The two terms get used interchangeably in practice, which causes real confusion, since they answer different questions. Maturity is a snapshot: a company’s current stage across dimensions like technology, organization, and customer experience, established through an assessment against Master B2B’s four-stage model. Transformation is the ongoing effort to move from one stage to the next, and Master B2B’s research found the overwhelming practitioner view is that this effort works better as a standing program with continuous budget and a dedicated owner than as a project with a defined end date. In short, maturity tells you where you are, and transformation is how you decide, on a continuing basis, to move.
Digital maturity vs. digital transformation
Digital maturity describes where a company currently stands, benchmarked against a defined model; digital transformation describes the ongoing work of moving that company forward, which Master B2B's research argues should be run as a program rather than a one-time project.