Digital Maturity: Startup 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 Startup 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
Organisations who are IDEATION 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 EARLY-STAGE 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 GROWTH-STAGE 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 MATURITY 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.
| Point | Stage | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 0 - 5 | Ideation | It is not yet in our strategy |
| 6 - 15 | Early-stage | Some informal activity underway, but not aligned to any overall strategic intent |
| 16 - 20 | Growth-stage | Formulated in strategy, but not effectively operationalised |
| 21 - 24 | Maturity | In implementation. Change management underway |
Product
Traction
Funding
Editorial
Business
Advice to attain the next level of maturity:
To move your startup from an IDEATION to an EARLY-STAGE level of digital maturity,…………
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 EARLY-STAGE to a GROWTH-STAGE level of digital maturity, …………
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 a GROWTH-STAGE to an MATURITY level of digital maturity, …………………….
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.
