A replatforming that stalled halfway
Navabi ran online stores for Germany, the Netherlands, France and Spain, plus an English-language store. The business had been built on a custom platform, and Navabi had hired an agency to move it to Magento.
When we met Navabi in 2020, the storefront was live on Magento, while the operation behind it still ran on the old platform. The new shop was slow, and the planned work had yet to start.
Navabi had the agency complete the most urgent fixes under its warranty and then brought us in. The brief had two parts: finish the move, and give the business a setup it could run without depending on a single supplier.
Working out what was actually needed
We began with an audit of what had been delivered so far against what the business required. It showed that finishing the move depended on three things: a new home for the work still handled by the old system, a Magento setup that carried over its data model, and product information that described each item the same way in all five stores. The answer was to fix and continue: the storefront stayed on Magento, and the rest of the back office would follow in stages.
That system posed the biggest challenge, because it had become the center of the operation. Customer service and ticketing, order handling, picking lists, and invoicing all ran through it.
Before any of that work could move, we needed a complete account of what the system did. We built it from two sources: conversations with the people at Navabi who handled each task, and our developers tracing the same tasks through the code. Every task was written down as a specification before it was rebuilt, and together these documents became the roadmap for the replatforming.
Taking the project over
For the handover, we assembled a dedicated team, including a QA tester who stayed on the account for more than a year. The team worked closely with Navabi's project manager and a marketing colleague, and the collaboration went well.
As the move progressed, Navabi's confidence in us grew. Once the replatforming was complete, the engagement extended to new marketing features.
What we built
Customer support moved to Freshdesk, and the other tasks went into Magento or into separate software as their specifications were completed. The old system was gradually retired as its last tasks moved out.
During the Magento migration, we also aligned product categories and attributes across the markets.
The outcome for Navabi
By the end of the project, the processes behind Navabi's stores were documented and rebuilt. The shop also responded faster, with pages ready to use in 47.4% less time, and monthly hosting costs were projected to fall by 34%.
"When features are added over the years, a system grows like an onion, one layer on top of another. It keeps working the way the business worked five or ten years ago, instead of how it wants to work now. What we delivered was a clean slate: a way of working built around what Navabi needed."
Sander Mangel, solutions architect, Open Commerce
Facing the same problem? If a move to a new platform has stopped partway and the old system still runs much of your operation, that system is worth mapping before the next part moves. Book a conversation with us
