Data Maturity Assessment
Project description
BDO is developing a Data Maturity Assessment to help its consultants better understand how well clients use data, analytics, and digital tools. Currently, BDO serves clients with very different levels of digital maturity, ranging from Excel-based organizations to highly data-driven companies. However, there is no standardized way to measure and compare this.
This project designs a survey-based assessment and dashboard that allows BDO to collect structured information about clients’ data usage, IT setup, and analytics capabilities. The goal is to support consultants in giving more targeted advice, improve benchmarking across clients, and strengthen BDO’s position as a data-driven advisory firm.
Context
BDO is an international accountancy and advisory firm that combines financial expertise with advanced IT and data solutions. Internally, BDO already works with technologies such as AI, machine learning, automation, Azure, Power BI, and Power Automate. However, BDO’s clients including municipalities, healthcare organizations, and mid-sized companies show large differences in their digital and data maturity.
Some clients still rely heavily on spreadsheets, while others already use advanced data platforms and analytics. This diversity makes it difficult for BDO consultants to consistently assess client needs and provide well-tailored advice. Without a standardized maturity assessment, consultants have limited insight into how advanced a client is, where the main gaps are, and which services are most suitable.
At the same time, organizations are increasingly expected to make data-driven decisions. Companies with low data maturity risk falling behind, while more mature organizations gain competitive advantages. For BDO, this creates an opportunity to expand its advisory services by offering a structured data maturity assessment that helps clients understand their current situation and future improvement potential.
Results
The main result of this project is a Data Maturity Assessment Toolkit for BDO. This toolkit consists of three main components: a structured survey, a statistical dashboard, and supporting research into data maturity frameworks.
The survey is designed in LimeSurvey and collects information about company characteristics such as industry, size, IT and data team structure, and the current use of business intelligence, artificial intelligence, and automation. The questions are aligned with BDO’s advisory goals, allowing consultants to identify strengths, weaknesses, and improvement opportunities in a client’s data landscape.
The dashboard visualizes the survey results and enables BDO’s MS&I team to compare organizations across industries and maturity levels. Consultants can use these insights to benchmark clients, identify common patterns, and support their advisory conversations with clear and visual evidence. This reduces reliance on intuition or unstructured interviews and makes assessments more consistent across projects.
The solution has been tested using mock data to validate the logic of the survey and the functionality of the dashboard. These tests show that the tool can successfully differentiate between organizations with low, medium, and high data maturity and provide meaningful insights for consultants.
The key value for BDO is that the toolkit creates a standardized way to understand client data maturity. This improves the quality of advisory services, makes client needs more visible, and helps BDO position itself as a trusted partner in data-driven decision making.