What a refreshing look from an industry analyst. Sally McKenzie's blog post this morning "A Lesson From Dad: Why Your E-commerce Platform Search Isn't Just About Software" brings back simplicity and a long-lens view for approaching an ecommerce platform selection. As she points out, "issues change" and while it is very important for the platform to meet your requirements to make you successful, you cannot afford to overlook the ability of the vendor to work with you in a partnership. At a minimum, most platform decisions result in a three year partnership.

To add another point to Sally's blog, it is important to make sure that there is a cultural fit with the vendor - because a selection process is more than just the presales aspect and it is more than just a feature list on an RFP. It is absolutely necessary to do your homework on the vendor, in fact we encourage folks who are evaluating us to conduct backdoor references beyond the three that they request from us. It is the clients that are in your shoes and have been working with us for days, months, and years that have the real story to tell. And that is something that cannot be explained in an RFP. We highly encourage checking backdoor references for all vendors - it is worth it.

Just recently, Brian Walker of Forrester, also wrote a blog post called "Frustrated with the eCommerce technology selection process? Tell us about it!" where he and Forrester are collecting feedback about the selection process and how we can collectively make it better. It is great to see multiple industry experts actively making sure that retailers are truly selecting the best platform - cheers to you both!