Best Practices for Transforming Your eCommerce Platform · 2020. 10. 14. · Best Practices for...

Best Practices for Transforming Your eCommerce PlatformHow to Achieve a Smooth Transition When Upgrading to Magento Commerce

Rick Johnson

President and CEO of Kadro

2Best Practices for Transforming Your eCommerce Platform

But your journey isn’t over. As your business

changes and grows, you’ll need more from

your online storefront, including more

features, functionality, and flexibility. If you’re

running your digital business on an older or

inflexible set of technologies, it may be time to

upgrade to Magento Commerce.

Magento Commerce is more than an

eCommerce platform. It is a robust, scalable

software framework which software

developers can easily customize, making it the

perfect digital commerce solution.

However, replacing your commerce platform

can be a daunting proposition, especially when

you’re running a high-volume commerce

business. A website shutdown or lengthy

business interruption could damage customer

confidence and set your business back

months. You may be wondering how you can

transition to the advanced technology you

need to power future growth while ensuring

business continuity today.

This paper identifies the best practices

and guidelines for upgrading to Magento

Commerce without disrupting your existing

business. It includes several examples of

businesses which retained key features and

functions from their old sites — we call this

functional parity — while gaining all the

benefits of Magento Commerce.

Building a new eCommerce site from scratch, whether you’re a

startup or an existing business, is a significant challenge. You

understand the journey, you’ve lived it.

Prepare for the Future with Magento Commerce

Magento Commerce is

more than an eCommerce

platform. It is a robust,

scalable software framework

which software developers

can easily customize,

making it the perfect digital

commerce solution.


Make the Business Case for Magento Commerce

These are all valid reasons for switching

to Magento Commerce. They are a

critical part of your business case if

your existing eCommerce site is poorly

implemented, missing key functionality

for today’s eCommerce shopper, or has

fallen substantially behind in usability and

performance standards.

To convince your leadership team to invest in

Magento Commerce, you must quantify these

potential benefits and if possible, show how

similar companies have achieved significant

gains. At the same time, you need a plan for

ensuring your new site will have all of the

custom features required to run your online

business.

Very often, the business case for

upgrading to Magento Commerce is

based on the promise your online

business will grow significantly,

your average conversion rates will

improve, and total cost of ownership

will decrease.


Is your site falling behind

in technology, features,

standards compliance, and

user experience capabilities?

Is the prospect of moving to

a new eCommerce platform

daunting due to cost

considerations or complexity?

You need to consider total cost

of ownership of your current

eCommerce solution including

lost opportunities from not

utilizing new technology, features,

and user experiences. One best

practice to apply in this scenario

is establishing the appropriate

solution architecture to leverage

what works best on your site, and

how Magento Commerce can be

best applied to fit your overall

business plan. It doesn’t have to be

an all or nothing decision.

Too often we hear from our clients

a prior attempt to replace their

existing eCommerce system failed.

The techniques and best practices

presented in this paper are

essential to avoid a failed system

replacement.

Why Do You Need to Upgrade?If you answer yes to any of the following questions,

your business could probably benefit from switching to

Magento Commerce.


Is your eCommerce site

currently a “unique snowflake”

which only a small number

of software developers

understand?

Are you worried about falling

behind your competition and

not providing the advanced

experiences your customers

expect?

Fully custom solutions are often

difficult and expensive to replace.

Often, the quality of custom

systems degrades over time. The

power of Magento Commerce

lies in its software framework.

Magento Commerce offers a

rich eco-system of experienced

developers and integrators. Best

practices around making sure

your code and architecture are

appropriate to current now and

future needs are presented below.

With advancements in AI

technology, evolving mobile

solutions like PWA, better

understanding customer brand

interactions, and different

ways new generations of online

shoppers are conducting

transactions, your business

needs to stay at the forefront of

eCommerce innovation to outpace

the competitions own capabilities.


Has your online business

grown to a level where your

current processes are not

working as well as they

used to?

We will present several best

practices and case studies

to illustrate how clients with

antiquated back-office systems

determined what to leverage,

what to replace, and how to apply

Magento Commerce to bring new

capabilities to their customers.


