Digital Maturity: Rapid Diagnostic

How digitally mature is your business?

The WIN Digital Maturity Rapid Diagnostic Tracker is based on five pillars and the corresponding indicators that fall within each that mark a stable, digitally mature business: Customer, Strategy, Technology, Operations and Organisation & Culture.

Answer the questions below to receive a rapid diagnostic report of where your business resides on the digital maturity scale, ranging from emergent (score between 0-4) to mature (score of 20) alongside some concrete recommendations on measures to take to move your business toward greater stability.

Disclaimer: These classifications are meant to serve as signposts for the CEO and their executive teams to assess where to prioritize their focus in these core business areas. They should not be interpreted as prescriptive or exhaustive. The information collected in this tool will be used only for bench-marking and reporting purposes and in ways that will not reveal who you or the organisation you represent are. Your answers will remain anonymous.

Rapid Diagnostic Digital Maturity Report

This report is an indication of how you score across the key pillars of digital maturity, and what to do to get to the next level.

Date

Company Name

Your overall digital maturity level is

Organisations who are EMERGENT in their digital maturity level are yet to measure their online audience growth, monitor their user engagement and/or diversify beyond print as a source of revenue. If there is a subscription to a digital revenue model in place, it will likely contribute to less than 5% of their gross annual revenue. They tend to utilize a fixed cost model exclusively, without allocating any budget toward improving digital capabilities or skills. Cost-cutting and process efficiency may be a consideration for survival while the value of gender equality is underestimated.

Organisations in the EXPLORATORY level of digital maturity experiment with improvements to their digital capabilities; periodically measuring their audience growth trends and online user engagement activities. They run trials with digital subscription models, metrics, and diversify their sources of revenue by experimenting with at least 1 to 2 alternatives. They have started implementing cost-cutting and process efficiency measures and allocated at least 10% of the training budget to digital skills upliftment while addressing gender pay disparities in pockets.

Organisations at the PROGRESSIVE level of digital maturity have a well-defined digital maturity strategy. They conduct audience growth and online user behavioural trend analysis on a monthly or quarterly basis.

They have started monetizing their online audiences and diversified their sources of revenue by experimenting with at least 3 to 4 alternatives. Digital subscription models are maturing as evidenced by the 3 to 4 monitoring metrics applied. Projects are in motion to ensure that their digital revenue contributes to between 10% and 20% of their gross annual revenue. Strategies are in place to replace fixed cost models with a variable cost model at scale. They’ve allocated between 3% and 5% of their Capital Expenditure budget toward digital improvements and between 3% and 5% of their Operating Expenditure budget toward cloud technologies, software, and licensing.

Operational efficiencies include cost-cutting initiatives to offset between 10% and 40% of revenue declines. Process efficiencies aim to cut costs by a further 5%.

Organisations at the PROGRESSIVE level of maturity have increased their share of the budget allocated to digital skill hires and talent such as coders, architects, engineers, and developers to between 10% and 20% of the budget. Between 10% and 20% share of the training budget has been allocated to digital skills training while a company-wide strategy to reduce the gender pay gap to less than 30% is underway.

Organisations at the ADVANCED level of maturity have implemented an organisation-wide change management program to embed the digital maturity strategy. They assess and benchmark their online audience growth trends regularly and initiate customer retention/engagement optimization projects accordingly.

Between 3 and 5 subscription models have been implemented with which to monetize their online audience. At least 5 to 6 non-traditional sources of revenue are secured, such that their non-traditional revenue contributes to at least 20% of their gross annual revenue.

Their technology stack has been migrated to the cloud so that at least 50% of their cost base is variable. They have devoted between 5% and 10% of their Capital Expenditure budget to digital improvements including editorial tools like CMS, hardware, laptops, and equipment. Organisations at the ADVANCED level of maturity have increased their Operating Expenditure on cloud technologies, software, and licensing by between 5% and 10%.

Cost-cutting has offset between 80% and 100% of revenue declines and they are approaching the break-even point. The organisation has kick-started process efficiency measures to realise further cost savings of at least 10%.

Organisations at the ADVANCED level of maturity have increased their share of the budget allocated to digital skill hires and talent such as coders, architects, engineers, and developers to between 20% and 40% of the budget. Between 20% and 40% share of the training budget has been allocated to digital skills training while a company-wide strategy to reduce the gender pay gap to less than 20% is underway.

Organisations at the MATURE level of maturity conduct frequent benchmark reviews and ROI analyses on online audience growth trends. They execute customer engagement strategies for customer loyalty and sales growth.

Digitally mature organisations have at least 7 to 8 non-traditional sources of revenue including 4 to 5 subscription models with which to monetize their online audience, ensuring that their non-traditional revenue contributes to at least 50% of their gross annual revenue.

