Migration and 4-Year-Long Support of a Magento Multistore

Summary

For 4+ years, ScienceSoft has been a reliable Magento support team to Dot It Restaurant Fulfillment, a restaurant supplier for non-food categories, and evolved the company’s ecommerce multistore from 40 to 80+ web stores tailored to restaurant brands of long-standing B2B clients.

About the Client

Dot It Restaurant Fulfillment sells branded merchandise, food safety supplies, labels, first aid kits, and other restaurant supplies to medium-to-large restaurant chains. To be able to create and offer branded product lines, the company once chose an ecommerce multistore model and now launches separate child storefronts for regular clients who conveniently reorder branded supplies. Dot It uses Magento as their ecommerce platform as it has in-built multistore functionality.

Dot It used to work with an in-house Magento developer but 4 years ago decided to outsource managed Magento support. That decision allowed them to fix issues and evolve their ecommerce solution much faster and ensure stable quality. As ScienceSoft supports a continuous cooperation model, we offered our services and were chosen for our deep Magento competence.

How We Evolved the Client’s Ecommerce Solution

During the first year of cooperation, ScienceSoft’s team addressed the most critical issues with website performance, data security, development and testing workflows, technical SEO as well as started improving website design and user experience.

Soon, the end of Magento 1 approached, and our team was tasked to plan the migration of the Client’s multistore to Magento 2. Due to a significant difference in architecture and code implementation in Magento 1 and 2, the migration process lasted one year and demanded from us to re-code all custom modules and re-install all commercial modules to be compliant with Magento 2 while fully preserving the functional logic. Our team got through the migration process smoothly, without any impact on website performance or functioning. Timely migration ensured access to all functional advances and security patches released for Magento 2.

Upon the migration, ScienceSoft’s team built new functions and features for the Client’s web store:

• A subscription service for repeat scheduled delivery.
• Credit hold to postpone scheduled delivery if the payment is overdue.
• Automated invoice delivery into clients’ accounts.
• EDI integration for e-invoicing.
• Homepage banner scheduler to rotate banner promotions.
• An automated order approval workflow.
• A live chat.

When a need came up, our team created and launched new storefronts for Dot It’s new clients.

In the course of work, the core team assigned for the cooperation consisted of a project manager and several Magento developers, the number of which scaled up and down depending on the workload. Over a year ago, our .Net developers joined to set up the integration between the Magento web store and the Client’s ERP system and enable:

• Automatic uploading of shipping tracking numbers and invoices from the ERP to clients’ accounts on the website.
• Visibility into real-time inventory levels from the ERP and timely out-of-stock notifications on the website.

Key Outcomes for the Client

The 4-year-long cooperation has resulted in:

• The growth of the Dot It multistore from 40 to 80+ branded web stores.
• Trouble-free migration to Magento 2.
• A more robust ecommerce solution that evolves in line with the Client’s business plans.
• Time-saving workflow automation due to Magento-ERP integration.