources that are hard to find.
IT is considered a bottleneck for business change because the systems have become tightly coupled; changes in one system affect other systems.
Business terminology is slowly replaced by the names that are used in the IT systems. But there is no clear connection to what the system terms mean in a business environment. While this might be fine for current employees, it is more difficult for new employees to comprehend and participate.
Processes that involve more than one department are person dependent and fragile. The processes often require that you ask a person in another department to fulfill tasks in their system.
The people in charge of business development need a thorough understanding of all current systems to build off them and change existing setups. This constraints the way the business can develop.
Level 3 - Connected
The distinctive features from a business perspective are cooperation and independence. A business department can do most of its work independent of other departments. It is allowed to access other department's data and functionality. From a digital perspective the distinctive feature is share data and functionality.
The competitive parts of the business are developed in cross-functional teams from business and IT. Analytics is provides their input to relative systems.
Benefits
Partners and teams are highly cross functional with trust in data, using the same language and sharing objectives.
The non-competitive parts of IT can be governed by IT without involving the business. Even the most critical change can be done without affecting the business or other IT systems. The competitive parts are developed in a tight relation between IT and the business.
It is easier to outsource parts of the business, to establish new business partnerships and be a part of an ecosystem. Mergers and acquisitions are also much easier. Furthermore, an organization that has reached this level has the upper hand in a merger.
Concerns
Automated processes spanning over several systems are possible, but hard to achieve. Cross-application guided user interfaces for the staff are still too expensive.
If the organization doesn’t have an adequate strategy for opening up their systems, it is setting itself up for failure. The organization will end up with unsupportable solutions, an extensive technology debt and a rigid IT landscape that threatens to slow the business development down to a grinding halt.
Level 4 - Orchestrated
The distinctive feature from a business perspective is collaboration; the departments work together seamlessly towards the same objectives. From a technology perspective the distinctive feature is orchestrated; the business processes are digitally orchestrated. This means that the processes are pushed forward by IT applications that carry out the automatic steps, provide guides for the manual steps and notifying when there is a problem.
System integration is not an issue; the organization knows how to do it and it "just works".
Benefits
All processes, both internal and external, are experienced as straight forward, simple and smooth. Changes in a business process can be implemented quickly and learned with a minimum of effort. Every employee knows what they need to do next and how to do it. New staff swiftly become proficient.
Concerns
The business processes can't adapt to changes in real-time and may struggle with unusual scenarios. Customers might experience the organization as rigid and unable to adapt to their specific needs.
Level 5 - Choreographed
The distinctive feature from a business perspective of the choreographed maturity level is dynamic. Many of the large orchestrated processes are divided into independent work flows. These processes are triggered by business events. They are loosely coupled. When a process sends an event, that may trigger other processes that are not necessarily linked to the event sending process.
Benefits
The organization becomes more agile. When a process is triggered by an event instead of a hard-wired call, it can dynamically react to new situations.
Concerns
It can be a challenge to fully understand how individual workflows add to the whole picture. There needs to be a way to know and track how each workflow triggers another.
Level 6 - Omniscient
The distinctive features from a business perspective are optimized and anti-fragile. Each process can be carried out in many ways. The best one for the situation is automatically chosen. From a technology perspective this is machine learning. The challenge here is to provide optimal conditions for choosing the optimal path instance.
Benefits
The business processes adapt in real time to any changes. They are more robust in the event of any unexpected external changes. Customers now receive a dynamic, personalized experience when dealing with the organization, making them loyal and willing to pay a higher price.
Concerns
With independent running workflows that are based on machine learning, it becomes much harder to understand the entire processes and to manually act on problems. At a certain point no one knows what underlying algorithms and logic are anymore.