Platform Selection Built for Your Complex B2B Reality

The consequences when you get it wrong:

• 65% of B2B companies want to re-platform in next 18 months according industry reports
• 2x-4x in implementation overruns and unexpected customizations
• 2-3 years of lost time before replatforming
• Worse: Customers don’t use it

The root cause?

What most consultants, agencies and others call “requirements” are high-level features or functionality. Demos look great. Vendors say “yes” to everything.

Then you find out the ‘gotchas’ later: Business logic that doesn’t translate. Capabilities that don’t work the way YOU need them to.

You need a better process—one built for YOUR complexity, not generic B2B advice.

We Built Platform Genius Because the Process Was Broken

There’s a reason 65% of B2B companies want to replatform. Traditional technology evaluation methods weren’t built for the unique complexity of your B2B reality.

As practitioners and advisors leading platform selections ourselves, we saw it firsthand:

• Distributors and manufacturers spending 6-12 months managing spreadsheets, coordinating vendor demos, and making million-dollar decisions without the bandwidth (and sometimes, expertise) to truly assess platform fit.
• Vendors controlling a sales process where every feature or function was ‘out of the box’ and the winner was the firm that sold best.
• And well-intentioned agencies, analysts, and consultants with limited visibility and natural incentives beyond finding the best platform.

Platform selection became an exhausting, time-consuming project instead of a clear path forward.

So we built Platform Genius differently—using real B2B implementations to create a systematic, data-driven process that delivers objective answers in weeks, not months.

Your Complexity, Mapped. Your Decision, Clear.

Every Platform Genius selection delivers comprehensive data customized to YOUR business—not generic checklists. Here’s what that looks like in practice:

You’ve heard the horror stories. Huge development costs, big delays—when the software vendor said it was ‘out of the box’.

Our scoring methodology solves for this by forcing vendors to identify not just ‘if’ but ‘how’ their platform supports:

• True Capability Scoring—Beyond yes/no to actual implementation reality
• Visibility to Customization—Know before you sign the contract
• Weighted Use Cases—allows you to include all, but prioritize what’s most important

Platform Genius in Action

When an objective, unbiased process is necessary to make platform decisions clear and defensible, Platform Genius™ is the only choice. But don’t take our word for it, these customer accounts tell the real story…

The Situation: Despite numerous demos, distributor with significant e-com revenue and complex requirements needed more clarity to replace sunsetting platform.

Platform Genius™ Revealed: 30,000+ data points across 18 platforms revealed a top scorer they’d not previously considered.

Outcome: Despite prior indecision, selection made in a few months with complete stakeholder alignment.

Platform Genius vs Traditional Selection

Platform selection seems straightforward—until you’re six months in with conflicting vendor promises and no clear winner. Here’s why these approaches are flawed and contribute to the rash of distributors & manufacturers who have low customer adoption and wish to re-platform.

? — This will vary and depend greatly on the agency or consultancy.

Agencies — Agencies excel at implementation and creative execution but specialize in a couple platforms and have limited, if any, expertise outside partner platforms. Ultimately, agencies make money on projects, creating natural bias toward platforms that generate project revenue or implementation profitability.

Analysts — Analyst firms provide broad coverage across many technologies using standardized frameworks. Their vendor-supplied data produces high-level overviews that lump B2B and B2C together. This “mile-wide, inch-deep” approach cannot account for specific B2B business complexity.

Consultants — Consulting firms offer strategic guidance in business transformation, but their platform selection methodology varies widely by individual consultant and engagement. Without practitioner-built, data-driven evaluation framework, their insights may be more opinion than B2B implementation reality.

Platform Genius™ starts with 45k+ data points across 25+ platforms, then customizes the framework to YOUR business logic. Comprehensive enough to catch everything. Specific enough to matter.

The Process: Data-Driven, Customized to Your Business

The Challenge. Most platform selection processes focus on feature lists and functionality.

That makes it easy for vendors say “yes” to everything – and they’re not lying. Implementation reveals the real gaps: The platform’s capabilities don’t work HOW you need them to.

The result? 6-figure customization, lost time and massive technical debt.

The reason? Surface-level features and functions don’t actually account for YOUR complexity—how your business actually operates.

The Solution. Platform Logic Alignment—a methodology that maps YOUR business logic to platform capabilities across 2,000+ requirements.

Not just “can it do this?” but “how does YOUR business do this, and can the platform match that logic?”

Here’s how it works:

We account for the nuance of your customers and how you support them:  to account for the complexity of your customers and how you support them.

→ Customer workflows, including hierarchies, approvals and personas customers require – miss them and customers can’t use your site.
→ Catalog management, accounting for the intricacies of how data, products and catalogs need to be managed across sites and stores – get it wrong and you’ll risk increased costs and missed revenue.
→ From fulfillment to order management to RFQ and much more –  we capture the nuance of your organization that de-risks your investment.

Result: While other processes explore features and functionality, we’re creating a data template – with specifications that match who YOU are.

This is where the magic happens, as we map your complex requirements to platform capabilities, leveraging Platform Genius’ 45k+ data points for accuracy and acceleration.

The key? Where analysts, agencies and consultants ask ‘does it have X feature’, we’re applying your requirements (map) to solve for HOW the platform supports them (Platform Logic Alignment).

→ Natively: Supported out of the box
→ Configuration: Can be managed by business user (zero code)
→ Plugin: Requires third-party extension
→ Custom: Requires development
→ Impossible: Platform can’t do it

Result: Quantifiable results unveiling the right platform fit and areas of likely customization.

We manage the entire evaluation process—not just scoring. We ensure comprehensive platform coverage, direct vendor demos using YOUR agenda, and include objective implementation partner selection.

→ Complete RFP process management – we handle the time-consuming logistics
→ Continuously updated data – No platform blind spots
→ We manage Test Drives, not Demos – Let’s you see how the platform will actually work for you.
→ Partner Seletion – Scoring & interviews ensure you get the right partner for the platform selected

Result: Complete, vendor-neutral evaluation in 8-12 weeks.

Your team gets comprehensive reporting that makes decisions defensible across your entire organization:

→ Comparative scoring – provides visiblity across all platforms and use cases
→ Weighted results – Ensures scoring accounts for organizational priorities
→ Thousands of Data Points – Provides objective validation of path forward 
→ DetailedRreporting – Results that can be understood from the C-Suite to the teams accountable

Result: Decisions all groups can support and defend.

Mapping the Entire Tech Stack

Built by practitioners from REAL projects, Platform Genius™ helps map your entire digital roadmap – simplifying your tech stack buildout. Choose the platform you need (or reach out to have a conversation about your current state).

In need of CRM, AI, Search, CMS, CPQ or more? We’re actively building out capability data for your tech stack.

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