- Your company is able to interact
with customers online
through your company website.
You have an active social media presence
through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn,
Instagram and the like.
You advertise through digital channels,
you have sophisticated digital communications
leveraging email and other collaborative technology.
How advanced or mature is your digital offering?
These are important
but these factors tend not to be sources
of competitive advantage
in today's market.
If this describes how far you've come,
you're at the first rung in digital evolution.
The rungs are as follows.
Digitally active companies
take advantage of the transactional,
digital or e-commerce solutions
to increase revenue.
Combined with a basic level of analytics
and operational improvements
such as the introduction of agile development methods,
organizations in this tier
are beginning to utilize the peripheral advantages
of a digital organization.
These organizations develop metrics
or key performance indicators
to gauge their progress
or lack thereof as well
and use that as the basis of further improvements.
Today, even mom and pop operations
are likely digitally active
as it's not a major undertaking
or a major expense to do so.
From the retail sector,
Sears is an example of a digitally active organization.
Due to the number of digitally native organizations
in the industry, Amazon being the most prominent
of those, companies that remain digitally active
like Sears, are likely to fade away
rather than thrive.
Digitally engaged organizations
develop digital solutions
and processes that can be found throughout the organization.
Digital work is more pervasive across the organization
in all departments of the company
and a digital operating model
would have been defined.
Digitally engaged organizations
use more advantaged analytics
and process automation freeing up capacity
and providing critical information
for strategic decisions.
To continue with the retail example I mentioned above,
most retailers are currently digitally engaged.
For reasons of opportunity
and self-preservation
they've advanced their capabilities
to compete with digital natives.
Digitally competitive organizations
push the envelop on how digital solutions
and processes can be utilized to not only drive revenue
but also to help forecast future needs
and respond quickly to identified gaps.
The harmonization between a digital operating model,
predictive analytics, and a microservices architecture
allows digitally competitive organizations
to quickly take customer desires
and feedback and turn them into actionable,
revenue-generating business solutions.
As artificial intelligence or AI
becomes more prevalent in business applications,
these organizations use rudimentary machine learning
to improve decision making
in big data analysis.
Walmart is an example
of a company that is now digitally competitive.
Again, Amazon gave plenty of reason to do this
and in recent years Walmart
has developed a Silicon valley-based e-commerce group
and it made one of the biggest digital native acquisitions
of all time in 2016
when it acquired jet.com
for more than $3 billion.
These have propelled Walmart to new heights
in its ability to compete with companies
that are much younger and more nimble.
Digitally mature companies
often have an artificial intelligence first perspective
in their businesses.
Companies with embedded AI solution
continue to drive what it means
to be leaders in the digital marketplace
by providing unique revenue-generating channels
from digital products and services,
digitally mature companies turn customers' data
and organizational flexibility
into constant opportunities
to drive new business.
Organizations on this tier
have surpassed an omnichannel experience
and instead provide a channel agnostic customer journey
through their products and services.
This means that the experience
in the store, on one's computer,
or on one's phone would have many similarities.
The color schemes, icons, logos
used across each would the same,
the sort of experience one had in the store
would be replicated on the digital channels
such as the computer or the phone.
The greeting that story associate might provide
would be provided digitally online.
Only a few organizations in the world
are truly digitally mature.
And those are the likes of Google, Amazon, and Facebook.
They're requiring droves of artificial intelligence talent
from around the globe
to fuel their growth.
You need not have as a goal
to become a digitally mature organization
but it is useful to understand
some of the differentiating factors
in growing as a digital organization
so you know what to shoot for
as the company advances.
Greater levels of maturity
are likely to translate to greater levels of value.