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Understand what you're solving before you fix it
When you're CEO or CMO, you may often think in terms of results: growth, efficiency, customer experience, and retention. But the complexity of how those results are achieved lies in the details: in systems, data, and workflows.
You're not replacing an e-commerce platform for fun. You do it because something isn't working and because the stakes are too high to stick solutions together. But the hard truth is that most companies, even with deep industry expertise, end up rebuilding the same problems they wanted to solve.
Why? Because the impulse to modernize often skips the crucial step: understanding what really needs to be solved.
When there is pressure to deliver results, it is' natural 'to jump to solutions. Choose a platform, hire a dev team, start building. But rushing into tech decisions without first getting alignment within your organization means treating symptoms, not causes. You're modernizing dysfunction.
Since I've come across this so much over the years, I want to raise awareness with this article about the step before technology: the one that makes every other decision smarter, faster and more impactful.
Identify what's there before you define what should be there
There are so many growing (e-commerce) companies with passionate, capable teams, with deep knowledge of their profession. But digital transformation isn't just about knowing your product and choosing a tech stack, it's about understanding your processes inside and out. And that's exactly where the problem lies.
Over time, workarounds accumulate. Informal decisions are important systems. Teams adapt to restrictions without documenting why they're doing this. As a result, the reality of how a company operates can quickly differ from how it presents itself.
That gap is where replatforming projects get stuck. Not because the team has no vision, but because the company hasn't mapped out its reality. That's why you should always start with clarity. Not clarity as a one-off kickoff activity, but as a working habit for exposing assumptions, discovering false expectations and finding out exactly “how value flows through your company”.
You can't fix what you don't see. Before you look at technology, you need to uncover the processes behind the platform. Process mapping is the practice of documenting how work actually flows through your company, exposing the gap between perception and reality before making technology decisions. With tools like Service Blueprints that visualize how systems and people interact, explain each step in a given process, or Assumption Audits that identify unspoken expectations between team members and customers. Shared understanding makes projects successful.
Replatforming is your chance to improve more than just the look and feel. It can eliminate the hidden friction that slows teams down. So instead of overlaying technology over legacy processes, look for where technology can really add value, such as repetitive tasks that can be automated or closing data gaps.
The goal is not to install more tools, but to create systems that support how your business actually runs and with the flexibility to grow with it.
Where an expert comes in
We've found that for any transformation — that's well adopted on time, on budget, internally and adds customer value — you need to start addressing processes and their gaps before deciding on technology.
Recently, we worked with a company that produced scientific laboratory equipment. Where did we start? By putting ourselves in the shoes of lab technicians and purchasing managers who are looking for specific products. What would make their life easier? What part of the company's sales processes could be improved to increase conversions?
These were the crucial questions that informed the features we were going to build for them. Transformation does not happen when you press “deploy”. It happens when the new system actually works for your people, your processes, and your customers. That's when value starts to be created.
Getting there means starting in the right place. Before choosing platforms or chasing features, take the time to ask tough questions, unpack assumptions, and identify what's really going on. Then, and only then, can you start building something better.
If you only take three things out of this article, let these steps to clarity be before code:
- Map current processes with Service Blueprints
- Perform Assumption Audits within teams
- Identify where technology adds real value
Clarity is not just for the discovery phase
Clarity is something that your IT team embeds through decision logs, feedback loops, and transparent conversations about considerations. It's what keeps scope manageable, delivery realistic, and trust strong, even when things shift mid-project — because that's what they always do.
If you're planning a re-platforming or digital transformation and want to check your current process map or business case, we offer a free 20-minute Clarity Call. No pitch. Just a conversation with a Solutions Architect or Business Analyst who understands.
