Vendor-Neutral B2B eCommerce Project Planning
Nailing project discovery and technical requirements analysis, building tender-ready project documentation and statement of work
PROJECT IN BRIEF
Client
A centralized enterprise-scale B2B purchasing, marketing, and event community for independent construction merchants, connecting over 1,000 member buyers of 1M+ products, collectively operating 3100+ branches across the United Kingdom.
With 550 suppliers, distributors, and manufacturers, the client ensures exclusive offers, terms, and deals, building 45% of the UK’s annual merchant sales value.
Industry
eCommerce
Construction
services
Project discovery and planning
eCommerce strategy consulting
Business analysis
Technical requirements analysis
Product analysis
Technology mapping
Platforms
Platform-independent
Way too many migration projects fail, with half exceeding their budgets, Gartner says. But what if you’re dead stuck with your legacy tech ecosystem, and keeping it seems like even more money down the drain?
Especially when you’re a B2B eCommerce giant having massive responsibilities for thousands of community members and hundreds of suppliers, requesting a consistent project discovery by a non-committed expert is a rule of thumb.
Amitech Group stepped in to make the grade in the challenge.
PROJECT BACKGROUND
Questionable feasibility of migration from a legacy system
The client’s operational and supply chain environment underlies a custom multicomponent Platform-as-a-Service marketplace comprising straight-through ordering, reporting, EDI suite, and account management systems.
Given that the component platforms were built long ago and scaled nearly to their limits, the risk of legacy system issues arose. Besides, the functionality behind the exhaustive tools partly overlapped, without the ability to provide a single entry point for different member and seller personas.
Add to this the ballooning server load and the associated expenses, and get a picture of how stuck the client was. This combination of factors made the client consider transitioning from the obsolete architecture to an ecosystem of SaaS-based eCommerce and Marketplace platforms.
The search for prospective marketplace tech vendors around the existing offerings hadn’t led the client anywhere, as none of the providers could handle the massive enterprise-grade data and operational load. Each stated that the potential adjustments of their default functionality were off the table.
Was it even possible to hand-pick a suitable cost-efficient vendor combination? Or the long-felt need for the makeover undertaking was a no-go, outright? An independent outside opinion was critical for the client.
They started looking for a trusted project discovery expert able to evaluate the strategic, financial, and operational feasibility of the replatforming, ensuring it met the growing member, supplier, operator, and, respectively, user transactions load.
Client's objectives
The client has requested project discovery to address these challenges while identifying opportunities for system and business process optimization.
The objectives were to define and map their business specifics, solution architecture, and technical requirements for the new B2B eCommerce ecosystem.
The major objectives
- Develop an eCommerce migration strategy
- Minimize costs through operational improvements and facilitated support
- Establish clear entry points for different user groups to streamline access and usability
- Enable a seamless and intuitive user experience
- Ensure that the solution smoothly supports millions of products
- Enable thousands of sellers to ultimately personalize their pricing lists
Required UX improvements for member & supplier users
- Unified login/Single Sign-On across all systems to streamline operational efficiency
- Mobile compatibility to manage orders, credit, reports, products, and finance on the go
- Real-time synchronization to speed up accurate updates for orders, payments, and dispute resolutions
- Advanced filtering and search to save filters and simplify navigation for frequently searched items
- Enhanced order processing to automate repetitive tasks like order approvals and rule overrides
- Facilitated API and data integration to reduce manual workload, enabling real-time product data updates and imports
- Customizable reporting for suppliers to zoom in on sales, turnover, and invoice data, gaining better performance insights
- Improved notifications to provide advanced updates on member requests, transfers, and partnership changes
VENDOR COMPETITION WIN
Given that we haven’t worked with the client before, they scrutinized our relevant project discovery and R&D expertise and had some face-to-face meetings with the team to touch base. Accolades from our long-standing tech partner added to our chances of getting the job.
The team’s ultimate advantage over the rival providers was an unbiased, vendor-independent view of the project we had from the outset. Thus, our goal-driven, product-owner approach won us the brand-new discovery challenge.
CHALLENGE
Support overbudgeting & operational efficiency issues
Proprietary technology
Running on custom-built or vendor-locked tech lacking flexibility, the solution infrastructure bottlenecked customization, scalability, and revamping. This also led to excessive hosting and maintenance spending.
Security costs
Given that most of the client’s tech ecosystem components resided on-premises, and hosting was self-managed, security was majorly their responsibility, and keeping it consistent required ongoing investment.
Fragmented user experience
Having multiple web entry points brought about inconsistent, fragmented user experience for the community members (buyers) and suppliers (sellers), which affected the overall system efficiency.
