Digital maturity is frequently discussed in organizations and research but is not always defined. There is also limited information about digital maturity in different industries. The purpose of this study was to compare a technical consulting firm's view of digital maturity compared to current research literature. The study consists of two parts: a literature study and a case study at Sweco civil in Sundsvall. The literature study showed that five factors are recurring: strategy, culture, technology, leadership and obstacles. This study confirms similarities with previous research findings regarding strategy, culture, barriers and technology described in similar ways at Sweco. The difference points to the fact that the company focuses more on technology and less on leadership than the literature does. In the literature, the factors are not always structured in a staircase that describes the relationship between levels. However, Sweco has a staircase that goes from standardization to integration and automation and finally transformation of business models. In all levels, the absence of leadership: goals, vision, and governance is an obstacle. To achieve standardization, the absence of a common industry standard was an obstacle and a negative attitude to new technology among employees. The middle level integration has barriers in the form of lack of coordination. The automation level experiences obstacles in the form of a lack of technical competence. The highest level of innovation has barriers in the form of lack of interest for innovation among employees, customers and partners. There is also a shortage of venture capital. / Digital mognad diskuteras flitigt i organisationer och forskning men är inte alltid definierat. Det finns också begränsats med information kring digital mognad inom olika branscher. Syftet med denna undersökning var att jämföra ett teknikkonsultföretags syn på digital mognad jämfört med aktuell forskningslitteratur. Studien består av två delar: en litteraturstudie och en fallstudie hos Sweco civil i Sundsvall. Litteraturstudien visade att fem faktorer är återkommande: strategi, kultur, teknik, ledarskap och hinder. Denna studie bekräftar likheter med tidigare forskningsresultat gällande strategi, kultur, hinder och teknik som beskrivs på liknande sätt hos Sweco. Skillnaden pekar mot att företaget fokuserar mer på tekniken och mindre på ledarskap än vad litteraturen gör. I litteraturen är inte alltid faktorerna strukturerade i en trappa som beskriver relationen mellan nivåer. Sweco har dock en trappa som går från standardisering vidare till integration och automation och till sist transformation av affärsmodeller. I alla nivåer är frånvaro av ledarskap: mål, vision, och styrning ett hinder. För att nå standardisering var en avsaknad av en gemensam branschstandard ett hinder samt en negativ inställning till ny teknik hos anställda. Mellannivån integration har hinder i form av avsaknad av samordning. Automationsnivån upplever hinder i form av brist på teknisk kompetens. Den högsta nivån innovation har hinder i form av att intresse saknas för innovation hos anställda, kunder och partners. Det finns också brist på riskkapital.

Företag, oavsett storlek, vill idag följa den digitala transformationen och höja den digitala mognadsgraden för att kunna få effektivare resultat samt nå de konkurrensfördelar som digitaliseringen kan medföra. Små och medelstora företag, så kallade SMF:s, påverkas av de förändringar som digitaliseringen medför eftersom de får helt nya möjligheter att delta i den globala ekonomin jämfört med tidigare. Denna studie kommer att utforska den digitala mognaden bland små och medelstora företag samt identifiera företagens utmaningar och efterfrågade stöd för att nå högre mognad. Studiens metod utgår från ett explorativt angreppssätt med en kvalitativ forskningsmetod och använder sig av en abduktiv forskningsansats. Både en strukturerad och en semi-strukturerad intervju används för den empiriska datainsamlingen. I studien intervjuas sju respondenter från olika små- och medelstora företag. Studiens analys undersöker hur företagens digitala mognad och utmaningar ställer sig mot teorier rörande digitalisering, digital mognad och digitala mognadsmodeller. Diskussionen belyser att de mer mjuka värdena som ledarskap, strategi och visionsarbete samt kompetensutveckling är utmanande för små och medelstora bolag. Dessutom diskuteras att små och medelstora bolags förutsättningar och resurser påverkar deras upplevda utmaningar samt vilka stöd som efterfrågas för att höja den digitala mognadsgraden. Studien visar att små och medelstora bolag har olika utmaningar för att nå digital mognad, men att de har viljan att höja mognadsgraden. För att höja mognadsgraden förutsätts att de har egna kapaciteter eller kan få förutsättningar i form av stöd och hjälpmedel för att prioritera transformationsinsatser och anpassa struktur samt kultur internt. / Companies, regardless of size, want to follow the digital transformation and reach a higher level of digital maturity. Because they want to achieve more effective results and gain the competitive advantages of digital transformation. Small and medium-sized enterprises, SMEs, are affected by digitalization and they are given new opportunities to participate in the global economy compared to before. This study explores the digital maturity of small and medium- sized enterprises and identifies their challenges for reaching higher maturity. Furthermore, the study distinguishes what kind of support SMEs are in need of to be able to raise their maturity level. The study method is based on an explorative approach with a qualitative research method and uses an abductive research approach with two types of interviews in the data collection, structured and semi-structured interviews. In the study, seven respondents from different SMEs were interviewed. The study's analysis examines how the companies' digital maturity and challenges can be linked to theories regarding digitalization, digital maturity and digital maturity models. The discussion highlights that softer values such as leadership, strategy and vision, as well as competence and digital knowledge are challenging for SMEs. In addition, it is discussed that the resources of small and medium-sized enterprises affect the perceived challenges as well as the support needed to increase the digital maturity level. The study shows that small and medium-sized enterprises have different challenges for achieving digital maturity. However, they also have the will to increase the level of maturity. In order to increase the maturity level, they must have their own capacities or get the capacities with external support. Then they will be able to prioritize digital transformation efforts and adapt structure as well as culture internally.