Each of the individual projects highlighted in this paper shared a set of common keys to success

to make sure the business and technical requirements were understood and adhered to during

development. Each key to success is presented below as a set of best practices which will help

transition your online business over to Magento Commerce.

Best Practices for a Successful Transition to Magento Commerce

Requirements Discovery

Understand Your Data

Right-Size Your Architecture

Know Where Custom Software is Needed

Plan User Acceptance Testing


When a primary objective of the project is

to maintain business functional parity, it is

essential to have a detailed understanding

of the existing site’s features, functionality,

business rules, data models, systems

architecture, and 3rd-party system

dependencies.

The first step in Kadro’s approach is to always

conduct a detailed requirements discovery

session with all stakeholders in the project.

This typically involves a detailed Q&A session

with each stakeholder and supporting

staff to make sure individual job

functions are understood.

Stakeholders should represent each

functional area of the business which will be

involved in using or interfacing with the new

site. Examples include product management,

customer management, order management,

shipping and fulfillment, content

management, marketing, sales, customer

service, merchandising, accounting, security,

information systems, marketplaces, etc.

The requirements discovery process should

focus on identifying which functionality stays

the same and what should change. Depending

on the overall budget of the project, replacing

an existing eCommerce site can present

Conduct a Detailed Requirements Discovery and Analysis Session


opportunities to make improvements to the

customer experience and the branding. It can

also include enhancing the look of the site

or adding new functionality your competitors

may not have yet.

At the business-level, specific end-user

scenarios must be thoroughly documented.

You will also need to map out the underlying

business rules that govern how different types

of data are used and managed.

At the systems level, all integration points,

data sharing protocols and methods, your

systems of record, and what systems to keep

versus those to replace, must be identified. As

part of this effort, you will need to document

your site’s key data structures for the product

catalog, customer accounts, and order

management.

During the analysis of the requirements,

it is key to identify the gaps between what

Magento Commerce provides out-of-the-

box, what can be achieved through Magento

extensions and Adobe technical partners, and

what elements will require customizations

to meet business and technical needs. This

analysis drives the scope of custom software

development effort which will be required.

If you and your developers

don’t fully understand your

requirements, you can’t

create the right solution for

your business.


Most eCommerce re-platform projects fail or

end up costing too much because the site’s

data and the unique business rules governing

the data are never fully grasped by the

development team.

The requirements discovery process and

analysis will focus on making sure developers

and systems integrators have a fundamental

knowledge of the site’s key data elements,

including those for the product catalog,

customer accounts, and order management.

The underlying business rules which govern

how this data is used and managed must be

well understood.

The source of data, how it is shared or

integrated with the new site, and how said

data fits within the underlying Magento data

models is essential. Understanding how the

data fits within Magento’s various data models

is also a key driver for the scope of custom

software development effort that will be

required.

Lastly, all the processes and scripts required

to convert data to the new site need to be

identified and developed to ensure data

integrity and parity on the existing site. These

scripts are used to convert the data from the

old site to the new site and may be reused to

convert data for test phases and the final go-

live site cutover.

The bottom line, the technical team building

the new eCommerce site must understand the

data and all its nuances which make-up your

eCommerce DNA.

Ensure Your Systems Integrator Fully Understands Your Data

The bottom line, the

technical team building the

new eCommerce site must

understand the data and all

its nuances which make-up

your eCommerce DNA.


As a general rule in software development,

having more source code means more code to

maintain and support.

When developing a new eCommerce site

on Magento Commerce, you must carefully

evaluate all third-party extensions. For

example, it makes no sense to add an

extension with 500 lines of code to the

checkout versus achieving the same purpose

by implementing 10 lines of custom code.

Far too often we see eCommerce sites

bloated with extension code which can lead to

maintenance headaches down the road.

Likewise, when migrating or porting code

from an old site to a new site to achieve

functional parity, you must take care each

module is properly implemented in the new

site’s architecture and data models. You

should attempt to minimize the number of

modules you create. Each new system in

the architecture means more integration

points, points to monitor for failures, points to

optimize for performance, added QA testing,

and likely higher total cost of ownership.

