Implementation

How long does a full Adobe Commerce + NetSuite integration actually take? And I mean realistically, not the number on your sales deck.

Six to seven months. That's not a best-case scenario—it's the timeline we consistently achieve when projects are properly scoped and stakeholders remain engaged.

Here's the typical breakdown:

• 4 weeks: Structured discovery and solution design
• ~5 months: Complete build and integration
• ~1 month: User acceptance testing and go-live readiness

For comparison, many agencies quote 18-24 months for the same scope. The difference isn't that we cut corners. It's process discipline and team structure.

Most agencies try to solve complexity by adding more people. More people means slower decisions, more handoffs, longer sign-offs, and project drag.

We take the opposite approach: a small, senior, highly empowered team—typically around seven core experts for a full build. Each leader has real decision authority in their domain. That keeps momentum high and eliminates bottlenecks.

For the timeline to hold, three conditions must be true:

1. Key stakeholders remain available for timely decisions and feedback
2. Communication stays clear, responsive, and consistent
3. Discovery fully defines scope before development begins

When new feature requests arise during the build (and they always do), we don't let them derail launch. We protect the original go-live timeline and move non-critical additions into Phase Two, scheduled after launch. That's how we prevent the 18-month death spiral that plagues this industry.

How much of our team's time does this require? We don't have a dedicated IT department sitting around waiting for this project.

Replatforming requires focused involvement—but only during specific, well-defined windows, not forever.

Discovery phase (3-6 weeks): This is the most time-intensive period. Expect two structured calls per week, about two hours each, focused on specific business or technical topics. Key leadership attention is around 50% during this phase—because getting clarity here prevents wasted time and money later.

Build phase (~5 months): The lift drops significantly. You'll typically have one 60-minute weekly progress call plus targeted tasks like catalog cleanup or data preparation for testing. Predictable, structured, far less disruptive.

UAT (pre-launch): One or two business stakeholders validate workflows before go-live. Focused, practical, time-boxed.

What if your key person gets pulled into a fire drill?

Projects don't stall because one stakeholder becomes temporarily unavailable. We always have multiple workstreams moving in parallel—architecture, integrations, UX, data prep—so work continues in areas that don't require that specific person's input.

We design projects to be resilient to real-world business interruptions—because they always happen. The only meaningful delays occur when a critical requirement is assigned to one leader, has a tight delivery window, and that person becomes unavailable right at the deadline. Even then, the timeline shifts slightly rather than grinding to a halt.

What happens to our existing order data, customer accounts, and purchase history during migration? Can we do this without shutting down operations?

Yes—we migrate without shutting down your business.

Data migration is one of the highest-risk areas in any replatform, which is why we treat it as a core workstream, not an afterthought.

What typically migrates:

• Customer accounts and login credentials
• Order history (so customers can see past purchases)
• Product catalog and categories
• Customer groups and pricing tiers
• Wishlist and saved payment methods (where applicable)

How we handle the cutover:

We run multiple test migrations before go-live to validate data integrity and identify edge cases. The final migration happens during a planned cutover window—typically a few hours to overnight, depending on data volume.

During cutover:

• We freeze order processing briefly (usually overnight or low-traffic window)
• Final data sync runs
• DNS switches to the new platform
• Orders resume on the new system

For businesses that can't tolerate any downtime, we can architect more complex solutions—like running both systems in parallel briefly—but that adds cost and complexity. For most companies, a well-planned overnight cutover is the cleanest approach. The key is preparation. Data mapping and test migrations happen during the build phase, not the week before launch. By go-live, there are no surprises.