Background. Digital maturity is an important topic for the public sector to respond the higher demands on digital solutions. Only 46 percent of the public sectors has a clear digitization strategy. Different organizations have different levels of digital maturity fulfillment. There are several reasons why organizations are interested in increasing the digital maturity. In order to increase efficiency, degree of innovation, customer value, improve decision making through digital transformations. Employees are the most important resource for an organization’s digital transformation. That is the reason why the organization should ensure their employees’ level of digital maturity addition to organizational development. By studying the municipality’s digital maturity, it will contribute to a research on the digital maturity on an individual level form the employees’ perspective. Purpose. The purpose of this thesis is to contribute with knowledge about how municipal employee’s digital maturity appears and to access the factors that are important to consider while implementing new technology in the organization. The factors will contribute to practical applications that encourage a higher level of employees’ digital maturity. Method. Based on the purpose, a qualitative study has been conducted. Twelve municipal employees with different background, position, and gender were interviewed to collect empirical data for a larger perspective on the whole municipality and IoT, Internet of Things, has been used as an investigation tool for this study. The analysis of the empirical data was based on our own definition of digital maturity at an individual level, which was based on previous research. By using the definition and other theoretical sources, the empirical material has been analyzed. Analysis and conclusion. The result of the thesis unveiled that there is a huge variation of the digital maturity level on municipal employees regarding to IoT. The main categories that the digital maturity is based on are individual's attitude, knowledge and use of the technology. The study unveiled that there is an interplay between these three categories. The factors that affect thesis categories also have an impact on the digital maturity on an individual level as well. The factors with an impact on municipal employees’ digital maturity are: individual interest, work tasks, experience, manager or leader, digitization strategy and technical education. / Bakgrund. Offentliga sektorn behöver bli mer digitalt mogna för att bemöta högre krav på digitala lösningar, men det är endast 46 procent av offentliga sektorn som har en klar digitaliseringsstrategi för sin verksamhet. Olika organisationer har olika uppfyllandegrad av digital mognad, vissa organisationer är mer digitalt mogna än andra. Det finns flera motiv till varför organisationer är intresserade av att höja den digitala mognadsgraden i organisationen. Det är främst för att öka effektiviteten, innovationsgraden och kundvärdet samt för att förbättra beslutfattande inom organisationen och utveckla organisationen genom digital förändring. Eftersom människor är den viktigaste komponenten för en organisations digitala transformation ska ledningen se till att utveckla sina anställdas digitala mognad i takt med sin organisationsutveckling. Genom att studera digital mognad hos en kommunal verksamhet skall vår studie bidra till forskningen kring digital mognad med fokus på de anställdas perspektiv. Syfte. Syftet med studien är att bidra med kunskapsbildning kring hur kommunalanställdas digitala mognad ser ut samt vilka faktorer som är väsentliga att beakta hos de anställda i en kommunal verksamhet vid införandet av ny teknik. Faktorerna ska bidra till praktiska tillämpningar som främjar en högre nivå på de anställdas digitala mognad. Metod. Baserat på syftet har en kvalitativ studie genomförts. Tolv kommunanställda med olika bakgrund, position, befattning och kön intervjuades för att samla in empiriska data med ett större perspektiv över den kommunala verksamheten där IoT, Internet of Things, har använts som ett undersökningsverktyg. Analys av det empiriska materialet utgicks från författarnas egna definition av digital mognad på en individnivå som är baserad på tidigare forskningar. Med hjälp av definitionen samt andra teoretiska källor har det empiriska materialet analyserats. Resultat. Resultatet från studien visar att det finns en stor spridning på den digitala mognaden hos kommunanställda gällande IoT. Huvudkategorierna som utgör den digitala mognaden är individens inställning, kunskap och användning av tekniken. Studien visar att det finns ett tydligt samband mellan dessa tre kategorier. De faktorerna som i sin tur påverkar dessa kategorier, det vill säga påverkar den digitala mognaden hos de anställda i en kommunal verksamhet gällande IoT är individens personliga intresse, arbetsuppgifter, erfarenhet, chef eller ledare, strategi och teknisk utbildning.