Their technology stack has been migrated to the cloud so that their variable cost outweighs the fixed costs across the business. They have devoted upward of 10% of their capital expenditure budget to digital improvements including editorial tools like CMS, hardware, laptops, and equipment. Organisations at the mature level of maturity have increased their Operating Expenditure on cloud technologies, software, and licensing by at least 10%.

Cost-cutting is a regular part of their activities which has helped them back to a position of profit. These organisations have matured their process efficiency measures to realise cost savings of upwards of 10%.

Organisations at this level of maturity have increased their share of the budget allocated to digital skill hires and talent such as coders, architects, engineers, and developers to between 40% and 50% of the budget. Between 40% and 50% share of the training budget has been allocated to digital skills training while gender pay parity has been achieved.

Overall Digital Maturity
Month	Progress
Your company	25
Industry Average	75

Digital Maturity Legends
Point	Scale	Note
0 - 4	Emergent	It is not yet in our strategy
5 - 9	Exploratory	Some informal activity underway, but not aligned to any overall strategic intent
10 - 14	Progressive	Formulated in strategy, but not effectively operationalised
15 - 19	Advanced	In implementation. Change management underway
20	Mature	Implemented, measuring ROI & benchmarking

Customer

Strategy

Technology

Operations

Organisation

Advice to attain the next level of maturity:

To move your organisation from an EMERGENT to an EXPLORATORY level of digital maturity, focus on improving your digital capabilities by implementing tools such as Google Analytics or Chartbeat to measure audience growth trends and monitor online user engagement activities. This will allow you to start tracking at least 1 to 2 of the critical digital subscription metrics including, inter alia:

Monthly retention rate
Subscriber engagement
Involuntary churn
Customer acquisition cost
Average revenue per user
Customer Lifetime Value

Monetize your digital content by experimenting with at least 1 to 2 digital subscription models including, inter alia:

Metered
Freemium
Windowing
Hard Paywall with Free Sampling
Subscription with offline benefits

Start to diversify your sources of revenue, by experimenting with at least 1 to 2 distinct non-traditional sources of revenue, amongst inter alia:

Reader Revenue
Sponsored content
Paid search and social
Affiliate revenue
Events
Multimedia
Syndication and
Distributed Content

Conduct a productivity exercise to establish a realistic view of your Newsroom’s productivity. Implement process efficiency measures and right-size your news businesses to become leaner and more cost-efficient.

Allocate at least 10% of your training budget toward digital skills upliftment and start to address gender pay disparities. Devote at least 3% of your total capital expenditure to digital improvements including editorial tools like CMS, hardware, laptops, and equipment, and increase your operating expenditure on cloud technologies, software, and licensing by at least 3%.

Reach out to WIN for a bespoke roadmap to digital maturity. Through a specialist productivity exercise, WIN will provide you with a realistic view of your Newsroom’s productivity measures and methods to improve them. Savings from rightsizing and streamlining efforts are reinvested into the business to fund Digital Transformation.

The WIN Stability Tracker tool sets media organisations on a trajectory toward Digital Transformation. The tool will provide your organisation with detailed insight into the specific areas of your business that require strategic interventions for sustainability, and the most relevant metrics to measure, monitor, and grow to become future-fit. It allows for our media partners to formulate a holistic digital maturity strategy, set relevant and measurable strategic objectives, track progress, identify issues and apply more rigour to decision-making by normalising the use of data in their companies.

WIN has done extensive advisory work with clients at a number of newsrooms across Africa and Southeast Asia. The news organisations are all different sizes, part of different groups, and experiencing different market pressures. While the consulting work covers several different areas, it is broadly concerned with 3 areas:

Rightsizing news businesses to become leaner and more cost-efficient in an environment of declining revenue, especially post-Covid
Pivoting editorial workflows and organisation to focus on digital audiences and publishing; future-proofing the business
Attempting to find ways to monetise digital content while simultaneously preserving print revenues under the deeply troubling socio-economic pressures brought on by Covid

The first US Chief Data Officer DJ Patil said: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t fix it.” This is the underlying principle for the journey we at WIN are inviting you to partake in.

For more information on how to become a WIN partner, please contact us via email at info@womeninnews.org. You can also learn more about WIN’s Stability programme as well as our various programmes and areas of expertise here.

Advice to attain the next level of maturity

To move your organisation from an EXPLORATORY to a PROGRESSIVE level of digital maturity, align your organisation toward improving its digital capabilities by defining a comprehensive digital maturity strategy.

