Digital Business Transformation for SMEs: Maturity Model for Systematic Roadmap

Digital maturity models (DMM) aim to measure the current level of a company's digitalization, as well as providing a path towards digital maturity. While many DMMs exist, several challenges surround their application for small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) that would ben the process on their own. The aim of this paper is to describe the development and the evaluation of a tool that assist SMEs with their digital transformation, from the maturity assessment to the setup of a systematic digital transformation roadmap. Following a Design Science Research approach, we elucidated the needs of SME managers regarding digital maturity through interviews (n=10). Then, we developed and evaluated a DMM integrated within an online tool through focus groups (n=3). We finally evaluated our tool in the context of six SME digital transformation initiatives. Our findings highlight that SME managers need prescriptions about digital maturity rather than a sole description of their organization' maturity stage. Evaluations show good results in terms of utility and validity. Moreover, a need for a more complete and specialized recommendation service was highlighted which pave the way for future research.