Take OST’s Free Connected Product Maturity Model Assessment
OST’s Chief Innovation Officer Jim VanderMey has worked to develop a proprietary model for OST to help organizations evaluate their maturity in the connected product and IoT space. The model consists of ten core forces at work within an organization to effectively create and support products with digital capabilities:
1. Strategy Development
2. Offering to the Customer
3. Durable Smart Product
4. Complementary IT Capability
5. Digital Supply Chain
6. Structural Organization
7. Process Organization
8. Competencies
9. Experience Design
10. Innovation Culture
The Five Levels of Maturity

Within each of these focus areas, a business can achieve five different levels of maturity:
Digital Awareness
Your company recognizes that disruption is imminent, challenges are coming and you need to take action to avoid stagnation or failure.
Smart Connected Products
Your company has successfully embedded electronics into a viable product.
Service-Oriented Enterprise
Your company has created smart services for which the connected product serves an enabling role.
Thinking in Service Systems
Your company has interconnected services with demand-actuated, solution-oriented systems both internally and up and down the digital supply chain. This connects the company’s offerings to larger value networks and ecosystems.
Data-Driven Enterprise
At your organization, the data and insights created by preceding developments build the foundation for smart services, which are aggregated into larger service systems. This enables the pursuit and realization of new data-driven business models.
Keep in mind that perfect maturity is not a requirement for growth. Instead, incremental steps in digital transformation can create tremendous value and new opportunities for your company.
You can take our free Connected Product Maturity Model assessment using the button below. This tool and your results will provide a foundational understanding of your current capabilities and give you concrete suggestions for making further digital transformation progress.
Important Considerations for Digital Maturity
What’s most important for your business to focus on may not be the most important thing for a business with the exact same score and answers. The value of IoT for you is completely different from other companies. The unique role of IoT at your organization should help determine your priorities.
However, many businesses face so many actions they could undertake that they end up doing nothing, which is the absolute worst thing for your business. The fundamental question guiding your digital transformation initiatives should be this: What is the biggest gap you need to address to achieve the brand promise, business model and/or revenue model that your product(s) should bring to your organization?
If you’re struggling to answer that question, OST can help. We can work alongside you to develop a prioritization strategy for your digital transformation. We can help you build a cloud platform or mobile application. We can help your teams deliver faster. We can help guide you through the evolution of your business with a thoughtful, deliberate approach to organizational change management.
If you want to speak with an expert about how to expand and accelerate your organization’s digital capabilities, contact OST today! Our services range from connected product design and development to IoT platform migrations to mobile app development and more.
Digital Maturity Model References
Felch, V., Asdecker, B., & Sucky, E. (2019, January). Maturity models in the age of industry 4.0 — Do the available models correspond to the needs of business practices? Proceedings of the 52nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332088479_Maturity_Models_in_the_Age_of_Industry_40_-_Do_the_Available_Models_Correspond_to_the_Needs_of_Business_Practice
Klötzer, C., & Pflaum, A. (2017, January). Toward the development of a maturity model for digitalization within the manufacturing industry’s supply chain. Proceedings of the 50th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Toward-the-Development-of-a-Maturity-Model-for-the-Kl%C3%B6tzer-Pflaum/e62a75a1c1aa3c69eb7738199f51a21ef8b4901f
Wessel, M., Levie, A., & Siegel, R. (2017, May 4). Why some digital companies should delay profitability for as long as they can. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2017/05/why-some-digital-companies-should-resist-profitability-for-as-long-as-they-can
Wessel, M., Levie, A., & Siegel, R. (2016, November). The problem with legacy ecosystems. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2016/11/the-problem-with-legacy-ecosystems