Through the detailed requirements discovery

process and analysis previously mentioned, all

the external systems, APIs, and data sharing

points must be identified and well understood.

You should also have extensive knowledge of

how these systems and their interfaces will

work together with Magento Commerce.

You must also carefully evaluate any general-

purpose middleware bridge and connector

solutions you may use to integrate third-party

systems with Magento Commerce. They may

promise a faster-to-market development

life cycle, but tradeoffs may include poor

performance or other limitations to scale.

Sometimes existing systems used by the

old eCommerce site may be repurposed to

accommodate the new Magento Commerce

site. This can include taking pieces of your old

site or other legacy systems and integrating

them with Magento Commerce to establish

integration points for managing orders,

products, customers, data feeds, or other

external systems.

Right-Size the Code Base and the System Architecture

Be smart when adding extensions and middleware - more code and more components

in the architecture may lead to more headaches and higher support costs.


Developing and testing custom software for

your new Magento Commerce site will be one

of the costliest and most time-consuming

aspects of your project. In Magento

Commerce, all new features you need are

added either by a third-party extension or by

creating a custom software extension. Your

site’s custom software development areas will

be determined from the following:

› The gap analysis from the

requirements discovery.

› Full understanding of the site’s data

and business rules and how these fit

within Magento core.

› Identify custom features from the

existing site and how they will be

replicated in Magento Commerce.

› How and where in Magento Commerce

will data, messaging, and functionality

from third-party systems be

integrated?

The good news is Magento Commerce

provides a robust software framework which

allows software engineers to extend the

platform specifically to each business’s needs.

For each system area requiring custom

software development efforts, it is a key best

practice to further define your business and

technical requirements, how and where the

customization will fit within the Magento

platform, and what elements of Magento will

be extended.

When third-party elements are involved,

it is important to identify if a pre-existing

extension will be used or whether custom

web service APIs or other data sharing

mechanisms will be used and how.

For areas involving messaging and state-

machine behavior with external systems, you

should use tools such as message sequence

charts to illustrate system interaction and

message flows to document the required

system behavior, timings, and dependencies.

Rigorously Identify and Define Where Custom Software is Required

Most of your project cost will be

in meeting custom requirements.

Make good decisions to get it right

and mitigate risks.


As previously noted, replacing an existing

eCommerce platform with a new one is

challenging. Some businesses find it very

difficult to know when the new site is ready

to go live. For very large systems, testing

can last a significantly long time, teams can

get frustrated, and costs rise for everyone

involved. A well-defined user acceptance

testing plan can provide clarity to all your

stakeholders, preventing a costly and

protracted testing phase.

We suggest developing your user acceptance

testing plans, test cases, and go-live criteria

long before testing is scheduled to begin.

Work closely with stakeholders – including

those involved with third-party systems which

will integrate with Magento Commerce.

Crafting a plan which works for everyone is

especially important if your existing site is

highly custom.

You should also clearly communicate pre-

deployment, deployment, and rollback plans

with all your stakeholders, rehearsing them at

least once.

To mitigate risks in replacing too much of an

existing system, consider a development and

deployment plan where significant elements

of the new eCommerce system are tested and

delivered incrementally in phases.

Carefully Plan User Acceptance Testing and Deployment to Ease Your Go-Live Stress

› Have a well-defined User

Acceptance Testing plan

› Include all stakeholders in

creating your overall test

plan

› Clearly define all

pre-deployment and

deployment tasks - and do

rehearsals.

› Consider incremental

phases to mitigate risks to

your existing systems


Real-World Examples

In this section, we cover how three fast-growing businesses transitioned to Magento Commerce while

still retaining key features and functions from their custom systems. Each case study details which

capabilities were migrated to Magento Commerce.


