Using capability maturity models to review effectiveness and set targets for digital transformation
Do you know the Carnegie Mellon Capability Maturity model (CMM)? It’s likely that you don’t if you work in marketing, unless your background is similar to mine. I used to manage software development back in the day, before the web, yes that long ago…
I used to manage small teams to create packaged software used by thousands of engineers worldwide, so it was important that we minimised defects when we shipped a new release. Of course every major bug irritates customers and generates support and rework. So the team leaders and I worked hard to implement a quality management system process for creating new software updates to minimise bugs - many who are involved with managing updates to web and Ecommerce sites will be familiar with requirements specs, prototypes and testing schedules, although this was before Agile and Scrum.
As part of trying to improve our development processes we used to find it useful to apply capability maturity models to benchmark against competitors. They help you be more objective about your capabilities and know where improvements are needed. In the classic CMM model there are 5 or 6 clearly defined stages as shown in the this Maturity model example:
You can see that most failed to make the top grades, of those who did, many were in India I recall.
Creating capability maturity models for digital marketing
When I switched from software development to marketing around 1995, the web was in its infancy and there were a lot more problems with site performance and content then there are today. Remember those quaint “under construction” signs. Laughable now. Many managing the adoption of digital technologies by their companies were based with a similar problem to the software developers. They needed to develop a robust, repeatable process that would enable them to deliver a service which was effective both for their customers and their commercial goals. Many still do. Using a scoring of capabilities can help:
- 1 Audit current approaches to digital marketing to identify areas for improvement;
- 2 Benchmark against competitors who are in the same market sector;
- 3 Identify best practice from more advanced adopters;
- 4 Set targets and develop strategies and roadmaps for improving capabilities through time;
- 5 Communicate the current situation to budget holders and highlight investment priorities in for different activities.
This need for well-managed processes is still the case, particularly with ongoing developments in the technology for delivering customer experiences across mobile and desktop and the need to integrate content and social media from multiple sources. Given that digital marketing is “Always-on”, it makes sense to benchmark the overall capability of digital marketing using a simple scoring system. I used to participate in Workshops at Cranfield School of Management where capability models developed by Professor Hugh Wilson were reviewed with companies participating in a benchmarking group. This rang a bell, so it gave me the idea to apply what I had learned of CMM for software development and apply it. I developed capability benchmark spreadsheets which were featured in the Econsultancy Managing Ecommerce Teams reports I worked on in 2005 and 2008 and more recently have updated them to the Smart Insights Digital marketing strategy audit.
I’m recalling my path of applying capability maturity models since we have just published a new capability benchmarking approach by Chris Jones. I got in touch with Chris since I admired the auditing approach in his Multichannel Retail Handbook and we arranged to share it for Smart Insights members. You can read more about the approach here in the his post on Ecommerce benchmark audits using PRICE. We hope it’s useful for Ecommerce businesses to identify gaps in the experience they’re delivering and put in place plans to beat their competitors.
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