The decision to switch vendors should be based on a careful evaluation of your current Adobe Commerce vendor's performance and its alignment with your future business objectives and goals. It's important to weigh the costs and benefits of switching your eCommerce vendor, which is no easy feat to achieve. You might want to consider all the potential risks and challenges associated to ensure build confidence in your decision to switch vendors.
Of course, no successful result can be achieved without careful planning and execution to ensure that your customers don’t feel the change, especially in their shopping experiences. If you’re using Adobe Commerce as your eCommerce platform, switching vendors can be an easy process if you follow the right steps. Here are some general steps we follow to ensure a smooth transition:
Step #1: Preparation Phase
This is where you prepare your team and your operations for the switch ahead. To kickstart things, it's important that you analyze and gather all relevant details about your current systems, integrations, processes, workflows, issue logs, and backlogs. This might also involve conducting meetings with primary stakeholders to review the current state of the system and reports, analyze data to identify gaps that suggest areas of improvement.
Once you have a precise understanding of your current eCommerce system, you can now identify goals and objectives from the switch (as in replacing eCommerce vendors), and brainstorm around challenges that might need to be addressed at the earliest. It might also involve working with your team to develop a roadmap that outlines scope, timeline, and resources (if any) required during the switch.
Step #2: Planning Phase
When moving from one Adobe Commerce to the other, the planning phase plays a critical role in ensuring a smooth switch. The planning phase involves analyzing the ideal state of the new Adobe Commerce vendor, structuring a transition plan with timelines, outlining the roles and responsibilities of each team member. In most cases, you would be asked to prepare checklists for the same via key stakeholders. Here are some points to consider when planning a switch in Adobe Commerce vendors.
- Identify the ideal state of the new vendor: The first step is to determine your ideal functioning state with the new Adobe Commerce vendor. This would include identifying some services, feature and functionality implementations, and specific eCommerce solutions you would require from the new vendor. Also consider the time duration of this switch, the budgetary changes involved, and any potential challenges or risks associated with the transition.
- Prepare a transition plan: Once you have identified your ideal state with the new vendor, now you need to outline the steps required to achieve it. This step would cover details around timelines, outcomes, roles, and responsibilities for each stage of this vendor switch.
- Set timelines: Set specific timelines for each stage of this transition, starting from Day 1 of your Adobe Commerce vendor switch, when do you plan on completing this transition, and any key milestones you wish to accomplish along the way (like new third-party integrations, feature implementation, and so on. This will ensure that everyone in your team and your new vendor is on the same page and that the switch is always on track.
- Detail the specific outcomes: Now is when you define what outcomes you wish to accomplish from this transition, for example, invoking some of the Adobe Commerce platform’s capabilities or reducing operational costs, or integrating new third-party tools for enhanced storefront performance, and achieving high-level of personalization in customer experiences. This will help you assess the success of the vendor switch process and identify areas for further improvement.
- Decipher your team’s roles and responsibilities: You need to define the roles and responsibilities of all your team members involved during this transition. You will need to identify who will be responsible for specific tasks during the transition and teammates who will be accountable for the overall successful transition.
- Preparing a checklist for Adobe Commerce vendor switch: This is where you must create a checklist for each stage of the transition to not miss anything. This checklist would include pointers around data migration, site testing, team training, and so on.
When you take time to plan your Adobe Commerce vendor switch, you are bound to minimize the risk involved during the process and ensure no business process is disrupted and no change is perceived by your customers. Moreover, you must also communicate this plan to all key stakeholders.
Step #3: Execution Phase
The third phase of your switching process involves implementing the transition plan that you prepared during the planning phase. The key steps involved in this phase include:
- Knowledge sharing sessions: You would need to schedule sessions with the new vendor’s team to ensure they are on the right track and possess a clear understanding of your current business processes and systems. All these knowledge sharing sessions should cover topics around current system architectures, integration points, and any customizations implemented. These sessions will help the new vendor to develop a precise understanding of your needs, forecasted goals, and how best their team can support your goals.
- Stakeholder meetings: It’s important that you hold stakeholder meetings within the organization to keep them at pace with whatever’s the progress happening with the switch. The key stakeholders would include representatives from IT, finance, operations, marketing, and other departments that might be impacted by the Adobe Commerce vendor switch. These meetings will serve as a platform to provide updates to key stakeholders, address any concerns, and gather feedback.
- Take ownership of current systems and backlog: Document all your outstanding issues and backlogs to address them all before the switch. This will provide you a clear picture of improvements needed and minimize business operations’ disruption.
- Seek support from your new vendor: No is the time you ask your new vendor to support you with data migration, testing, and training.
Step #4: Validation Phase
This is an important step in switching Adobe Commerce vendors and involves everything in place as you go all-in with your new Adobe Commerce vendor. Moreover, this phase plays a critical role in ensuring a successful transition and that the new vendor and their team meets your business requirements. Here are some key steps to consider during the validation phase:
- Reviewing the checklist you made in the planning phase: Now is when you review the checklist you prepared during the planning phase to ensure that all pointers have been taken into account, all your data has been migrated successfully, agreed-upon customizations have been implemented, all integrated tools are working together seamlessly, and so on.
- Testing to check for functional or performance issues: Your new vendor’s team needs to ensure that even with the switch your online storefront is working as before (or even better). Implementing functional and performance testing procedures along with user acceptance testing will ensure that even with the vendor switch, your digital system is still meeting the needs of your customers and all key stakeholders.
- Training to all users on new implementations: The new vendor must also provide training to all users on any new features they’ve implemented to improve store performance as well as any changes made to existing workflows or processes.
By this phase, your new vendor should be able to take ownership and support your existing systems and communications independently. Their team must have established roles and responsibilities for each team member and should be working on a scaling strategy and commence executing action plans on further business objectives and opportunities.
Step #5: Monitoring Phase
The monitoring phase of the switch is rather an ongoing process that involves tracking and measuring the performance of your digital system and ensuring that it delivers desired business value. By now, your new ecommerce software vendor should be able to support you completely and also establish cadence and monitoring. Here are some key steps to take during the monitoring phase:
- Monitor performance indicators: First and foremost, you and your new vendor must start monitoring performance indicators, KPIs, and SLAs that are relevant to your business. This can include metrics such as system uptime, response times, conversion rates, and customer satisfaction. It is imperative that your new eCommerce software vendor establishes these metrics early on in the process and tracks them regularly.
- Create cadence at project and executive level: Along with the new vendor, you must create cadence for monitoring progress and addressing any issues that arise at project and executive level. This can include regular project team meetings to review progress, identify roadblocks, and develop action plans for issues encountered. At the executive level, you need to ensure that senior leaders are informed of progress and any issues that require their attention.
- Establish an escalation process: During your tenure with the new Adobe Commerce partner, it is only usual for escalations to arise, therefore, you must agree on a process that escalates all the unresolved issues at the project level to the appropriate level of management. The escalation process must be well-documented and communicated to all the stakeholders.
- Work towards continuously improving the system: Your new vendor’s team must continuously review and improve your digital system to ensure that it delivers maximum value to your business and superior shopping experiences to your customers. Moreover, their team must cover regular system upgrades, enhancements, and optimization processes. They must be able to solicit feedback from users and stakeholders alike to to pinpoint areas for improvement and result in a maximum overall business value.
Switching over Adobe Commerce vendors? We can help you