About REEDS Jewelers

Founded in 1946, REEDS Jewelers of

Wilmington NC is a full-service omnichannel

retailer with an online presence and stores in

18 states. REEDS offers fine jewelry, designer

jewelry, and watches including David Yurman,

Michael Kors, Pandora, Alex & Ani, Tacori,

TAG Heuer, and Rolex. REEDS Jewelers has

worked with Kadro on their eCommerce

solution since 2001.

Primary Objective

Prior to adopting Magento Commerce,

REEDS.com operated on a proprietary

custom eCommerce solution built by Kadro.

Over time, as REEDS Jewelers’ eCommerce

business grew, they required a commercial

eCommerce platform to reduce their

dependency on a proprietary custom solution.

REEDS Jewelers selected Magento Commerce

to build the solution they required. Achieving

functional parity with their existing custom

solution was essential and critical to the

project’s success.

Key Features and Capabilities Migrated to Magento Commerce

› The branding and mobile responsive

web design of the existing site to be

retained and implemented in the new

Magento site’s theme. REEDS’ prior

investments in UI/UX design to be fully

leveraged for the new site.

B2C eCommerce – migration from proprietary

Java J2EE solution to Magento Commerce

Site: REEDS.com

Case Study Summary REEDS Jewelers


› REEDS Jeweler’s product catalog

data model is complex. Key features

were needed to handle multi-faceted

product attributes, fulfillment types,

brand types, dynamic product options

such as engravings, dynamic product

add-ons such as resizing and warranty

plans, and custom configurations.

› All payment methods supported from

custom site including major credit

cards, PayPal, Amazon Pay, Affirm,

Bitcoin, REEDS Gift Card, and REEDS

private label credit card.

› Product search and recommendations

using Reflektion site search solution.

› Order Management System for

managing the entire order workflow,

editing orders, and taking phone-

assisted orders.

› Integration with back-office IBM

AS/400 ERP system and POS system

including store-level inventory,

product pricing, and promotions, and

EDI for drop-shippers.

› Ability for sales associates in retail

stores to place online orders for

customers in-store.

› Centralized warehouse fulfillment, in-

store fulfillment, and store associate

facilitated sales/fulfillment.

› Product and content update triggers to

Akamai CDN.

› Support for product education content

and glossary terms for jewelry and

watches integrated dynamically with

product detail pages to guide the

buying decision.

Key Changes to the Site Resulting from the Magento Commerce Project

› The final system architecture

used a strategy to evolve the

order management and product

management features of their prior

custom solution into a separate

order management system (OMS)

and product integration management

(PIM) solution. The custom OMS/PIM

was then integrated with Magento

Commerce, leveraging all pre-existing

back-office integrations and achieving

functional parity with how managing

products, orders, and customers are

performed. This significantly reduced

total cost and overall project risk.

› To achieve site performance

requirements for page-load of

dynamic category pages and layered

navigation on REEDS.com, Kadro

worked with Reflektion to fully

integrate their product catalog search,

preview search, and category pages.

› A new credit card payment gateway

service was integrated to improve PCI-

compliance.


› Functional parity with the features, functionality, data, and UI/UX of the highly custom

site was achieved with the Magento Commerce implementation.

› Not all technology had to be re-written or replaced. The new system architecture

leveraged many existing components by re-engineering them into separate OMS and

PIM components.

System Architecture

The Results


About LCI

LCI is an NIB-affiliated, not-for-profit

corporation providing products and services

to the US Government. Operating under

the auspices of the AbilityOne program, LCI

has grown and diversified for over 80 years

to become one of the largest employers of

people who are blind or visually impaired in

the United States.

LCI operates multiple distribution centers,

eCommerce websites, retail stores, and

manufacturing facilities within the United

States. Through their three eCommerce

websites, they sell office supplies, office

equipment, furniture, industrial supplies,

and tactical assault gear to government and

military buyers.

Primary Objectives

› Move all LCI eCommerce sites from a

custom ASP/.Net implementation to

Magento Commerce with

Microsoft Dynamics AX.

› Upgrade the Microsoft Dynamics AX

system.

› Allow B2B customers to see all their

orders online.

› Streamline the administration of

multiple websites.

