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The Biglight Digital Maturity Index 2026 was created to benchmark digital maturity across five key capabilities, helping digital leaders understand how they compare with their peers and providing evidence to support internal conversations about investment, priorities and change.
The first 16 responses to the Biglight Digital Maturity Index 2026 are in!
Together, these enterprise B2B organisations generate more than €60bn in annual revenue and represent a broad mix of manufacturers and distributors. Whilst the sample is still growing, some clear themes are already emerging.
Perhaps the most interesting finding is that the biggest barriers to digital transformation are not necessarily the ones most people would expect.
1. The biggest barriers are internal
When respondents were asked what was holding them back, the most common themes were lack of ownership, organisational structure, internal alignment, adoption and change management.
Technology challenges certainly exist, but they were mentioned far less frequently than organisational barriers.
This is an important distinction. Most organisations have access to technology, platforms and tools. The challenge is often creating the ownership, momentum and organisational support needed to deliver change successfully.
Successful digital leaders increasingly find themselves acting as change agents rather than channel owners.
2. Ambition exceeds readiness
The most common priorities for the next 12 months were customer and market growth, digital transformation, automation and AI.
There is no shortage of ambition.
However, the barriers identified by respondents suggest that achieving these ambitions will depend on overcoming the ownership, alignment and adoption challenges that continue to slow progress.
Although all organisations have a clear destination, for most the biggest challenge will be creating the internal conditions needed to reach it.
3. Customer understanding is underutilised
Most organisations have created successful digital channels that have been adopted by customers, but many still struggle to act on customer insight to in order to grow and improve these experiences.
Customer understanding is widely recognised as important, but collecting feedback and acting on it are two very different things.
The voice of the customer is still not the fuel that powers digital innovation across many B2B organisations.
4. Product data remains an underused asset
Many organisations recognise the importance of product information on key commercial outcomes, but few treat it as a potential source of strategic advantage.
Product information plays an increasingly important role in customer experience, self-service, search, conversion and digital performance. Yet it is often viewed as operational overhead rather than a commercial asset.
The impact of product data on commercial performance is not reflected in the way it is created and maintained by many organisations.
5. AI readiness lags AI ambition
AI and automation featured heavily in future priorities.
However, respondents also highlighted capability, governance, adoption and scaling challenges.
Many organisations are experimenting with AI, but fewer have established the capabilities needed to scale it effectively.
The challenge for many organisations is less about access to AI capabilities and more about focusing on how to create value from it.
The most important lesson
Whilst the overall themes were remarkably consistent, every organisation reported a different combination of strengths, capability gaps and barriers to progress.
There is no single path to digital maturity.
This is precisely why benchmarking matters.
Understanding industry-wide trends is useful. Understanding where your organisation differs from those trends is often even more valuable.
Growing engagement
As additional responses are added to the Digital Maturity Index throughout 2026, we'll continue to share emerging findings and benchmark insights.
If you'd like to understand how your organisation compares, participation in the benchmark remains open. Every participant receives a personalised benchmark report highlighting their relative strengths, capability gaps, barriers to progress and priorities for improvement.
The assessment takes less than five minutes to complete and all responses are treated confidentially.
Start the Digital Maturity Index →
We’ll be sharing the full findings from the Digital Maturity Index later this year.
