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~ Intershop ~

longer can cope requires you to think about a new com- employees of your company are capable of executing the
merce platform. Take into account your plans for the future. processes they need to. Therefore, it is advisable to create
Do you want to add new brands, new countries, integrate training programmes for all employees who will be work-
new touchpoints or even add multiple web shops? Your new ing with the new e-commerce platform. Demands are ever
system needs to give you this freedom and adapt easily to rising in the e-commerce market, so it is important for your
your current and future needs. staff to keep up with the increasing opportunities and de-
mands platforms and the market offers. Often, investing in
Limitations and automating processes new e-commerce technology will pay for itself. Alternatively,
Have you ever been thinking about the limitations your cur- you can review current processes within your supply chain to
rent system has and what a new platform’s limitations might decrease the risk of failing.
be? With ever-increasing opportunities, consumers and busi-
ness buyers are lured to online shops. What do your competi- A scalable platform
tors off er your customers that you do not because your system Choosing a new commerce platform heavily impacts your
is not capable of doing so? What is the potential benefi t if business. After carefully weighing the reasons and risks, and
you do off er this? Ultimately, off ering the best customer ex- deciding to move forward with the process, you can be on
perience possible will keep your customers loyal to your shop. the looking for a new platform. According to Intershop, im-
Errors in the customer journey might lead your consumer or portant aspects of the new platform you are choosing are the
business buyers to the hands of a competitor. scalability, flexibility, user-friendliness and customer experi-
ence. A good platform solution supports demand-based use
Automation of processes becomes ever more important. It of additional resources and can handle traffic spikes. ••
can be a third reason to choose a new commerce platform.
If data cannot be processed easily amongst your third-party
systems, you are not benefitting from using all available data
in order to successfully offer a personalised customer experi-
ence consistently via every touchpoint and generate more Replatforming in E-commerce: The reasons, the risks & how to choose
revenue and lasting relationships. Other reasons to think the right platform. The full Intershop whitepaper can be downloaded on
about a new platform is the continuous performance and https://info.intershop.com/resource-replatforming-en
costs of your current system. If errors occur, that will cost
you money. It might be wise to calculate what investments
it will take compared to choosing a new platform and what
the benefits of both are.

Preventing risks
Choosing a new platform is not free of risk. It can be
complex, time-consuming and costly. Some of the most
important cases where things can go wrong, is that the
planning of time and budget is not sufficient. Therefore, if
projects get delayed, you might end up paying for it. Second,
when choosing a platform, make sure that all of your service
channels can be linked to it, without the need of building
all kinds of tools to get every program up and running (in a
sufficient manner). A good way to determine whether you
are ready and what the important features are is to assign a
value to them. Higher valued requirements should be taken
care of first. That way, the essential elements of your busi-
ness – so your business can at least operate – are working. In
general, it is very important to carefully prepare the migra-
tion. It is more than just thinking about prioritising. It is
about talking to the team that will perform the migration. It
is about replying quickly to upcoming questions and having
enough resources available to make sure the team can work.
Create a way of working in order to agree on how to work
with change requests.

Once a migration is completed and you are ready to work
on your new platform, it is very important that all of the

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