Our Partner Tenzing, an Commerce specialist, has over a decade’s experience managing the infrastructure, performance and security of online stores just like yours. With clients in five continents, they work with retailers that run their stores on platforms like Magento, Oracle Commerce and Hybris -working closely with retailers and their development partners to ensure the success of their online channel.

With over 60 eCommerce clients across their base, they’ve noticed a few factors that impact the success of the SI partner relationship, especially in times of rapid growth. If you are in the middle of deciding on a development partner for your eCommerce site, hopefully this insight from Tenzing will help you pick the right partner.

3 reasons retailers outgrow their development partners:

1. Scalability
The explosion of eCommerce in the past decade has meant that many retailers are growing rapidly. At Tenzing, we often see cases where the development partner that worked on a site’s initial launch does not have the experience to handle the environment once traffic has increased exponentially. With growth, you might find new product lines to introduce or new geographies to expand into, and you need a partner that can support these new requirements. When choosing an SI partner, don’t look for a vendor that can handle your site today, look for one that can handle the site you want to have in a year or two. Ensuring your site is built to handle future growth from launch will help avoid problems down the road.

2. Support
Similarly, a small and agile team may be enough to manage and support your site at launch, but as you grow your support needs will increase. If your online revenue grows from $1M to $10M (or even from $10K to $100K), every minute of downtime costs you 10x.

When scoping out the initial project, you may not be concerned about 24×7 support, or guaranteed response times. However, as your site grows (and it will), these elements will become crucial if you run into any problems. When choosing an eCommerce development partner, make sure that they have the capacity to support your site well beyond your current capacity. Look for client references that are larger and more complex than your current business to give you insight into how they might handle your site as it grows.

3. Platform Expertise
As your online business grows and evolves, your environment will grow more complex. New technologies, styles and trends will result in new integrations and additions to your site. An increase in users and catalogue items will also enhance the complexity of your environment. As your site grows, you may invest in advanced performance or security services, adding another layer to your environment. Make sure your development partner can build a site that can handle these types of changes and expansions.

Obviously the pace of technological change makes it unrealistic to think a site will last ten years, even five is a stretch! That being said, choosing the right development partner might mean you get years more out of your site, and will certainly mean fewer headaches and issues along the way.

For more insight into Tenzing’s advice for choosing an Ecommerce Development Partner, check out their new eBook.

Interested in more direct advice on choosing a development partner? Contact Tenzing directly to discuss how they can help you choose a Systems Integrator Partner.

About Tenzing
Tenzing delivers solutions and services that enhance performance, maintain security and simplify compliance for retailers and manufacturers. By combining deep technical expertise with exceptional service delivery and support, Tenzing helps clients alleviate risk and maximize revenue from their digital investments. Tenzing deploys, manages and optimizes software and infrastructure for leading commerce platforms from partners such as Oracle, Hybris, Magento, and IBM. With offices and customers in the Americas, EMEA, and APAC, Tenzing is regularly recognized as a high growth company and industry leader. Tenzing is ISO 27001 certified, AT101 SOC audited and PCI-DSS Service Provider Level 1 compliant and audited. Tenzing also partners with Amazon for the global delivery of managed commerce services on AWS. For more information visit www.tenzing.com