B2B eCommerce – migration from custom

ASP/.Net solution to Magento Commerce

Sites: www.buylci.com,

www.lcidistribution.com,

www.tacticalassaultgearstore.com

Case Study Summary LCI



› Integration with Microsoft Dynamics

AX for all product feeds, category

feeds, inventory, pricing, orders,

shipping, and fulfillment. This includes

products and categories sourced by a

third-party distributor and fulfillment

partners.

› LCI’s existing branding and graphical

design were to be maintained for

the new site. Kadro used Magento’s

built-in mobile responsive web theme,

Luma, to ensure the site leveraged

all built-in Magento templates and

achieved branding and graphic design

consistency with existing sites.

› Cancels, Returns, and Exchanges are

handled within Microsoft Dynamics AX

and required integration with Magento

Commerce for importing return

orders.

› Tiered table-based shipping rates

and carrier-based shipping rates

– depending on specific business

rules – were required for the Magento

Commerce site.

› Specific business rules for two-

tier and three-tier purchase order

flow must be applied to Magento

Commerce’s B2B workflow process.

› Some products are only available

to purchase by specific customer

groups. A single category will contain

restricted and unrestricted products.

› Customers on a subset of the websites

purchase via a contractual price

book. The rules Magento uses to give

customers the lowest price had to be

overwritten to support specific pricing

by customer group.

› Microsoft Dynamics eCommerce

pricing engine supported real-time

lookup of three-tier pricing tier (base

+ price book + contract pricing) which

needed to be converted to the two-tier

model supported by Magento (base +

customer group).

› EDI orders and phone assisted orders

processed through Microsoft Dynamics

AX are fed to Magento Commerce

so customers can have a complete

omnichannel experience for reviewing

order status and invoice history.

› Multi-site support from Magento

Commerce enables LCI to operate and

manage all three eCommerce sites

under one administrative control and

hosting environment.


System Architecture

› LCI, Kadro, and LCI’s integration

partner for Microsoft Dynamics

worked together to achieve the

objectives of the project. The risks

and challenges to the project

were significant, considering

both the eCommerce system and

supporting ERP system were

being changed in tandem.

› Leveraging Magento

Commerce’s B2B feature set

was key to meeting the project’s

requirements.

› All features and functionality that

LCI relied on with their custom

ASP/.Net sites were preserved or

replaced with functionality in their

new Magento Commerce site.

The Results


About National Wholesale

Established in 1952, National Wholesale

is a family-owned and operated business

specializing in women’s clothing and fashion

accessories. They operate a traditional mail-

order catalog and an online business.

Primary Objectives

Having migrated their eCommerce site from a

home-grown solution to Magento Commerce

1 back in 2016, National Wholesale set the

following objectives for their move to Magento

Commerce 2:

› The move to Magento Commerce 1

didn’t achieve functional parity to

their home-grown site. Therefore,

they needed to recover functionality

previously lost.

› The move from Magento Commerce

1 to Magento Commerce 2 is a

platform replacement because of the

fundamental differences between both

platforms code architecture. All prior

Magento Commerce 1 customizations,

including the IBM AS/400 back-office

integration, had to be migrated to

Magento Commerce 2.

› National Wholesale needed a fully

managed hosted solution with

Magento Commerce cloud to improve

uptime and site performance.


› Reorganization of the product data

attributes allowed National Wholesale

to restore previously lost functionality

of configurable products containing

combinations of clearance and

full retail simples under a single

B2C eCommerce – migration from Magento 1

to Magento Commerce Cloud

Site: www.shopnational.com

Case Study National Wholesale


configurable style. It also permitted

users to place individual sizes within

a style/color on clearance without

selecting the entire style/color

combination.

› Replaced the existing product

integration which used a custom PIM

and third-party Magento extension to

completely replace the product catalog

daily. The original Magento Commerce

1 implementation caused daily system

downtime, excessive indexing, and was

error-prone.