Set projects in motion to diversify your sources of revenue. Monetize your online audience and digital content such that your digital revenue contributes to between 10% and 20% of your gross annual revenue:

Experiment with at least 3 to 4 alternative sources of revenue. Examples include inter alia:
- Reader Revenue
- Sponsored content
- Paid search and social
- Affiliate revenue
- Events
- Multimedia
- Syndication and
- Distributed Content
Experiment with 3 to 4 digital subscription models such as:
- Metered
- Freemium
- Windowing
- Hard Paywall with Free Sampling
- Subscription with offline benefits
Conduct audience growth and online user behavioural trend analysis on a monthly or quarterly basis. Mature your digital subscription models by applying at least 3 to 4 relevant monitoring metrics which may include inter alia:
- Monthly retention rate
- Subscriber engagement
- Involuntary churn
- Customer acquisition cost
- Average revenue per user
- Customer Lifetime Value

Obtain a realistic view of your Newsroom’s productivity, which will enable you to right-size your news business for a leaner and more cost-efficient operation, hereby offsetting 10% to 40% of revenue declines. Implement process efficiency measures to realize a further 5% in cost savings.

Replace your fixed cost models with variable cost models at scale. Trade capital expenses for variable expenses and benefit from economies of scale by migrating your technology stack into the cloud for example. This way you will pay only for when you consume computing resources, limited to how much you consume.

Devote between 3% and 5% of your Capital Expenditure budget to digital improvements including editorial tools like CMS, hardware, laptops, and equipment. Increase your Operating Expenditure on cloud technologies, software, and licensing by between 3% and 5%.

Increase the share of budget allocated to digital skill hires and talent such as coders, architects, engineers, and developers to between 10% and 20% of the budget. Allocate between 10% and 20% share of the training budget to digital skills training and set a company-wide strategy in place to reduce the gender pay gap to less than 30%.

Reach out to WIN for a bespoke roadmap to digital maturity. Through a specialist productivity exercise, WIN will provide you with a realistic view of your Newsroom’s productivity measures and methods to improve them. Savings from rightsizing and streamlining efforts are reinvested into the business to fund Digital Transformation.

WIN has done extensive advisory work with clients at a number of newsrooms across Africa and Southeast Asia. The news organisations are all different sizes, part of different groups and experiencing different market pressures. While the consulting work covers several different areas, it is broadly concerned with 3 areas:

Rightsizing news businesses to become leaner and more cost-efficient in an environment of declining revenue, especially post-Covid
Pivoting editorial workflows and organisation to focus on digital audiences and publishing; future-proofing the business
Attempting to find ways to monetise digital content while simultaneously preserving print revenues under the deeply troubling socio-economic pressures brought on by Covid

The first US Chief Data Officer DJ Patil said: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t fix it.” This is the underlying principle for the journey we at WIN are inviting you to partake in.

Advice to attain the next level of maturity

To move your organisation from a PROGRESSIVE to an ADVANCED level of digital maturity, implement an organisation-wide change management program to embed your digital maturity strategy.

Secure at least 5 to 6 non-traditional sources of revenue such that your non-traditional revenue contributes to at least 20% of your gross annual revenue. Examples include inter alia:

- Reader Revenue
- Sponsored content
- Paid search and social
- Affiliate revenue
- Events
- Multimedia
- Syndication and
- Distributed Content

Experiment with 4 to 5 digital subscription models such as:
- Metered
- Freemium
- Windowing
- Hard Paywall with Free Sampling
- Subscription with offline benefits
Assess and benchmark your online audience growth trends regularly and initiate customer retention/engagement optimization projects accordingly. Mature your digital subscription models by applying at least 5 relevant monitoring metrics which may include inter alia:
- Monthly retention rate
- Subscriber engagement
- Involuntary churn
- Customer acquisition cost
- Average revenue per user
- Customer Lifetime Value

Obtain a realistic view of your Newsroom’s productivity, which will enable you to right-size your news business for a leaner and more cost-efficient operation, and advance your cost-cutting initiatives to offset between 80% and 100% of revenue declines such that you approach break-even point. Implement process efficiency measures to realize a further 10% in cost savings.

Replace your fixed cost models with variable cost models at scale. Trade capital expenses for variable expenses and benefit from economies of scale by migrating your technology stack into the cloud rendering at least 50% of your cost base as variable, for example. This way you will pay only for when you consume computing resources, limited to how much you consume.

Devote between 5% and 10% of your Capital Expenditure budget to digital improvements including editorial tools like CMS, hardware, laptops, and equipment. Increase your Operating Expenditure on cloud technologies, software, and licensing by between 5% and 10%.

