More and more, we hear eTailers coming to the realization that the website “band-aiding” and “bolting-on” they’ve been doing for the past few years no longer makes economical sense. They’ve tried to fix issues and add new online capabilities to stay competitive, but have ended up creating a “Frankenstein’s monster” of point software products.   

If you’re in this “Frankenstein” club, you probably felt that each point decision made sense independently, especially when compared to the large cost of replatforming your online store.  But in trying to save a nickel or dime, you’re creating a TCO nightmare of a site that won’t keep up with the competition and still requires risky, time-consuming and expensive bolting-on for future features like searchandising, affinity selling, guided navigation, personalized recommendations, micro-targeting, automated cross-sells, AB testing, personalized eMails, proactive assisted service, etc.

Stop and do the ROI/TCO math. You need to honestly evaluate whether your e-commerce platform can continue to meet evolving consumer needs and internal marketing and merchant needs. Are you in the position to evolve your site to help you double or triple your online business?  Are you comfortable that the site will stand up to the future volume of visitors and transactions? Will IT no longer be the bottleneck for advancing the site and implementing the online vision of the company? Be honest with yourself about your long term situation.  It’s too easy to just think one Christmas season at a time.

You may conclude that like many eTailers, you’ve probably reached a “tipping point” where cobbling together a plethora of pieces from different vendors every year no longer makes sense. It might be time to look at a holistic pre-integrated suite that includes everything from the core e-commerce components (commerce engine, catalog management, search, merchandising & marketing, content management) to more advanced capabilities like searchandising, guided navigation, affinity selling, personalized recommendations and e-mails, split testing, site analytics, and click to call.  

It’s simple…history repeats itself. As most IT organization have realized on the ERP and CRM front withcompanies like SAP and Oracle, in the long run an integrated suite can make the most economical and functional sense.