Can the operation execute on the platform it already has?
Operational Excellence is the second foundation. It asks whether the business is internally ready before it is externally funded: whether the processes, data and discipline exist to make a platform investment pay, or whether the platform will simply expose their absence at greater scale and speed. The failure cluster is Operational Immaturity. Most digital commerce shortfalls are not technology failures; they are readiness gaps of exactly this kind.
The six checks
Does operational discipline precede platform investment?
Do the core retail processes execute?
Is there a single view of inventory across channels?
Are data standards built for distance selling?
Are marketing and the site experience aligned?
Is site speed treated as commercial, not technical?
The self-assessment runs all thirty-six checks in thirty honest minutes and nothing you enter leaves your browser. The Barking Cat Review applies them to your business by walking it as a customer does, measuring what it finds against your numbers, and naming the constraint that is actually binding.