In today’s global society, organizations are facing the challenge of ever-increasing customer demands as a consequence of benefits posed by digital technology. Not only has it led to a market of fierce competition and the inevitable pursuit for competitive advantages, but it also has required actors to explore and exploit the agile development of digitization. Organizational initiatives to harvest the benefits of digital technology and address the challenges have been referred to as “Digital Transformation”. The concept is running rampant through all industries and sectors, and no firm is any longer immune to its impacts. In the context of small and medium-sized enterprises, they are commonly referred to as being in a predicament of inadequate resources and limited capabilities to digitally transform. This study aims to shed light on how leaders of small enterprises, with their current conditions of digital transformation, can address key challenges through the use of digital transformation strategies. More specifically, a multiple case study was conducted based on the small tech reselling market of Portugal. Both leaders and employees were interviewed and asked about their current challenges, what efforts are made to digitally transform the companies, and how the leadership contribute to that end. From this, the paper suggests ways of managing these challenges and at the same time incubate digital transformation through assessment and measurement models.

The business landscape as we know it is being disrupted by an increasing usage of emerging digital technologies, to reap the benefits of the new technological opportunities managers need to transform their organizations. To do so, research literature proposes striving towards digital maturity. However, knowledge within the area of digital transformation and digital maturity is insufficient amongst organizational leaders. Moreover, theoretical guidance in terms of which changes that are required to increase digital maturity in an organization, is still absent in research literature. To address the academic gap and provide guidance in practical challenges, the research objective to create a framework to evaluate digital maturity was constructed. To reach this objective, the following research questions were derived: RQ1: Which levels can digital maturity be divided into and what characterizes each level? RQ2: When progressing upwards along the digital maturity scale, what are the key dimensions that allow transition from one level to the next? To answer the research questions and thereby meet the research objective, an abductive, multiple case study of large companies in the manufacturing and service industry was performed. 16 interviews and two workshops were conducted to provide the data which was then thematically analyzed and structured to provide answers to the research questions. Our findings were then used to construct the Digital Maturity Framework. Our findings suggest the following three levels of digital maturity; Awareness, Experience, and Autonomy. The characteristics of each levels is expressed in six organizational dimensions, namely Processes, Leadership, Culture, Strategy, Analytics, and IT. To transit from one maturity level to the next, Leadership in terms of change management is a key dimension in all transitions. Before organizations qualify for the level Awareness, they must first lay the foundation through Process management. Experimenting and testing new digital tools and technologies is a key dimension to reach the level Experience, and Strategy is a key dimension in both the transition to Experience and the transition to Autonomy. Our findings contribute with a more nuanced framework of digital maturity as well as guidance for managers about what they need to do to progress in digital maturity. The importance of change management is the most valuable managerial implication of our findings, because change will always trigger friction in the organization, which in turn requires strong and driven leaders to drive the change.

The thesis deals with the creation of a website and a web application of a project to support digitization in small and medium-sized companies in the Czech Republic. The website and applications are built on the Websy content management system. The test environment that was created provides an assessment of the company's digital maturity. The expert module contains additional functions for members of the cooperating expert group.

Digitalization has changed the business environment for all businesses, whether large or small. As the multitude of digital solutions for the business world continuously develop and evolve, investigating how companies can better take advantage of digitalization is crucial for gaining and retaining competitive advantage. The current research field regarding digitalization is rather novel and has been heavily focusing on how digitalization can improve businesses, and which technical solutions may work best for companies. Thus, switching the focus and studying how companies can improve their digitalization presents an alternative perspective for the current research. As the research field has stressed the importance of studying digitalization within SMEs due to the lack of knowledge and know-how in smaller companies, we examine digitalization in the context of SMEs. In order to examine aspects that may be beneficial for digitalization, we chose to use entrepreneurial orientation as a lense. Entrepreneurial orientation considers a set of characteristics resulting in a level of entrepreneurship in all sizes of companies, and it is found to improve business performance. In order to develop a comprehensive theoretical framework regarding entrepreneurial orientation and digitalization, the following research question was formed: How is the digitalization of Swedish SMEs facilitated by Entrepreneurial Orientation? For gaining a comprehensive understanding on how digitalization is implemented to the business models of SMEs in Sweden, and how entrepreneurial orientation facilitates the implementation of digitalization, our theoretical framework is built upon three theories: entrepreneurial opportunities; digitalization; and entrepreneurial orientation. The construct used for observing entrepreneurial orientation consists of five elements: proactiveness, risk taking, innovativeness, autonomy and competitive aggressiveness. The study was conducted in Sweden through semi-structured interviews. The data was collected from small- to medium sized companies that all had implemented digitalization in their business models and were mature. The interviewees were all in managerial positions in the firms, either as CEOs or COOs. The semi-structured interviews resulted in rich data that provided us with insights in terms of digitalization, how digitalization is implemented to the business models of SMEs, and how the elements of entrepreneurial orientation play a role in this implementation. The results indicated that digitalization begins by making smaller changes to business models (e.g. adopting business systems). Gradually, the existing systems are completely replaced by digitalization, and the companies move on to exploring digitalization in terms of new products and services. In this process, entrepreneurial orientation has a facilitating effect through i.a. higher levels of risk taking, emphasis on being early in adopting new solutions, improved productivity and efficiency through innovativeness, and increased trust for employees to make decisions and to perform projects autonomously. The only element that did not show any clear indications in terms of digitalization was competitive aggressiveness, as SMEs do not use digitalization directly as a source of competitive advantage, but rather as a way to improve other aspects in their business models and thereby gain competitive advantage.

