Your Guide to Digital Maturity

As businesses try to embrace digital transformation in marketing, sales, and all corners of their businesses, they’re hitting a snag. Consumers expect engaging, personalized experiences delivered instantaneously on their channel of choice. Immediacy and customization require a data-centered understanding of your buyer’s journey.

The 4 stages of digital maturity

Google and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) created a framework to measure organizations’ digital maturity. The problem is that few organizations make it past the first two steps (Nascent and Emerging) of digital maturity. While each step might sound simple, implementation is a big challenge for brands. See where you fall on Google and BCG’s scale to start your own journey.

1. Nascent

Nascent organizations are just getting started with digital maturity. They have an uphill battle to not only get their heads around their customer data, but also to build internal trust in that data. 

Nascent organizations are trying to use their data but have to build out processes and structures to prepare that data first. They’re actively looking for executive buy-in as well as relevant, useful data for the teams that need it. 

2. Emerging

Emerging organizations have some form of owned data, but usually for a single channel. They’re testing new things and documenting their process. Emerging organizations prioritize aligning KPIs, data, and documentation for a good foundation. They’re also aligning a common language and approach to maturity across departments but haven’t achieved it just yet. 

3. Connected

Connected organizations are much more digitally mature. They can demonstrate, in hard numbers, the ROI of their digital maturity efforts. Attribution is easier because they’re using their data effectively, too. 

Connected organizations start to focus much more on the data and technology, which is backed by organizational goals. They can attribute certain actions to profit, but haven’t quite achieved multi-moment yet. 

4. Multi-Moment 

Multi-moment organizations are very rare but they capture the ideal mix of data and insight into every point of the customer journey. Multi-moment campaigns personalize all customer interactions and they can attribute the source of the customer’s responses to apply immediate feedback mechanisms. Their teams couple machine learning and custom attribution models to boost their bottom line. 

Why digital maturity matters

Digital maturity may seem overwhelming, but at New Path we know that great results come from hard work. Even though your organization might never reach multi-moment digital maturity, you may still see these benefits: 

1. Improved audience experience

Two-thirds of businesses compete solely based on customer experience. In a world where customers can buy from anyone else, personalized experiences will keep them loyal to your brand. Digital maturity helps you identify the proper audiences, tracking essential data and providing the right content during the buyer’s journey. 

2. Decrease costs

Digitally mature organizations spend less—a lot less. Just look at the numbers:

• Digital native organizations are 26% more profitable and have a 12% higher market value on average. 
• Mature organizations are 3X more likely to report significantly better profit margins.  

3. Save time

Technology is a must for digital maturity, but it won’t replace your hardworking employees. If anything, it empowers employees to focus on high-value tasks instead of daily minutiae. 

4. Improve time to market

First to market is usually first to get customers’ business. But without digital maturity, it’s really hard for organizations to innovate quickly. 

Digital maturity boosts productivity with strategic digitization. With a more agile environment, you can ideate new ideas, experiment, and get a product to market before your competitors. 

Technology is molding our world, and things seem to change on a daily basis. If you want the world to see your business’s brilliance, it’s time to take a digital-first approach. 

Digital maturity changes your mindset but requires an environment of continuous learning. New Path can help you marry strategy, organizational structure, and technology to achieve digital maturity. Find out how!