Digital marketing limitations
The client’s existing solution didn’t allow for bringing in advanced marketing instruments, hampering their marketers’ attempts to systematically garner stats, drive data analytics, user engagement, and optimize omnichannel campaigns.
Custom PIM dependency
Underlying a custom PIM, operational workflows within the marketplace couldn’t be seamlessly adapted to the client’s evolving business requirements and growing product ranges.
Limited search capabilities
The platform's search functionality was far from the advanced standards the client wished it complied with. Thus, navigation and product discovery were too challenging for both buyers and sellers, especially given how massive the catalogs were.
SOLUTION
Migration feasibility analysis & comprehensive project documentation
The resulting solution is a full-scale project discovery, underpinned by a tender-ready technical requirements breakdown. The project documentation stack enables the client to carry out an efficient search for a prospective tech service provider, without limiting them in their platform or vendor choice.
While assisting the client in validating the replatforming decision, Amitech Group assessed the following key drivers:
- Outdated technology
- Operational overheads
- Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
- Marketing
- Scalability
- Security
- Customer experience
- Innovation and competitiveness
- Regulatory compliance
- Time-to-market
- Data and analytics
- Maintenance and technical debt
Collaboration
As soon as our team was brought into the loop, both parties agreed to opt for the Waterfall methodology route for the project. Namely, we’d first mapped the scope of work and desired deliverables to then stick to the plan while bringing in the associated stakeholders as the need arose.
The decision-making board helped clear the product vision. Alongside, within each phase, the back-office team iteratively worked on prepping the artifacts.
THE MAJOR CONTACT POINTS
Digital and Commercial Directors, and eCommerce Managers who communicated the client’s concerns and detailed requests while aligning our investigation deliverables with their business vision.
Head of Finance and Systems, and Head of IT who were there for us during a couple of demo meetings and while we’ve been collecting the business process information about the client’s tech environment.
Data Engineer and Internal Web Developer who assisted in making the tech breakdown for particular tools.
“What struck us most in terms of business collaboration within the project was the client’s willingness to resolve every concern on the fly. Blazing-fast reaction, indeed. The three major stakeholders were supercharged, intensely inquisitive, responsive, and amazingly creative.
Regardless of the extremely high workload they had non-stop, they found the time to test-drive each solution we came up with, attempting to fit it into their business environment right away.”
COMMUNICATION CHANNELS & FEATURED TOOLS
Results
7
weeks
To handle a full-blown project discovery, planning, and documentation
15
hours
To align the strategies and deliverables with the client’s vision
233
user scenarios
With acceptance criteria for 5 user persona groups
19
schemes
From high-level DFD to ordering and invoicing sequence diagrams, to products and B2B pricing, and beyond
70
pages
Outlining technical eCommerce architecture and data flows
25
pages
Dwelling on the client’s business case specifics
Deliverables
Technical Architecture Document (TAD)
Outlines the eCommerce solution architecture, from software to infrastructure to required integrations with the ERP and other systems in place.
Makes a clear distinction between custom development versus out-of-the-box SaaS apps, dwells on the integration approach with the existing systems, and architecture scalability details.
Business Requirements Document (BRD)
Captures all of the client’s business requirements, outlining the desired functional and non-functional outcomes for the key user personas and the system itself.
Addresses projected optimized business processes with regard to user personas and their capabilities, as well as future system components.)
Data Flow Diagrams (DFDs)
Give a high-level view of data turnaround throughout the new system, specifying key systems involved, including the ERP.
Detailed sequence diagrams provide clarity on interaction points between individual processes. This ensures each flow (e.g., product catalog updates, order processing, etc.) is documented, involving system and data operation touchpoints.
Business Case Validation Brief
Assesses the business case, from cost-benefit analysis to ROI projections to alignment with the client's strategic objectives.
Gives stakeholders confidence that the roadmapped solution will meet business goals and ensure that the resources and effort required are justified.
Further collaboration
The project discovery result fully met the client’s needs, providing them with the required documentation to quickly find the appropriate vendor to nail their migration undertaking.
Now that the Amitech Group team has helped with a consistent request for proposal (RFP), as soon as the client finishes validating the deliverables, they will execute a tender in search of a trusted tech provider and kick the project off with the winning team.
THE UNDERLYING MASTERY INGREDIENTS
Engagement model
Time and Material with NTE
Methodology
Waterfall
Team composition
- Business Consultant
- Solution Architect/Technical Lead
- Product Owner/Business Analyst
- Project Coordinator
Last updated: March 24, 2025
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Expertly removes bottlenecks from most nuanced processes, mounting everything on smooth rails. Creative and T-shaped enough to embrace oceans of mind-blowing tasks.
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Democratizes those royally sophisticated tech phenomena by means of concise copy and occasional wit.
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