As today’s world is becoming more digital, so is almost all business markets are becoming more and more digital and companies that choose to digitalize seem to not only increase efficiency and profitability. It also makes the company better at adapting to change. Despite these upsides, not all companies are digitalizing proven in some part by the panic among companies created by the Covid-19 pandemic. This study aims to look at if the categorist of management in companies can influence the company's ability to digitalize. This is done by measuring the dynamic capabilities and the entrepreneurial orientation in management and comparing it to the company’s digital maturity. The data was quantitatively by having managers in Sweden completes a survey. A theoretical framework is created to formulate the major theories of the study and relevant hypotheses. To analyze the collected data the multiple regression analysis method was used to see if the variables that any statistical relationship and if the variables have statistical relevance. The results showed that entrepreneurial orientation dint does not have any statistical relevance however dynamic capabilities had a statistical relevance and quite a big effect on the digital maturity of the company. However, a bigger sample for the questioner is suspected to show that entrepreneurial orientation could have had statistical relevance as the sample group for this study was quite small. This study has helpt to fill the gap in knowledge on how management characteristics affect digitalization in companies. The author of this study recommends future research teams conduct more quantitative approaches to get a better picture of how management affects digitalization, by looking at other categorists in management, the important part is that they use a bigger sample size.

Companies are going through a phase that is called “Industrie 4.0” where the aim is to adapt their organization and culture toward the industrial revolution that is going on. There are multiple cultural aspects to look at while going into this process. This study applied Hofstede’s cultural dimensions to go in depth when it comes to the cultural development and Industrie 4.0 Maturity Index-model to create a foundation for digital transformation to measure the digital maturity of the organization. As one of the variable is distance work and the impacts on culture development, a quantitative study has implemented to clarify the connection between these variables, but also measuring the current stage of the digital maturity of the organization. Thus, a questionnaire was shared with employees from 9 different countries to compare the responses both country wise but also department wise. Therefore, the questionnaire covered following variables: digital maturity, digital transformation, effective workforce, distance work/remote work, cultural dimensions. Additionally, hypotheses were discovered and thereafter the results were put into SPSS system and then the authors analyzed the graphs and shortly compiled the outcomes of the study. The main result showed that employees are expecting the company to take next steps on its journey toward a more digitalized company, but they are not willing to move into a hybrid model that force them to work from home more than once a week since they are satisfied with their current system. However, the company should take into account the cultural differences and attitudes that employees carry before doing any radical changes.

Purpose – This study aims to identify and analyze innovative strategies that firms can use to develop customer engagement online without relying on third-party cookies, whilst also considering the firms' level of digital maturity. Method – To explore the innovative strategies for developing customer engagement online without third-party cookies, a sequential mixed-method design was employed, utilizing semi- structured interviews and survey data. A total of 12 respondents participated in the study, providing both interview and survey data for analysis. Findings – The findings of this study consist of four main themes in terms of strategies that don’t rely on third-party cookies to develop customer engagement online. These strategies are presented as data-driven strategy, value-based strategy, rethink allocation strategy, and direct customer engagement. Moreover, the findings reveal a greater interest and a positive attitude toward the data-driven strategy in particular, which in turn relies on the subthemes of CRM- system, and SEO. Theoretical and practical implications – This study holds theoretical implications in terms of firstly, confirming the previous research about engaging customers through customer communities. Secondly, this study contrasts the research about the dimensions required to develop customer engagement stated by de Oliviera Santini (2020) and Pansari and Kumar (2016). From a practical perspective, this study provides implications valuable for people in marketing leading positions deciding upon the strategic direction for digital marketing. Moreover, this study contributes with four strategies for businesses to adapt based on their database and organizational optimization.