the digital capability assessment

Are you prepared for digital disruption and transformation?

Check your company’s digital capability fast and holisticly with four digital capability views: competition, customer, leadership capabilities and technological capabilities.

Making a company competitive during times digital disruption and new technologies requires holistic thinking.

With the help of the Digital Capability Assessment and its views board of directors and top leadership ensure that they take holistic view to the phenomenon.  

Assessment has been divided into four views: 1) Competition 2) Customer 3) Leadership capabilities and 4) Technical capabilities.

The purpose of the assessment is to create awareness, discussions and maybe even widen thinking among leadership teams and at the board rooms, but more importantly the idea is that based on the assessment results leadership make decisions and take actions to continuously develop the business and to be competitive.  

The assessment is a practical list of questions and statements which could be reviewed and considered. The assessment is not meant to be comprehensive, but to highlight key areas of strengths and weaknesses of current state and thus serve as an opener of mind and basis for further discussions and decisions.

Key steps:

1.       Fill out the questionnaire

2.       Review, analyse and discuss the results

3.       Make development roadmap and metrics

4.       Execute and follow up, make corrective actions

A.    Competition

1.       We have stepped back to understand what is the going on with digitalization.

2.       We have understanding of megatrends that impact us.

3.       We are alert to weak signals that impact us.

4.       We are alert to possible changes to the market and new competitors.

5.       We have discussed digital threat and identified signs of digital disruption e.g. we do not say it “It has nothing to do with our industry”.

6.       We understand how serious digital threat is to us.

7.       We understand how urgently and aggressively we need to establish options for future success.

8.        We have identified opportunities and/or disruption possibilities that digitalization could bring to us (e.g. new business models*).

9.       We have made active decision what kind of role we take in digitalization (e.g. active, passive).

10.    Our company has defined a partnership network or an ecosystem* where we operate and we understand the importance in digital era.

*business model explains who your customers are and how you plan to make money by providing them with value.

* ekosystem is a partnership network, which goal is to create customer value. Partners of the ecosystem provide complementary services or are even competitors. In the ecosystem collaboration is done with e.g. developers, customers, startups, different non-profits, universities, consortiums and even with competitors.

 B.     Customer

1.       We take customer experience into account in our product/service development by involving the customer in development work and asking customer feedback.

2.       We use digital technology to get close to the customer, to understand him/her, to make fact based decisions and to ensure value adding customer experience and easiness (e.g. mobility, geo-localization, data analysis, IoT, social media, API, web-pages, e-commerce).

3.       We have discussed the possibility that our target customer could change due to digital change.

4.       Customer data is in the heart of whole customer experience. We use metrics, analytics and can make fact based decisions based on those.

5.       We mesh seamlessly the physical and digital experiences e.g. by enhancing customer experience.

C.     Leadership capabilities

1.       We have digital vision and/or strategy or new technologies and digital disruption has been taken into account in our vision and/or strategy.

2.       Our leaders understand how value will/can be created and what we need to do to win during times of digital disruption and new technologies.  

3.       Our organizational culture supports digital initiatives e.g. to foster innovation, collaboration, piloting

4.       Our organizational structure supports digital transformation.

5.       Our operative organization has named person responsible of digitalization.

6.       Our operative organization has mapped competences, capabilities and gaps needed in the era of digital disruption and new technologies.

7.       We know what is meant by agile company, not only agile IT.

8.       We are transforming our company to agile company.

Board of Directors leadership capabilities assessment:

1.       We have needed digital knowledge or background* in the board of directors and top leadership.

*Digital knowledge or background means at least basic understanding and experience of digitalization and the changes it brings to business, society and everyday life, as well as to related business models and technologies.

1.       Our ways of working at the board of directors meet the needs of the era of digital disruption and new technologies.

2.       We ensure as board of directors that operational execution power of the company is tuned to the era e.g. we have needed resources and competences.

9.       Our boards and company’s mindset is set for the era of digital disruption and new technologies

 -  we understand the cultural and behavioural changes that might be needed.

3.       We have true and deep interest, capability and will to get familiar with the strategic opportunities and threats of the company in the era.

4.       Have we mapped the risk related to the era of digital disruption and new technologies and we have risk management plan.

5.       We challenge and follow up validity of strategic assumptions.

6.       We constantly follow up strategy execution and react to deviations with corrective actions, and if needed we are capable to redirect our strategy. Thus we can say our way of working is agile and flexible.

 D.    Digital capabilities

1.       We use digital technologies to get closer to and to understand the customer (e.g. some, mobile apps, analytics).

2.       We use digital technologies to empower employees (e.g. internal collaboration tool).

3.       We use digital technologies to transform the business processes (e.g. to automate, purchase, sell, market)

4.       We have turned/are turning from product company to software and service company.

5.       We use big data and/or analytics to make fact-based decisions.

6.       We have smart, connected product/service for external sales (IoT product/service) or for internal use (industrial internet).

7.       We have cloud services used through web. Services can be used any place and any time. No need to own servers.

8.       We have strong relationship between IT and business to drive change and collaborate.

9.       We take data ownership and IT security seriously.

10.    In our organization digitalization is not driven by technology, but through vision, strategy and customer value.

11.    We use agile and lean, values, practises and methodologies in IT and Service development

12.    We use agile and lean values, practises and methodologies across or in business some units (e.g. HR, sourcing, finance, marketing)