5 measures to gauge your digital portfolio maturity

The motivations to digitize client-facing solutions vary but are often both push and pull: a push from your organization to grow revenues, gain competitive advantage, and further differentiate products and services, and a pull by the market looking for the latest technologies such as AI/ML, AR/VR, and digital twins for immediate business benefit.

When WGI and Columbia Universities’ Global Leaders in Construction Management polled over 570 end users about strategic technology trends they saw having the most business impact on the infrastructure industry in 2023, they cited AI and ML at 32%, augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR) at 13%, and 3D printing at 12%.

When setting goals and measuring progress, it often helps to assess the current state of the digital portfolio in terms of how digitally-enabled it is today, as well as to define the future vision in terms of the organization’s digital ambition. The future vision may be 100% digital or a lower, but more practical, target based on the mix of actual products and services being delivered.

If we take the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry as an example, the level of digitization will clearly vary by division or department. Since it deals with high-tech data acquisition, via LiDAR, photogrammetry, and other means, the geospatial division will likely be more digitally enabled in its current state than other divisions, and may have a strong appetite (and strong client appetite) for further digitization.

When thinking about digital portfolio strategy and the maturity of the portfolio, some common questions from the senior leadership team may include: What percentage of our portfolio is digitally enabled today? How often are we refreshing our portfolio and introducing new products and services? What percentage of our portfolio is leveraging data analytics to help improve decision making and monetize our data? What percentage of our portfolio is leveraging automation and AI and ML to take the grit out of the system and deliver intelligent insights? What percentage of our portfolio is delivered in a SaaS model for annuity revenues?

To assess the current state as well as to plan the future vision and target outcomes from a portfolio innovation perspective, here are five measures of digital enablement to aid your digital portfolio strategy.