Time-to-market (or time-to-revenue, as we sometimes call it) is incredibly important for any digital transformation project or ecommerce site migration process.
A short time-to-market ensures that businesses quickly get what they need to grow further, regardless if that’s superior ecommerce infrastructure, omnichannel capabilities or marketplace integrations. It also minimizes operational disruption and allows internal teams to focus more on ecommerce management instead of technical tweaks, leaving the tech part of it to the new platform-provider. And, of course, it provides shoppers with an elevated customer experience sooner rather than later, meaning they are incentivized to shop more.
All in all, migrating to a new ecommerce platform in a short period of time has all the potential to boost a retailer’s revenue and to unburden employees, which is the reason why platform-providers have the responsibility to make the migration process as smooth and as quick as possible. Also, because brands and retailers essentially pay for software well in advance of financial gains, so the sooner an ecommerce platform proves its worth to its customers and brings in money, the better.
How does VTEX approach ecommerce site migrations?
Recognizing all considerations above, VTEX takes time-to-market seriously. Despite serving numerous premium brands and retailers — 2,500 active online stores across 32 countries, to be precise — our average time of implementation is just 109 days, a little more than three months.
This is achieved through a combination of a vast ecosystem of implementation partners, close customer support from teams like Professional Services (i.e. a squad of solution experts) and a cloud-native architecture that does wonders in terms of quick set up and total cost of ownership (TCO).
Below, you can find a few of our ecommerce replatforming success stories covering a mix of industries and business models.
Ecommerce site migrations by industry
Electronics
In a sector that has just recently started to embrace digital transformation and go direct-to-consumer, VTEX is lucky to have supported pioneers like Motorola and to have helped them grow in the long term.
In 2015, Sony decided to go ahead with VTEX as a technological partner for upgrading its Latin American ecommerce operations. The consumer electronics giant realized a replatforming process was imperative in order to continue serving customers’ growing needs, an idea amplified by plans for a regional expansion, but the switch from Oracle ATG to VTEX needed to be quick. Therefore, five stores were migrated across 90 days, with two new ones built in 40 days.
Another great performance is portrayed by Panasonic Brazil, which moved its direct-to-consumer channel to VTEX in 2018 in just 30 days from Rakuten Shopping Solution. The collaboration has been marked by continuous improvements and now the company benefits from a low-development platform in the shape of VTEX IO and takes advantage of great features like a shareable cart.
Fashion
An industry that was often deemed easy to digitalize is fashion. With prospects of omnichannel and marketplace, however, fashion ecommerce is currently proving trickier to manage than a few years ago. VTEX is nonetheless able to keep up with new technological demands and it has the stories to prove it.
Following an MVP mindset, fashion retailer Iorane successfully replatformed in five days, perhaps our greatest record yet. VTEX’s open-APIs architecture enabled the Brazilian brand to import already existing product catalogs and customer databases. Needless to say that it was successful: after the migration, the conversion rate increased by 180%.
Next, we have Joy, a boutique fashion brand from the UK which wanted to unshackle itself from technology development, so it chose to move to VTEX. It did so in three months and it has never looked back since, as it is now seeing profound growth and changes for the better, such as conversion rate increases and mobile-first usage.
For Grupo Soma, one of Brazil’s largest fashion conglomerates, migrating to VTEX made strategic sense, since VTEX is a 3-in-1 technological solution. The migration was kicked off in January 2018 and, in just two months, the first ecommerce website was good to go. In total, seven ecommerce websites belonging to different brands were live on VTEX by Black Friday, with 200 brick-and-mortar stores fully-integrated into the omnichannel operation.
Sports & Fitness
A sister industry to fashion, sports & fitness has been undergoing phenomenal growth lately thanks to a greater attention devoted to physical and mental wellbeing. Thus, state-of-the-art ecommerce capabilities have been required to conveniently equip shoppers with sporting goods.
Under Armour Brazil migrated to VTEX as a first step in a region-wide standardization of ecommerce platforms. The migration took less than 90 days, just in time for Black Friday 2020, and didn’t imply any UI changes, as the American brand wanted to gauge VTEX’s pure migration effect. VTEX did not disappoint: conversion rates jumped by 35% YoY in the big retail event.
Furthermore, Decathlon Brazil migrated to VTEX in just four months from a local platform-provider. By doing so, it drastically reduced costs associated with ecommerce software management and, nowadays, it’s the company’s most successful ecommerce unit in the world.
Al’s Sporting Goods over in the US replatformed to VTEX between March and August 2019, scoring an implementation time below five months. The retailer sought an ecommerce platform that can uphold its vast inventory whilst delivering a great customer experience. VTEX was the logical fit.
Pharma
The pharmaceutical industry is incredibly hard to navigate on digital terrain, since it deals with subscriptions and medical approvals. Still, the right platform can handle anything.
Pague Menos, a big Brazilian drugstore chain, desired its new ecommerce operations with VTEX to be up-and-running for Black Friday 2018. Therefore, the migration had to happen in three months — and it did, with absolutely no negative impact upon the ecommerce channel.
Another great story is Farmacity. A few years ago, the pharma chain with more than 300 stores in Argentina migrated to VTEX in three months. The replatforming experience was “perfect”, according to the customer, and revenue was also quick to ramp up, with transactions increasing by more than 35% in the first month since the go-live.
Grocery
Grocery, perhaps the most complex sector to digitalize successfully, right on par with the pharmaceutical industry, is coincidentally where VTEX excels at.
Back in 2018, DIA Argentina, a grocery chain with more than 900 physical stores in the Latin American country, went live with VTEX less than three months after choosing to replatform to us. Now, it can also quickly plug-in its stores to act as mini-fulfilment centers and pick-up points. During the pandemic, it managed to integrate 352 locations in just 3.5 months, setting a robust foundation for its omnichannel strategy.
Likewise, Walmart Argentina migrated from Microsoft Commerce Server in 2015 and gained, after a six-month frictionless migration process, the perfect framework for grocery omnichannel, on top of a rapid reduction in TCO.
A special mention goes to the migration of Carrefour Brazil from SAP Hybris to VTEX, which, despite lasting longer than our average, marked our most complex migration project ever. In just 10 months, we achieved the migration of 13 million customer data and 7 million SKUs for the giant’s ecommerce and marketplace channels, the latter of which includes more than 3000 third-party sellers.
Migrating your ecommerce lightning fast
All these replatforming stories go to show that an ecommerce site migration does not have to be snail-slow. It can be quick, smooth and invigorating and exactly what your business needs when you have the right partner by your side. If a switch is indeed in order, no matter what platform you choose for your ecommerce business, remember that speed of implementation is important.
