Apply a Digital Transformation Maturity Model

After completing this unit you’ll be able to:

Assess the maturity of your institution’s current digital transformation.
Set goals and next steps for optimizing your school’s digital transformation efforts.

What is Digital Transformation?

“Digital transformation” refers to using technology to transform your operations to ensure that you can meet the needs of students throughout their learning journey. What does it look like in practice? If your educational institution is offering any kind of digital experience to constituents (self-service application information or live chats on your website, automated recruiting email journeys or online platforms where students can build community), digital transformation is already underway at your school.

For additional examples of digital transformation in practice, see the blog posts in the Resources section below.

Successful digital transformations prioritize the constituent.

Digital transformation won’t look the same at every institution, but there is a common framework we can all reference in order to better understand the work and outcomes in an educational context. Here are four pillars of digital transformation:

Surface insights
Deliver impact
Deploy with agility
Ensure privacy and security

While these pillars are applicable to every institution, different schools are likely to be at different levels of maturity in each area. There’s no right or wrong place to be in your digital transformation journey. Understanding where you are now will help you make informed decisions about what to do next to move towards full maturity in your school’s digital transformation.

Keep reading to learn more about each pillar and to see a scale of maturity you can apply to determine where you’re starting from at your institution and what goals you can set for optimization.

Surface Insights

Digital transformation is data-driven. When you’re able to surface data insights efficiently, you can use them to make better strategic and tactical decisions. End goals for this pillar of digital transformation include centralized access to existing information systems, automated collection of new types of data, and equitable use of AI (artificial intelligence). Take a look at the maturity scale to decide if your institution is getting started, emerging, or optimized for excellence when it comes to surfacing insights.

Getting Started	Emerging	Optimized for Excellence
Reporting and analytics are available but data is siloed in systems that don’t communicate.	Analytics have been consolidated and are being used by decision makers across the institution.	AI-powered predictive and prescriptive insights are being leveraged by staff at all levels of the institution, and are incorporated into automated processes.

Deliver Impact

To maximize the impact of digital experiences, you need to be able to take action with fully automated and data-driven engagements at scale. When you reach a high level of maturity in this step of your digital transformation journey, you create efficiencies that make it possible for staff to focus their time and energy on the most critical interventions needed to improve the constituent experience.

Getting Started	Emerging	Optimized for Excellence
Engagements are managed in point solutions and personalization is limited.	Data is integrated, which provides increased personalization and allows for some cross-department interventions.	Engagements are planned across departments. Data management is centralized and AI-driven automations are streamlining efforts.

Deploy with Agility

It’s exciting when your institution purchases the tools you need to provide excellent digital experiences to constituents. But proper deployment of new solutions is a critical step in the process. A mature deployment plan helps you provide new experiences quickly, and enables you respond to the inevitable changes that come with continued growth and innovation.

Getting Started	Emerging	Optimized for Excellence
New capabilities have required the purchase of new tools and right now they’re poorly integrated.	You have centralized platforms and an integration framework to incorporate new tools.	You have the ability to build and deploy new tools with minimal disruption to critical processes, and you can rapidly adapt to change.

Ensure Privacy and Security

Digital transformation demands a new approach to information security. An initial goal for this pillar is centralization in order to protect your institution's data and digital assets. Your ultimate goal is to have a framework in place that lowers your institution's risk and empowers you to be prepared to respond in the event of a crisis.

Getting Started	Emerging	Optimized for Excellence
You have no centralized security control. Access to data is managed at the application level.	You have a centralized framework and governance for managing access to data.	You leverage dynamic insights into threats and controls to ensure privacy and data security. Constituents are empowered to understand and manage their data.

Move Towards Excellence

Once you’ve assessed the maturity of your institution’s current digital transformation efforts, you can set realistic goals and take steps to move closer to a fully optimized strategy. To keep learning about how a thoughtful, strategic approach to data management drives transformation, check out the Trailhead modules linked in the Resources section. To explore options for getting help on your journey, see the links below to Salesforce.org Customer Success Services and How to Choose a Salesforce Consulting Partner.