When SAP announced the sunset of SAP Commerce, a billion-dollar medical distributor faced a real problem. Their capable internal team had already spent 12+ months on due diligence — collecting requirements, conducting data rooms with major vendors, running extensive demos.

Yet after all that effort, they still couldn’t make a decision.

The problem wasn’t expertise — they had a strong team. But translating their complex B2B eCommerce needs into specific, comparable platform capabilities was taking too long. Every vendor query came back “yes.” Every feature was framed as “out of the box.” How do you differentiate when nothing differentiates?

The complexity was real. The company operated with:

• Multiple acquisitions and an active M&A pipeline
• Multi-store, multi-brand requirements
• Multiple distribution centers
• Subscription-based ordering for some customer segments
• Complex order workflows and approval logic
• Catalog complexity driven by supplier-supplied product data

The stakes matched the complexity: dozens of internal stakeholders, a sunsetting platform with a hard deadline, and a multi-million-dollar decision everyone needed to defend internally.

1. The traditional approach was failing in predictable ways:

   • Vendor-led demos were polished and broad. Every platform appeared to do everything.
   • Requirements documents existed but weren’t specific enough. Without granular capability mapping, platforms couldn’t be objectively compared.
   • Stakeholder opinions varied widely. With no objective framework, every conversation became a subjective debate.
   • Each new “deep dive” added information without convergence. More data, no decision.

   This is the pattern in nearly every stalled platform selection: lots of activity, no clarity.

B2B Squared engaged the team and ran the full LogicFit framework — the same 8-stage process used in every Platform Genius RFP engagement.

Discovery for this distributor surfaced 110 use cases and 1,200+ scoreable, platform-specific capabilities. This wasn’t starting from scratch — the team’s prior work was preserved. The new process added the technical specificity that made objective platform comparison possible.

The process then evaluated 18 platforms — including one the client had never seriously considered. Vendors were required to demonstrate, against the company’s actual use cases, exactly how their platform would deliver each capability. Mutually-exclusive scoring tiers — Native, Configuration, Plugin, Custom, Impossible — forced precision instead of vague “yes” answers.

By the end of scoring, the framework had generated 30,000+ data points across the 18 vendor platforms.

The winning platform wasn’t on the client’s original shortlist.

Many vendors from the original list were eliminated through objective scoring. A platform purpose-built for this distributor’s exact use cases — one that vendor-led demos and analyst reports had never surfaced — emerged as the clear leader.

Beyond the platform decision itself, the scoring data revealed which “out of the box” claims were accurate, where customization would be required, and where hidden costs were likely. Dozens of stakeholders had objective understanding instead of subjective debate — and the chosen platform came with complete defensibility for the executive review.

1. Comprehensive coverage doesn’t add time when the framework is right. Evaluating 18 platforms took less time than the team had previously spent investigating their internal shortlist.

2. Granular scoring eliminates the “out of the box” trap. When vendors must specify HOW they deliver each capability — Native, Configuration, Plugin, Custom, or Impossible — the real differences surface.

3. The right platform is often one you haven’t considered. Vendor-led discovery only surfaces the vendors who show up. Requirements-led evaluation surfaces the platform actually built for your business.

4. Defensibility is a deliverable. Multi-million-dollar decisions need objective support, not opinions. The scoring data became the artifact that aligned dozens of stakeholders.