There are two important building blocks before embarking on the development of the desired platfrom:
Company strategy
Mostly forgotten in the hurry of starting a project, but crucial to the alignment with the organisation: what is the company strategy? How will the project fit into this? Where are dependencies on other projects, resources or focus? How will the project contribute to the overall goal of the company? Short-listing helps in defining the project scope, pace, goals and set-up.
Team
What will be the core team? Will you build it yourself, will a partner build it or will it be a joint operation? Which expertise will be needed, both internally (e.g. logistics, security, back-end processses).
Metalevel-knowledge
To establish a shared view setup a repository to assure meta-knowledge and shared definitions. This will help to get alignment and get a shared view on the challenge that you are facing.
Possible topics
- The brand: brand vision and values, product vision, style guides, etc.
- Customer Journeys: understand them for the most critical customers for the most critical products and services (and how they relate to the brand, the different stakeholders and values).
- Multicountry- / Multilanguage
- Products and services
- Pricing
- Order & delivery
- Warehouses & Promotions
