Ecommerce migration requires input and assistance from a wide cross section of disciplines both inside and outside of your organization. Some of these stakeholders may need to be included as permanent members of your migration team, while others can be brought in at key milestones to provide support and insights

Once you’ve secured buy-in for an ecommerce replatforming project, the next step is to create a list of requirements that you’ll need from a new solutions provider and partner. You’ll also want to create standardized evaluation criteria for grading potential solutions partners. This is a very detailed process, so it helps to think about your requirements as two sides to the same coin—existing issues you need to fix, and new functionality you’d like to add

Armed with your completed RFP template, the next step in the process is to begin evaluating your platform options. This goes beyond weighing one solutions provider over another. Instead, you’ll need to understand the nuances between different ecommerce architectures, and evaluate which one is the best solution for your brand

The next step is to weigh the total cost of ownership (TCO) and return on investment (ROI) for the solutions providers you’re considering. Calculating TCO between different platforms is always tricky, as virtually all providers have different cost models and areas that require differing levels of investment

If you’ve gone through the platform evaluation and TCO assessment process and landed on Shopify Plus as your provider of choice, then the final step is to build a business case to get a CAPEX spend signedoff