The Salesforce paradox maps directly to retail platform decisions.
Retailers stay on Magento or similar platforms not because the interface is good - most would admit it is not - but because the checkout logic, promotional rules, and inventory behaviour built around it over ten years cannot be reconstructed elsewhere without losing institutional knowledge nobody documented.
The interface was replaceable from day one. The decade of undocumented decisions built inside it was not. That is the real switching cost and it has nothing to do with the software.
Perfectly put Om. And thank you for the additional example. Many of the systems that are deeply embedded in organizations from sales, to marketing, customer support, and accounting use platforms with UIs designed in the late 2000’s. They’re not being used out of love of the experience.
Exactly 100% - the UI is almost irrelevant at that point. The system became the operating model.
Replacing it means rebuilding the operating model, not just migrating the data. That is a completely different conversation than most platform decisions start with.
The Salesforce paradox maps directly to retail platform decisions.
Retailers stay on Magento or similar platforms not because the interface is good - most would admit it is not - but because the checkout logic, promotional rules, and inventory behaviour built around it over ten years cannot be reconstructed elsewhere without losing institutional knowledge nobody documented.
The interface was replaceable from day one. The decade of undocumented decisions built inside it was not. That is the real switching cost and it has nothing to do with the software.
Perfectly put Om. And thank you for the additional example. Many of the systems that are deeply embedded in organizations from sales, to marketing, customer support, and accounting use platforms with UIs designed in the late 2000’s. They’re not being used out of love of the experience.
Exactly 100% - the UI is almost irrelevant at that point. The system became the operating model.
Replacing it means rebuilding the operating model, not just migrating the data. That is a completely different conversation than most platform decisions start with.