IT Supplier Maturity Evaluation

Digitalisation is impacting upon the economy more and more and, thus, upon companies of any size and position. Trends associated with digitalisation bring various advantages, such as scalability, op-timisation, and emerging technologies, to the market. As competition is not staying put, companies are forced to react to changes so as not to be disrupted and forced out of the market. Therefore, change projects and initiatives are launched in order to successfully transition to the next stage. For various reasons, such programmes fail or do not fulfil their purpose. As those initiatives are often allocated or evolve within the IT department, IT executives turn to their IT suppliers and consulting partners to support their digital business transformation projects. However, as those com-panies are also transforming due to the same trends, many are not capable of supporting their customers due to a lack of knowledge or not possessing the relevant capabilities, for instance. The purpose of the present research is to develop a model with which to support this part of assessing the relevant abilities of IT suppliers in supporting a company’s individual digital business transformation. To do so, this master thesis first identified the main challenges related to digital transformation and revealed an existing gap of knowledge and capabilities to successfully transform digitally. Moreover, the paper analysed the current IT supplier environment and highlighted relevant trends. The analysis revealed that gaps exist in the organisational setup from a mindset perspective as well as in terms of required skills during the initiation but, more excessively, during the implementation stages of transformation projects....