Appendix 2   Assessing Your Building Blocks for Digital Transformation

This appendix offers an assessment tool companies can use to gauge their progress on the digital transformation journey. The assessment tool borrows from a survey we distributed from May to August 2018. The results of the survey are available online at cisr.mit.edu.¹ To maximize the value of this assessment, leaders should complete the survey individually and discuss differences in their assessments.

To start, use the building block definitions in figure 1.1 to rate the current status of each of your enterprise’s digital building blocks:

Now examine each building block in more detail using the following questions:

Your enterprise’s current knowledge about the value of digital to customers …

Your underlying operational backbone—the systems (e.g., ERP, CRM), processes, and data supporting your core transactions—currently …

Your digital platform—the business, data, and infrastructure components facilitating rapid innovation and enhancement of digital offerings—currently …

Your accountability framework—that is, the individuals or teams accountable for digital components and offerings—currently …

Your external developer platform—a platform for an ecosystem of partners who contribute and use digital components—currently …

Notes

1. M. Mocker, J. W. Ross, and C. M. Beath, “How Companies Use Digital Technologies to Enhance Customer Offerings—Summary of Survey Findings,” MIT Sloan Center for Information Systems Research, Working Paper No. 434, February 2019.