Navigating Digital Maturity: Why Your Transformation Isn’t a Sprint

By Simon Dubuc, Managing Director

In the fast-paced world of supply chain management, “Digital Transformation” has become a ubiquitous term. We hear it in boardrooms, read about it in industry journals, and see it touted as the panacea for every operational headache. But at LIDD, we view digital transformation through a different lens. It isn’t just about buying the latest software or jumping on the AI bandwagon; it’s about building objective-driven infrastructure that enables your business to grow sustainably.

One of the most critical lessons we’ve learned through years of implementations is that digital transformation is not a sprint—it’s a journey that must be taken piece by piece. To navigate this journey successfully, you must first understand your starting point. This is where the concept of Digital Maturity comes into play.

Understanding the Digital Maturity Model

Digital maturity reflects how well an organization’s systems, processes, and data work together to support its operational and growth objectives. In the context of supply chain systems — such as ERP, WMS, and planning tools — maturity is not defined by a specific piece of software alone, but by how clearly data is organized, how well processes are defined, and how ownership is established across teams. These elements ultimately determine how effectively systems can be implemented, integrated, and scaled over time.

To help visualize this progression, we use a five-level Digital Maturity Model. It isn’t a rigid framework or a checklist. Instead, it provides a practical way to understand where your organization is today and what must be addressed before moving forward. It shows the steps an organization takes as it evolves from fragmented workflows to increasingly automated operations.

1. Organizing Data & Processes

At this foundational stage, the focus is on addressing fragmented workflows and inconsistent data. Most companies at this level are struggling with a lack of structure and need to establish a baseline of “system readiness”.

A critical part of this stage is defining data ownership and accountability. Organizations must understand what data they need, who is responsible for it, and how it is used across workflows. Many companies at this level still rely heavily on spreadsheets and manual tools — and that alone is not a blocker. In fact, organizations can be highly disciplined and well-prepared at this stage. What matters is whether processes are clearly defined and ownership is established, creating the foundation needed to centralize operations effectively later on.

2. Centralization of Operations

Here, we begin to centralize core business functions along with warehouse, manufacturing, and planning operations into a single source of truth. The goal is to ensure that different departments are no longer operating in isolated bubbles, but are working on the same dataset.

A typical objective at this stage is to tie your operational and execution systems back to your financial system. In a mature environment, these two worlds should not work in independent silos. This means ensuring that every time you execute a physical task like receiving a purchase order on the dock or shipping an order to a customer, your accounting teams can easily reconcile these transactions to financial documents.

3. Advanced Functionality

Once the core is stable, organizations can enable additional functionality within their systems to improve efficiency and usability. This stage focuses on centralizing processes that were previously managed outside the system, improving user experience, removing workarounds, and extending functionality based on real operational feedback. This may involve adding modules, extensions, or features such as warehouse scanning that bring the system closer to the point of activity and better support day-to-day operations.

4. Dedicated, Integrated Solutions

When core ERP capabilities are no longer enough to handle complex operations, specialized systems like a Warehouse Management System (WMS) or advanced supply chain planning tools are introduced. At this level, it is vital that all systems, although sometimes on different data models or infrastructure, work together cohesively to prevent new silos from forming.

5. Process Automation

This is the “North Star” for many: a state where systems are fully stabilized, allowing the focus to shift toward automating repetitive tasks. This includes leveraging advanced tools like AI, robotics, and advanced orchestration workflows to accelerate both decision-making and execution.

Digital Maturity is Not Linear

In practice, very few organizations fit neatly into a single level. It’s common to see elements of different maturity stages across the business.

Even if certain parts of the organization appear to be operating at a more advanced level, unresolved gaps in data, process clarity, or ownership should always be addressed first. When symptoms of early-stage immaturity exist, the priority should be to return to the foundation before moving forward.

Identifying the Symptoms: Where Are You Today?

Before you can decide where you’re going, you must be honest about where you are. Often, companies don’t truly understand their current state until they begin to see symptoms of digital immaturity. These symptoms are the red flags that tell you there is a gap in your technology or processes.

Some of the most common indicators we see include:

• Low Trust in Data: If your team doesn’t trust the information coming out of your system, they will revert to manual workarounds, further degrading the system’s value.
• High Dependency on Tribal Knowledge: If your operation relies on specific knowledge trapped in the heads of one or two key employees, you are at risk. This “tribal knowledge” makes training new staff nearly impossible.
• Reliance on External Tools: Are you running your multi-million-dollar business on a “house of cards” made of Excel spreadsheets and paper notes? While Excel is a great tool, it is not a sustainable way to run a company.
• Siloed Systems: Your procurement team’s software doesn’t talk to your warehouse software, leading to manual data replication, a high headcount just to move information, and inevitably, data errors.
• An Inability to Scale: You want to add a new business process or handle more volume, but your current systems simply won’t support it.

The Power of Honesty and Change Management

Assessing your current state isn’t something to take lightly. It means getting into the weeds of how the operation really runs. This usually happens through discovery sessions where process owners — from procurement through to sales — walk through their day-to-day work, the tools they rely on, and the pain points they deal with.

In these conversations, it’s not unusual to hear leaders say, “I didn’t know we did it that way,” or “I didn’t know we used that spreadsheet”, which is often the first real signal that gaps exist between how the business is assumed to operate and how it actually does.

That level of visibility comes from surveying the teams and people executing the work. It’s the most reliable way to identify real business requirements. You don’t want to simply reimplement a bad process in a new system; you want the system to support a more efficient way of working.

This leads to a critical point: Change Management. Jumping multiple levels at a time, for example, going from pen-and-paper directly to full automation, can be incredibly risky and can often have the opposite effect of what you intend. Transformations require change in people, processes, and technology. Taking incremental steps allows your organization to absorb these changes without breaking the business.

Building Your Roadmap: Aligning Strategy with Technology

Once you’ve identified your symptoms and acknowledged your maturity level, the next step is to define a phased technology implementation. This roadmap should align your technology with your overall business strategy.

Ask yourself:

• How can we improve customer experience?
• How can we increase warehouse productivity?
• How can we enable our team to make data-driven decisions?

The roadmap should focus on timing and readiness — not just which tools to implement. Shiny new technologies only deliver value when the underlying data and processes are ready to support them. The goal is to make the right investments at the right time, without overwhelming your people or systems.

When Is It Worth the Upgrade?

A digital transformation is an investment, not just of money, but of significant time and resources. You must correlate your new plan to your roadmap and ensure the result justifies the effort. An upgrade should result in higher efficiency and visibility, but you must be prepared for the fact that it will place an additional load on your current resources to implement and maintain.

Not every company needs to be at Level 5. The goal of the Digital Maturity Model is to help you understand where you are and—crucially—if you are ready to move to the next level. If your current systems support your objectives and allow the business to operate and grow effectively, staying the course may be the right decision. If not, that’s your signal that it’s time to invest..

Final Thoughts

Digital maturity is not about reaching a specific level or implementing the most advanced tools available. It starts with understanding how the business actually operates today and being willing to address the fundamentals before layering on complexity.

Organizations that approach maturity this way invest when it matters, fix the right problems in the right order, and build systems that reflect how the business needs to operate, not how it operated in the past.

The objective is to build a roadmap that fits the business, applies the right amount of pressure on teams, and supports sustainable growth. When maturity is approached this way, technology becomes an enabler rather than a source of rework.