CommerceBolt — a Perigeon company
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Service

Advisory

A short paid engagement to answer the expensive question before you commit to it. Which platform, whether to replatform at all, what the real scope is, and what it will cost to run once it is live.

Diagnosis first

Questions worth paying to get right

Each of these is a decision where being wrong costs six figures and twelve months. A few weeks of work in advance is cheap by comparison.

  1. "Which platform should we be on?"

    Usually asked after three vendors have each recommended their own. An assessment against your actual constraints produces a different answer from a feature comparison.

  2. "Is our current platform really the problem?"

    Often it is not. We have advised against replatforming before and will again — the symptom and the cause are frequently different systems.

  3. "Why does everything take so long to ship?"

    An architecture and process question. Sometimes the codebase, sometimes the integration design, sometimes a release process nobody owns.

  4. "Is this proposal reasonable?"

    A second opinion on someone else's scope and estimate, from people who build this for a living and are not bidding for the work.

Why this is a separate engagement

Free consultancy is a sales process. There is nothing wrong with that, but it is worth knowing which one you are in, because the incentives are different.

An agency assessing whether you need a rebuild while bidding for the rebuild has an interest in one answer. Paying for the assessment separately removes that, and it means the output is written to be executed by anyone rather than scoped to suit us.

We still have a position: we work on three platforms and not on others, and that shapes what we know. Naming that is more useful than claiming a neutrality nobody in this industry actually has.

What tends to come out of it

In our experience the most common finding is that the problem is one layer below where it was reported. Slow releases turn out to be an integration design issue rather than a platform limitation. Poor conversion turns out to be product data rather than checkout. A replatform request turns out to be a theme problem.

That is the value of looking before committing: the expensive decision frequently turns out to be the wrong one, and finding that out in week three is considerably better than in month nine.

Where this leads

Often to a smaller project than the one you were considering — conversion work or a targeted rebuild rather than a migration. Sometimes to the full programme, scoped properly. Occasionally to nothing at all, which is still a result worth having paid for.

Platforms

Where we build.

You are not obliged to let us build it

Advisory is sold and delivered as its own engagement, and the output is written so another agency could execute it. That is deliberate: advice given in the hope of winning the build is not advice, and you should be sceptical of it wherever it comes from — including from us. If our honest recommendation is that you do not need the project, that is what the document will say.

Discuss an engagement

Scope

What a build includes.

  • A written recommendation

    With the reasoning, the alternatives considered and what would change the answer. Something you can hand to a board, not a slide of logos.

  • Total cost of ownership, three years

    Licence, hosting, apps, agency and internal time. Platform comparisons that stop at licence cost are the most common way these decisions go wrong.

  • Architecture review

    How your storefront, ERP, PIM and fulfilment actually fit together, where the coupling is dangerous, and what it would take to change.

  • A sequenced roadmap

    What to do first, what to defer, and what not to do at all. Ordered by dependency and return rather than by enthusiasm.

  • Risk register

    The things most likely to derail the programme, named in advance, with the mitigation and who owns it.

  • A build estimate you can test

    Shaped so you can put it to other agencies on equal terms, because an estimate only you can price is not a useful one.

How it runs

From first call to live.

  1. Brief 2–3 days

    The decision you actually need to make, who has to be convinced, and the constraints that are genuinely fixed rather than merely assumed.

  2. Discovery 2–3 weeks

    Interviews with the people who use the systems daily, a technical review, and the commercial data — traffic, orders, catalogue, cost base.

  3. Analysis 1–2 weeks

    Options modelled against your constraints with three-year costs, including the option of changing nothing, which is sometimes right.

  4. Recommendation 1 week

    Written up and presented to whoever has to sign it off, with the reasoning exposed so it can be challenged rather than taken on trust.

Frequently asked questions

Are you independent if you also build?

Partly, and we would rather name the conflict than pretend it does not exist. We build on Shopify Plus, Adobe Commerce and Salesforce Commerce Cloud, so we are not neutral about platforms we do not work with. What we can commit to is that advisory is paid for separately, the recommendation is written so another agency could execute it, and that where the honest answer is a smaller project than the one you were considering, that is what the document will say — including when the smaller project is one we would not be paid for.

How long does an advisory engagement take?

Four to six weeks for a platform selection or architecture review. Shorter for a second opinion on an existing proposal. Longer only if discovery uncovers that the question you asked is not the question that matters, which happens.

What do we actually receive?

A written recommendation with the reasoning, a three-year total cost of ownership comparison, an architecture review, a sequenced roadmap and a risk register — plus a presentation to whoever needs to approve it. Documents rather than slides, because these decisions get re-litigated months later and slides do not survive that.

Can you review a proposal from another agency?

Yes, and it is a common engagement. We look at whether the scope matches the problem, whether the estimate is credible, what has been left out, and which assumptions would change the price. We will say when a proposal is sound — that is a useful answer too.

What if the recommendation is to do nothing?

Then that is the recommendation. It happens more often than the industry admits, usually where the perceived platform problem turns out to be a theme, a data or a process problem that is far cheaper to address.

Want to talk through Advisory for your store?

Tell us where it hurts. We will tell you honestly whether we are the right people for it.

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