More enterprise will attain digital maturity status in East Africa

The year 2019 will certainly witness expansive growth of digital enterprises to maturity levels said Lawi Ayisi, Head of Digital Information and Technology, Jubilee Insurance during the East Africa’s 2019 CIO Year Ahead Forum held in Nairobi, Kenya.

Defining digital maturity as a measure of an organization’s ability to prosper during the era of digital transformation through discipline, innovation and resilience Ayisi said that although a handful number of East African countries are committed to attaining the maturity status, they’ll set a worthwhile pace for others to follow suit.

He broke down the maturity-level in five stages. These include: Digital Denial which he pointed out as a stage in which organization(s) are yet to make a decision to go digital.

The next step Ayisi highlighted was the Digital Magic Man/Woman. This is the point, he elaborates as one which an organization hires a Chief Digital Officer, to be in charge of digital transformation. He or she is tasked to superintend the journey of the organizations digital transformation but unfortunately, gets pulled into every business meeting with time resulting to an overload an aspect that he noted as bad for the digitization journey!

Ayisi enumerated the third stage as Digital Island in which an organisation now decides to add more resources towards the transformation journey. These resources come as a digital team, digital division, centre-of-excellence, most of which he says work in silo.

The Digital Infusion stage which Ayisi pointed out encompasses the infusion of Digital champions or experts into an organisation’s different departments add significant value since the champions work closely with the digital teams and slowly infuse digital transformation into the entire organisation. He observed the stage as a critical one since it initiates the final stage of digital maturity.

The fast stage is Digital DNA said Ayisi inclines on having every single member of an organization to be digitally transformed having been taught and trained by peers.

Curiosity may take a lay person into wondering why an organization should embrace all the five stages to get fully digitized. Ayisi was not hesitant to elaborate on the benefits firms stand to enjoy when digitally transformed.

He stressed that Digitally Mature organizations benefit from distinct market advantages which include; Ability to drive more top line revenue, move with velocity, they use data as an asset and competitive weapon and Digital maturity can amplify your profits.

He was quick to point out that a few Digitally Mature Organisation in East Africa that are; Network Data Interchange, an affiliate of Telkom Kenya, the e-Citizen Portal that is a Kenyan Government initiative, Tala and Branch both which are Financial credit services providers, Safaricom that is a mobile service provider and Cellulant and Finserve both that do payment service provision.

Ayisi closed his presentation at the CIO Year Ahead Forum themed Driving Innovations in Organizations with a strong conviction that 2019 will see more digitally mature east African Organisations. Just watch the space!