› Enhanced the inventory process

to increase its frequency and send

additional relevant data which was

previously lost in the migration

to Magento Commerce 1. The old

process could not handle providing

customers with expected ship dates

on back-ordered products and was

executed infrequently as it caused a

full system re-index. The new design

delivers rapid inventory updates with

no system downtime, improving the

customer experience by providing

expected ship date information

through the cart.

› The orders feed was previously

implemented with a third-party

extension and was missing key

elements which would have required

additional customization. In lieu of

a rewrite of an extension, the order

export was custom-written to match

the previous output with the omitted

data now included.

› The pricing feed was previously

implemented with a third-party

extension and did not support

discounting down to specific

size/color/style. The extension

was replaced with a custom

implementation that accepted the

same format but correctly handled the

pricing variations.

› A new product onboarding process

was created in Magento Commerce to

eliminate errors with launching new

products while providing an overview

of products being prepared for the

website.

› National Wholesale wanted to

maintain their existing custom

connector for managing product,

inventory, pricing, orders, and

fulfillment in selling their products on

the Amazon marketplace.

› Magento Commerce customizations

were used to dramatically improve

swatch performance on category

pages while supporting quantity

discounts across varied priced simple

products under a single configurable.

› Product search and recommendations

were improved in utilizing the

Reflektion search solution.

› A new credit card payment gateway

was integrated for improved PCI-

compliant solution.


System Architecture

› The Magento Commerce implementation achieved functional parity with the features,

functionality, data, and UI/UX of the Magento 1 site, as well as bringing forward

custom features previously missed when migrating from their former custom

solution.

› All integration points with the IBM AS/400 back-office successfully implemented.

› Magento’s cloud solution is used for improved site reliability and performance.

› Shopnational.com was named top Women’s Fashion (single

brand) eCommerce website by Newsweek for the Newsweek

2020 Best Online Shops.

The Results


Conclusion and Key Takeaways

› Perform a detailed discovery and analysis of business and technical requirements from all

stakeholders.

› Assemble a software engineering team that fully understands your site’s requirements, the data

that represents all aspects of your site, and all the business rules needed to make it run your

business and serve your customers.

› Make sure you think through how to leverage, reuse, migrate from, or integrate with the custom

systems you already have in place.

› Rigorously identify and define the custom software required for your complete solution.

› Carefully plan user acceptance testing, criteria for cut-over, and your rehearsed deployment

plan to eliminate go-live stress and anxiety.

Remember, Magento Commerce is more than an eCommerce platform. It is a robust software

framework for building custom solutions to meet your specific needs and ensuring all the features and

functionality you need are achievable.

Learn More

To learn more about upgrading to Magento Commerce, please visit www.magento.com.

Moving a high-performing eCommerce site to a new digital commerce

platform is a considerable challenge. These best practices can help you

plan and execute a smooth transition from your existing platform to

Magento Commerce:


About Kadro

Founded in 2001 in Raleigh, N.C., Kadro is a software engineering firm that delivers B2C and B2B

eCommerce solutions on Magento Commerce. Kadro provides enterprise-class software development

and integration services to develop eCommerce sites for retailers, distributors and wholesalers across

many industries and markets. Learn more at www.kadro.com.

Follow Us on Social Media

linkedin LinkedIn kadro-solutions

twitter Twitter @kadro

instagram Instagram @kadroinc

facebook Facebook KadroSolutions

Contact

Ariel Mordetsky

Vice President of Revenue

(877) 435-3453

[email protected]


About Magento Commerce

Magento Commerce, part of Adobe Experience Cloud, is the leading commerce solution for merchants

and brands across B2C and B2B industries and was recently named a leader in the 2020 Gartner

Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce. Magento Commerce boasts a strong portfolio of cloud-based

omnichannel solutions that empower merchants to successfully integrate digital and physical shopping

experiences.

Magento is the #1 provider to the Internet Retailer Top 1000, the B2B 300 and the Top 500 Guides for

Europe and Latin America. Magento is supported by a vast global network of solution and technology

partners, a highly active global developer community and the largest eCommerce marketplace for

extensions available for download on the Magento Marketplace. More information can be found

at Magento.com.

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