Most Enterprise CEOs Would Rather Gnaw Off Their Arm Than Replatform
If you are SMB and lower mid-market, the risk is lower. But in Enterprise? The stakes are so high. Who can blame CEOs for inaction? Just look at this litany of issues with any platform:
You don't have experienced people to manage the project.
Your requirements could be non-existent, incomplete, or wrong.
You could bite off more than you can chew.
You could choose the wrong platform.
Even the right platform can be implemented incorrectly. This is said by any new agency that takes over from any old agency, ever.
You could choose the wrong agency.
Even the right agency can have staffing issues.
You don't transfer catalog and customer data properly to the new system, destroying your experience.
You could botch key integrations between systems, ensuring the systems don't work together properly.
You don't manage the SEO transition properly, killing all your organic traffic.
Even the right platform can be resisted by your staff, or they could be trained improperly.
Even a great platform can be too difficult to learn.
You might not invest enough in training.
You might hire the wrong people and not realize it.
You might have attrition.
You might not follow up with new versions and just stop the project too soon.
A major eCommerce replatform effort is like walking a tightrope, over a pit stocked with alligators while 3,000 feet above the pit. While juggling chainsaws.
I recently looked at some data on platform choice by major brands and retailers, even 10 years later. 10 years later, most of those sites look like they did on launch day, with no signs of change on the horizon.
The ones that have changed, many got even worse than they were before. Mostly because they distrusted their vendor and moved to an in-house solution managed by the only agency in the world who knows that platform.
Nevertheless, they persisted.
The simple facts on the ground indicate that the devil you know always seems to be preferred to the devil you don't.
