Before the roadmap: what we really look at when measuring Digital Maturity

People rarely come to us saying “We have a digital transformation problem.” They usually come with something specific: an app that needs to be rebuilt, an AI capability to integrate, a new channel to launch, or a process to digitize. And that makes sense: it is often the concrete request that brings to light something that would otherwise remain abstract.

The first thing we do is not immediately respond to that request. Instead, we take a broader look at what surrounds it before building any proposal around it. Not because the request itself is wrong, but because it almost always reveals something about the rest of the organization - and it is worth looking at that first, not afterwards. An app that needs rebuilding may be hiding a data issue no one is looking at; an urgently requested AI feature may run up against an infrastructure that simply is not ready to support it.

Taking this broader view is not something companies naturally do on their own, and there is nothing unusual about that. People inside an organization are focused on the solution in front of them: they rarely have the time or the mandate to stop and look across multiple areas at once. The company does not need to already be “data-driven” or accustomed to this kind of analysis. What it needs is someone to bring that outside perspective before the solution is built.

Two ways to assess Digital Maturity: outside-in and assessment

How we approach this depends on what can actually be observed.

If the company has a consumer-facing product or service, a great deal of information is already public: reviews, apps, websites, declared technology stacks, open positions. This makes it possible to build an initial outside-in perspective before even sitting down with the client: a solid working hypothesis to validate together, rather than a blind snapshot.

If, on the other hand, the company operates in B2B, or if public signals are simply not enough, that perspective needs to be built together with the organization: internal surveys, interviews with key functions, and access to data that is not publicly available. It is a different kind of work - slower and more collaborative - but it starts from the same underlying criteria.

This is not just a methodological detail for specialists. It is why we are wary of anyone proposing the exact same framework to every client, regardless of what that company actually reveals to the outside world.

Key criteria for assessing Digital Maturity

The specific criteria need to be adapted to the context: a manufacturing company and a digital scale-up cannot be assessed in exactly the same way. But some areas come up almost every time, regardless of the industry:

• Customer experience: how consistent and frictionless the customer's experience is across digital channels, rather than how extensive the range of features is.
• Product and digital ecosystem: whether what the company offers is designed to generate measurable value, or is simply a collection of disconnected initiatives.
• Data utilization: whether data exists but remains confined to reporting, or whether it genuinely informs decision-making.
• Technology and infrastructure: whether the architecture enables the organization to move quickly or becomes a constraint that every new project must work around.
• Ways of working: whether digital has clear ownership within the organization or depends on whoever happens to take responsibility for it at a given time.

Everything else - compliance, experimentation, organizational culture - comes into or drops out of the assessment depending on what actually matters to that organization at that particular moment. A longer list does not make the assessment more rigorous, it makes it harder to translate into decisions.

The five levels of Digital Maturity

Each criterion is assessed on a five-level scale:

• Initial, ad hoc, reactive
• Emerging, isolated initiatives
• Structured, defined processes
• Managed, measured, data-driven
• Optimized, leading practices, continuous improvement.

What does this mean in practice? Take data, for example. At the Initial level, data exists but no one looks at it regularly. Structured means dashboards and KPIs are in place and monitored, but separately by each function, without a unified view. Optimized means data informs decisions before a problem emerges, rather than simply detecting it after the fact.

When it comes to customer experience, Emerging might mean having a website that works, but no one is measuring whether the experience is consistent across channels. Managed means metrics such as NPS or CSAT are tracked continuously and actually used to decide what needs to change.

What do Digital Maturity levels mean in practice?

A maturity level is not a score. “Initial” does not mean a company is doing something wrong. It simply means that a particular area has not yet received significant investment or attention, often because, until that point, it did not need to. Likewise, not every company needs to aim for “Optimized” across every criterion: a B2B company with a small number of enterprise clients does not have the same need for digital experience personalization as a mass-market e-commerce business.

The level describes where the company stands in that specific area, not how valuable the company is.

This is why our assessment is not focused on calculating an average, but on looking at the shape of the maturity profile. A company scoring 4 in one area and 2 across the others tells a very different story from one that consistently sits at 3 across the board - and requires a different type of intervention.

An average flattens precisely the information we need. It risks turning a useful snapshot into a score that does not help anyone decide what to do next.

An example of a Digital Maturity assessment

Let’s take a composite profile based on patterns we often see: a company manufactures physical products and has invested for years in product reliability, but considerably less in the digital experience surrounding those products.

The product and its service ecosystem are relatively mature: the feature set is rich and internal technical expertise is strong. Customer experience across digital channels, however, remains at an Initial level. Reviews can provide objective evidence of this - for example, on Trustpilot or major online stores - even before any internal interviews take place.

Data is collected through the right analytics tools, but the link that turns that data into product decisions is missing: it remains a measurement layer rather than actively informing future developments. In this scenario, the digital strategy, where one exists, has not yet become a shared reference point for the people responsible for executing it.

A profile like this does not need further investment in the product itself, which is already a strength. It needs to close the gap between that product and everything that should help unlock and amplify its value.

From Digital Maturity assessment to roadmap priorities

Once the digital maturity profile is clear, the next question is not simply, “What should we fix first?” It is about understanding what will have the greatest impact for that specific company and what is most urgent given market conditions or upcoming regulatory requirements.

Not every gap carries the same weight, and not every gap needs to be addressed immediately.

We always start from the most relevant opportunities. This is what separates a plan that merely looks comprehensive from one that is genuinely prioritized and tailored to that company, at that particular point in time.

That is where we start, regardless of the initial request that brought the client to us.