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TL;DR: Internal portal builds don’t stick around because they’re the best—they stick around because they’re emotional. In this post, we unpack the real reasons freight forwarders hesitate to replace their homegrown customer tools, and how to introduce a modern solution without alienating the teams that built them.
The Hidden Emotional Cost of Homegrown Portals
Forwarders often know their in-house customer tools are outdated. But replacing them is still hard. The barriers aren’t just technical—they’re emotional, political, and organizational.
Sunk Cost Bias
Years of time, budget, and political capital go into internal builds. For many leaders, sunsetting the portal feels like admitting a mistake, even if it’s the right call.
Political Capital & Visibility
IT and ops leaders often earned their seat at the table by championing these tools. To walk away can feel like forfeiting hard-won influence.
“Don’t Rock the Boat” Ops Culture
Even when usage is low, portals can feel “good enough.” In fast-moving, fire-drill-heavy ops environments, status quo often wins by default.
The Quiet Resistance: IT and Dev Team POV
Let’s talk about the real holdouts.
Fear of Obsolescence
If the company moves away from an internal tool, what happens to the team that built it?
Personal Investment in Code
These platforms are often labors of love. Engineers have poured years into making them work. Naturally, they’re protective.
Competing Priorities
No one’s defending the old portal—it’s just never the top fire. Dev teams are buried in TMS issues, security, integrations. The portal keeps limping along, not urgent enough to kill, but too tangled to tackle mid-chaos.
How to Reframe the Conversation
You are replacing the customer platform IT worked hard to build, but that doesn’t have to mean burning bridges. The goal is to evolve with minimal disruption, while giving internal teams the credit they deserve for getting this far.
“Free Up Dev Time for High-Value Work”
Let internal teams focus on ops and backend modernization. Offload customer UX to a platform purpose-built for it.
“Modernize Without Rebuilding the Whole Stack”
Upgrading your customer experience doesn’t have to mean blowing up your whole stack. With Logixboard, you get a modern, unified shipper experience layered over the internal systems you already use.
“More Reliable Than Piecemeal Rebuilds”
What looks like “control” often becomes a tangled mess of patchwork fixes. Purpose-built platforms bring stability and scale.
A Non-Threatening Path to Sunset
Start small. Prove value. Bring your internal teams along for the ride.
- Pilot alongside your existing portal—no disruption.
- Migrate in phases—start with one service or region.
- Highlight usage deltas—compare onboarded users, shipper feedback, and “Where’s my stuff?” ops requests.
Proof: Forwarders Who Made the Leap
“We looked at trying to build a single-pane-of-glass customer solution in-house, but the cost ballooned to 8x the original quote.”
—Adam Hill, CEO, Scarbrough Global“An in-house build—the upkeep, the updates, the bug fixes—it can be crushing.”
—Charlie Hanson, Int’l Branch Manager, OpenRoad Inc.“We had our own portal for several years. It was a big differentiator for a long time, but our customers outgrew it.”
—Daniel Hallock, VP of Business Development, V. Alexander
Check out V. Alexander’s full story here.
Final Thought
Replacing your internal portal isn’t a takedown. It’s a strategic shift. One that honors the work that’s been done while positioning your company to win the next wave of shipper expectations.
Because in 2025, “good enough” means you’re already falling behind the competition.
