Why Digital Transformations Fail

Tony Saldanha, who ran IT and shared services at Procter & Gamble as a vice president, takes on the 70 percent failure rate of digital transformations. He traces the cause to missing clear goals and a lack of disciplined process rather than to technology or innovation. He offers a five-stage model that moves a company from automating isolated processes to running on digital technology as its backbone. Each stage comes with two disciplines needed for success and a checklist of questions to keep the effort on track. Saldanha draws on dozens of case studies and on leading digital change at P&G, framing the goal as becoming the next Netflix rather than the next Blockbuster.

Salim Ismail, founding executive director of Singularity University, endorsed it as part of the Exponential Organizations book series on scaling transformations, and P&G executive Shailesh Jejurikar called it a clear, practical path to digital transformation.