Increase the share of budget allocated to digital skill hires and talent such as coders, architects, engineers and developers to between 20% and 40% of the budget. Allocate between 20% and 40% share of the training budget to digital skills training and set a company-wide strategy in place to reduce the gender pay gap to less than 20%.

Implement between 3 and 5 subscription models with which to monetize their online audience. Secure at least 5 to 6 non-traditional sources of revenue such that your non-traditional revenue contributes to at least 20% of your gross annual revenue.

The WIN Stability Tracker tool sets media organisations on a trajectory toward Digital Transformation. The tool will provide your organisation with detailed insight into the specific areas of your business that require strategic interventions for sustainability, and the most relevant metrics to measure, monitor and grow to become future-fit. It allows for our media partners to formulate a holistic digital maturity strategy, set relevant and measurable strategic objectives, track progress, identify issues and apply more rigour to decision-making by normalising the use of data in their companies.

WIN has done extensive advisory work with clients at a number of newsrooms across Africa and Southeast Asia. The news organisations are all different sizes, part of different groups and experiencing different market pressures. While the consulting work covers several different areas, it is broadly concerned with 3 areas:

Rightsizing news businesses to become leaner and more cost-efficient in an environment of declining revenue, especially post-Covid
Pivoting editorial workflows and organisation to focus on digital audiences and publishing; future-proofing the business
Attempting to find ways to monetise digital content while simultaneously preserving print revenues under the deeply troubling socio-economic pressures brought on by Covid

The first US Chief Data Officer DJ Patil said: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t fix it.” This is the underlying principle for the journey we at WIN are inviting you to partake in.

Advice to attain the next level of maturity

To move your organisation from an ADVANCED to a MATURE level of digital maturity, conduct frequent benchmark reviews and ROI analyses on online audience growth trends and execute customer engagement strategies for customer loyalty and sales growth.

Secure at least 7 to 8 non-traditional sources of revenue such that your non-traditional revenue contributes to at least 50% of your gross annual revenue. Examples include inter alia:

- Reader Revenue
- Sponsored content
- Paid search and social
- Affiliate revenue
- Events
- Multimedia
- Syndication and
- Distributed Content

Experiment with 4 to 5 digital subscription models such as:

- Metered
- Freemium
- Windowing
- Hard Paywall with Free Sampling
- Subscription with offline benefits

Assess and benchmark your online audience growth trends regularly and initiate customer retention/engagement optimization projects accordingly. Mature your digital subscription models by applying at least 5 relevant monitoring metrics which may include inter alia:

- Monthly retention rate
- Subscriber engagement
- Involuntary churn
- Customer acquisition cost
- Average revenue per user
- Customer Lifetime Value

Obtain a realistic view of your Newsroom’s productivity, which will enable you to right-size your news business for a leaner and more cost-efficient operation. Make cost-cutting a regular part of your activities to help you back to a position of profit. Mature your process efficiency measures to realise cost savings of upwards of 10%.

Replace your fixed cost models with variable cost models at scale so that your variable cost outweighs the fixed costs across the business. One approach is to trade capital expenses for variable expenses and benefit from economies of scale by migrating your technology stack into the cloud. You will then only pay for the computing resources consumed.

Devote upward of 10% of your Capital Expenditure budget to digital improvements including editorial tools like CMS, hardware, laptops, and equipment while you escalate your Operating Expenditure on cloud technologies, software, and licensing by at least 10%.

Increase your share of the budget allocated to digital skill hires and talent such as coders, architects, engineers and developers to between 40% and 50% of the budget. Allocate between 40% and 50% share of the training budget to digital skills training while putting measures in place to achieve gender pay parity.

The WIN Stability Tracker tool sets media organisations on a trajectory toward Digital Transformation. The tool will provide your organisation with detailed insight into the specific areas of your business that require strategic interventions for sustainability, and the most relevant metrics to measure, monitor and grow to become future-fit. It allows for our media partners to formulate a holistic digital maturity strategy, set relevant and measurable strategic objectives, track progress, identify issues and apply more rigour to decision-making by normalising the use of data in their companies.

WIN has done extensive advisory work with clients at a number of newsrooms across Africa and Southeast Asia. The news organisations are all different sizes, part of different groups and experiencing different market pressures. While the consulting work covers several different areas, it is broadly concerned with 3 areas:

Rightsizing news businesses to become leaner and more cost-efficient in an environment of declining revenue, especially post-Covid
Pivoting editorial workflows and organisation to focus on digital audiences and publishing; future-proofing the business
Attempting to find ways to monetise digital content while simultaneously preserving print revenues under the deeply troubling socio-economic pressures brought on by Covid

The first US Chief Data Officer DJ Patil said: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t fix it.” This is the underlying principle for the journey we at WIN are inviting you to partake in.