**1. Introduction**

The origination of the Internet reinforced process automation by linking businesses with customers *via* web platforms, social media, and mobile apps. This digital transformation influenced all business functions and disrupted the ecosystem in every industry. Nowadays, technology is associated with almost every activity of individuals, from buying groceries to finding a life partner [1]. Digital-native companies are considered grown-ups in a digitally empowered world among companies. Their perspective has been shaped by new technologies, strategies, and approaches to impact

the organizational value chain. Not all organizations are comfortable enough in transforming their businesses to comply with the new competitive environment. It requires understanding digital maturity and learning how to respond to the competitive environment rather than converting processes overnight [2].

Bumann and Peter [3] attempted to distinguish digital transformation from the often interchangeably two concepts that have distinct meanings: "Digitization" and "Digitalization." Digitization and digitalization are often defined based on personalized or organizational perspectives [4]. Extant literature has divided digital transformation into three phases starting from "digitization," which is defined as "the conversion from analog to digital" [5]. The second phase is "digitalization," which is defined as "the innovation of business models and processes that exploit digital opportunities" [4] and finally digital transformation. Vial [6] observed three paradigms of digital transformation definitions. First, digital transformation as organization-centric. Second, digital transformation is based on the technologies used and the nature of the transformation crop up. Third, clustering the similarities, such as the use of standard terms. Kane et al. [7] argue that digital transformation is not about using technologies individually but integrating them to transform businesses. A definition of digital transformation that combines all three paradigms is introduced by Vial [6] as "A process that aims to improve an entity by triggering significant changes to its properties through combinations of information, computing, communication, and connectivity technologies." This definition is also supported by Maltaverne [5], who defined digital transformation as "New ways of doing things that generate new sources of value."

Not all organizations are comfortable enough in transforming their businesses to comply with the new competitive environment. It requires understanding digital maturity and learning how to respond to the competitive environment rather than converting processes overnight [2], which implies the definition of digital maturity as "a measure of an organization's ability to create value through digital." Kane [2] emphasizes that focusing on digital maturity instead of digital transformation is more beneficial for the organization. Since becoming mature is a gradual process, it is not easy to see how it looks at the end; hence, it is a never-ending loop. Preparing for a digital future requires the development of digital capabilities within a firm's activities, culture, people, structure, and sync with organizational goals. In the journey of achieving digital maturity, Kane et al. [8] mentioned that 90% of the digitally matured organizations have overcome the constraints associated with the process by optimizing digital strategy within the business strategy. Further, Kane et al. [8] mentioned that leaders from highly digitally matured organizations could anticipate digital trends and prepare for industry disruptions with the upper hand.

According to the academic literature, digital maturity models are nourished by the Capability Maturity Models (CMM) and its derivatives, such as Capability Maturity Models Integration (CMMI) [9]. In the spectrum of capability maturity levels, "initial" and "optimized" positions are considered as least and highest maturity levels, respectively. Middle levels have been named as "repeated, defined, and controlled" in the ascending order [10]. The dictionary definition of "maturity" falls into two aspects: "reaching the state of completeness" and "raise it to full growth." However, within the literature, it is termed as "process maturity," "organizational maturity," "process capability," "project maturity," and "maturity of product capabilities" [9]. The process maturity is a stalk concept of total quality management, which demonstrates improvement in technical and business processes [9] and plays a vital role in digital transformation due to mapping the existing process in the transformation process [11]. Paulk et al. [12] have considered capability maturity in organizational

*The Acceleration of Digital Maturity during the COVID-19 Pandemic in the Retail Industry… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.107378*

software development and maintenance due to the importance of software development in the digital space.

Digital maturity models provide assistance to identify gaps, manifest vital areas to focus on, and help figure out the starting point of each phase of the digital transformation journey. Hence, digital maturity models act as a guide or a tool to refer to digital transformation to make it less complex [13]. Bumann and Peter [3] examined different dimensions that are studied in the most common models of digital maturity in the literature. **Table 1** illustrates the expression of the 20 main dimensions expressed in the most common digital maturity models in the literature.

The analysis of Bumann and Peter [3] provides an in-depth insight into the most applied dimensions in digital transformation and maturity frameworks available within the referred literature in the past 10 years. Models presented by Anderson and Ellerby [13], Schumacher et al. [17], Peyman et al. [15], and Schäfer et al. [16] have paid attention to all highly applied dimensions. Kane et al. [8], Valdez-De-Leon [18], Peter [20], and Schlaepfer et al. [21] reported specific dimensions that others have not caught, namely, investment, process digitalization, cloud and data, digital marketing, digital environment, value chain—ecosystem, innovation, and structure. At the score level, culture (score: 9), strategy/technology (score: 7), leadership (score: 5), customer/operation/people (score: 4), organization/governance (score: 3), and monitoring and control/products (score: 2) are the most vital dimensions, and the rest, such as investment, process digitalization, cloud and data, digital marketing, digital environment, value chain, innovation, tasks, and structure, look like the supporting action fields for digital maturity models.

COVID-19 has recently accelerated the implementation of digital transformation worldwide and across different industries [22]. It accelerated the planned digitalization and digitization processes for enterprises already undergoing transformation. It has also created the neediness for such acceleration in companies that are not digitally mature yet. In this exploratory study, we considered the effect of COVID-19 on the acceleration of digital maturity in the retail sector in Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan government declared a lockdown from March 20, 2020 to nearly 52 days across Sri Lanka [23]. First, a state of emergency was imposed, and under the state of emergency, a curfew was declared. During the curfew, people were confined to their homes, except for essential service workers (firefighters, police force, doctors, etc.) and those granted special permission such as in supermarkets and pharmacies [24]. Supermarkets and pharmacies started online ordering systems and delivery services; such activities were also closely monitored by the Sri Lankan army. By the third week of May, the curfew was lifted [23]. At the beginning of the lockdown, companies in the country were completely closed but slowly started to operate remotely, and many were reluctant to adopt the work-from-home concept. As we will see in the results section, many companies were unprepared to meet the new normal's requirements. In the early few weeks of the lockdown, there were also huge inefficiencies in distributing essential groceries and supplies by the government [25].

Due to the exogenous and endogenous tensions arising during the COVID-19 pandemic, to keep business up and running, an agile execution of digital transformation was crucial to achieve a quick response to bounce back [26]. Such a rapid response happened in the absence of a well-formed and approved digital business strategy and a lack of secured sufficient resources. Researchers debated the importance of the fusion of digital business strategy and digital transformation strategy [27]. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Sri Lankan companies accelerated their digital transformation activities and witnessed gradual success attributed with many ups and downs.

