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CNS Digital Maturity Model

The Digital Maturity Model (DMM) looks at digital maturity through the CNS lens: how well you understand your customers’ needs, and how well equipped you are to measure and meet them.

The model

The model looks at an organisation across six areas:

  • Culture
  • Strategy
  • Technology
  • People
  • Organisation
  • Customer
  • Definition: "Digital Maturity Model (DMM). This is the framework we use to help understand how digitally mature an organization is and to help build a roadmap for the future. With the commitment to make digital a core part of your organization, DMM provides guidelines for a clear path throughout the journey."
  • The CNS perspective: "Digital maturity can be viewed from many perspectives, we choose to form our model around the CNS concept of Customer Needs Solutions; How well you understand your customers needs, and how well equipped your organisation is to both measure and meet those needs, now and as they change moving forward."
  • Assessment steps: "Measure - Survey … / Report - bespoke document … / DM Index - spidergraph / Implications / Recommendations / Next steps"

The Digital Maturity Assessment

  • "DMA - Digital Maturity Assessment is a survey that consists of a six-part, cross-organisation questionnaire completed by selected group of internal stakeholders. This allows you to compare current digital maturity against your customers' perceptions of your capability to meet their needs (discovered in the CNA)". The CNA is the Customer Needs Assessment. The output is a CNA / DMA Report, and the leadership workshop identifies opportunities in "Customer strategy and innovation / Customer experience / Operations / Technology".
  • It remains an optional deliverable in the current (2026) method.

Digital readiness and AI readiness: two different assessments

  • Digital readiness is the wider assessment. It covers whether the organisation can gather, process and create digital files, for example digitising customer service calls so that CNS can analyse them by theme.
  • AI readiness covers whether the organisation can deploy AI as specific agents. For example, an agent that analyses themes in customer feedback and allocates them to Needs groups.
  • The Digital Readiness Assessment is the same thing as the six-part Digital Maturity Assessment (DMA) above. AI readiness is a separate assessment.