Independent ecommerce replatform assessment

What it answers

A replatform is warranted when the current platform is the binding constraint on a commercial outcome that can be named and measured, and when the business has already made the current platform do everything it can. Most replatform cases fail that test. They turn out to be a proposition problem, or a team problem, with a technology invoice attached.

The assessment establishes which case you have before the purchase order does.

Who carries it out

Steve Webster, founder of Barking Cat Advisory. He has run retail and ecommerce P&Ls since 1999, up to £240m, and has led replatforms at Hush Rituals, Boohoo, Fashion Union, Hotter US, Harveys Furniture, eXtra, Liwa and Barbour, the last of them a global move onto Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Someone who has led eight replatforms is well placed to tell a board when it does not need a ninth.

What it examines

The assessment is the Barking Cat Review pointed at the platform question. Two to four weeks, fixed scope, analytics access and a handful of conversations, deliberately light on your organisation. It reads the business against the six questions a board should answer before the vendor does:

1. Is product data governed and structured, or is the plan to sort that out in the new platform?
2. Is pricing controlled beyond spreadsheets?
3. Is inventory unified and real-time, or routed through middleware workarounds?
4. Have customer services, finance, supply chain and marketing been through a structured requirements process, rather than informed of a decision?
5. Can the internal team operate the platform at full capability, or will the business be agency-dependent within eighteen months?
6. Is there a defined commercial end-state, or an MVP and a hope that phase two gets funded?

Alongside those, the customer journey is walked from the first search to the return, and every finding is measured against your filed results: traffic, conversion, order value, margin and repeat.

What you receive

A written assessment that states its conclusion in one sentence: replatform, do not replatform, or not yet and what has to be true first. Behind it, the binding constraint on the trade, named and evidenced, and the sequence: what to fix in a fortnight, what to build in a quarter, and what not to spend on at all. The findings are argued with your leadership team in a working session and the written assessment stays as the record.

If the answer is yes, selection support is available on request.

The answer is allowed to be no

The assessment can conclude that no replatform is required, and frequently will. In Steve’s judgement many mid-market retailers would generate more profit from six months of disciplined data governance and pricing control than from a £3m replatform.

That answer is only available from an advisor who does not earn from the build. Barking Cat Advisory is paid a fixed fee, stated in writing before instruction. It takes no referral fees from platforms, agencies or vendors, and it does not sell, resell or implement Shopify, Adobe Commerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, BigCommerce, commercetools or any other platform.

Read the argument first

Should we replatform? Six questions to ask before the vendor answers for you. The essay behind this assessment, including the four conversations nobody had on a replatform that went wrong, and the one that went right because the board chose restraint over prestige.

What happens next

Thirty minutes, no pitch. If there is work worth doing, a fixed-fee proposal in writing within two working days. Then the engagement, or a plain no.

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