Terms of Trade · Edition 1: The PE deck
Replatform
Definition
Moving an ecommerce business from one commerce platform to another: catalogue, checkout, integrations, content and, in most cases, the agency that runs it. Undertaken when the current platform is the binding constraint on a commercial outcome the business can name, and undertaken far more often than that condition is met.
Field note
Replatforming is the golden rule of every new head of ecommerce. It is the must-do, because until it is done they can never be held responsible for the numbers. It is also the easiest way to burn eighteen months and half a million pounds of capex, at the end of which the proposition is exactly what it was, rendered on a different stack.
Board question
Name the commercial outcome the current platform is preventing, with the number, and show me what was tried on the current platform first.
Applied through
Should we replatform, the six questions a board should ask before approving the spend, written from the chair that approved one.
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