Why a Successful B2B Migration Requires More Than Just a New Platform

After decades in which B2B buyers hadn’t demanded great online buying experiences, the rise in Millennial and Gen Z decision makers has transformed digital commerce into a significant revenue driver for B2B organizations—and now some of the world’s most established companies are searching for ways to improve their online buying platforms.

At Shopify, we’ve helped companies like Simon Pearce reimagine the way they serve B2B buyers and sellers with faster and more unified commerce experiences. But for every success story, I’ve heard a handful of others about companies that were disappointed with the results they saw (or didn’t) from their digital transformations. In almost all of those cases, the businesses were quick to blame their software providers first for overpromising and underdelivering.

This misconception is permeating the market: that a new platform will magically solve decades of technical and process debt businesses collect along the way. This belief has led to countless failed migrations and millions in wasted investment. While choosing the right platform is certainly the first step toward success, achieving meaningful results requires retailers to critically evaluate—and often fundamentally change—how they operate. This willingness to transform is precisely what a surprising number of businesses have been slow to embrace.

Legacy processes and the burden of the past

Long-established B2B businesses carry a staggering burden of technical debt and outdated processes. Building these legacy systems was the right choice at the time because they solved critical business challenges at a time when no better options existed. But as digital commerce evolved, teams found themselves with no option but to reactively patch these systems, creating a tapestry of functionality never designed for today's digital-first world. The result was a complex web of dependencies that dictates how businesses operate today—and actively works against the agility modern commerce demands.

Before switching to Shopify, Allied Medical found that its B2B operations were at the mercy of inflexible and outdated software. With no invoice history or a streamlined reordering process, Allied Medical’s customers faced a clunky online purchasing journey. A simple typing mistake led to error pages and abandoned searches and carts.

“Our previous ecommerce solution was outdated and difficult to manage. We had to manually add all B2B accounts and contacts, which caused errors and created inefficiencies. Clients were often forgetting passwords or shared logins, which created frustration and additional work for our customer care team.”

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After switching to Shopify, Allied Medical saw a 14% increase in transactions across B2B and DTC channels. While our platform undoubtedly enabled this business growth, Allied Medical’s openness to changing its backend infrastructure ultimately got this transformation over the finish line.

“B2B on Shopify has allowed us to introduce features that greatly improved the experience of our wholesale customers, such as better search functionality, access to unique offers, and the ability to access history from different user accounts within the same company. This consolidated view allows for a faster repurchasing process.”

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No ecommerce platform is a silver bullet solution

When merchants migrate to Shopify, they often arrive with the expectation that simply moving their existing operations to a new platform will eliminate their technical debt and streamline their processes. This is fundamentally misguided.

Sure, there are immediate benefits—no more managing on-premises servers or worrying about infrastructure scaling. But if you're simply recreating your existing complexity on a new foundation, you're missing the point entirely.

In my role at Shopify, I’ve seen several examples where B2B retailers have successfully modernized their operations by switching to Shopify and evaluating gaps in their processes. We’ve seen companies like Snyder Performance Engineering (SPE) increase average customer spend by 40%.

Here are just a couple ways SPE overhauled its B2B operations after migrating to Shopify:

• They integrated Quickbooks and ShipStation with Shopify to sync real-time inventory data and automate order fulfillment for their warehouse team.
• They launched a self-service portal that allows wholesale customers to assemble bulk orders and check out at their own convenience

"My team doesn't have to wait for an order to get manually plugged in. By the time somebody places an order, it can literally be packed and shipped within a couple minutes. That's big in wholesale.”

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There's only so much improvement you can get from changing platforms if you're unwilling to change processes. The platform isn't the limitation—your willingness to evolve is.

Breaking free from legacy thinking

The biggest obstacle to a successful migration isn’t technical—it’s psychological. Many business processes exist only because old platforms forced them into being. When it’s time to migrate, B2B leaders often feel compelled to recreate these relics instead of reimagining what’s possible. Migration isn’t just a technical project. It’s a chance to rethink how your business works. As the examples in this article show, you can’t unlock the full value of a modern platform unless you’re willing to leave legacy thinking behind.

If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. In 2019, Gartner analysts Mike Lowndes and Sandy Shen published research on developing a digital commerce strategy. Their two key takeaways are as relevant now as they were then:

• Organizations often treat digital commerce as a one-time project, which leaves them with an application architecture misaligned with business goals—and a platform unable to adapt to changing market conditions.
• Organizations tend to blame their technology platforms when digital commerce fails to meet expectations, without realizing that customer experience needs continuous optimization to improve performance and stay competitive.

This leads to a crucial question I ask in every migration planning session: "What exactly are you simplifying here?" If the answer is "nothing," you're setting yourself up for disappointment.

Migration is your opportunity for a clean slate

The most successful migrations happen when merchants approach them as an opportunity to fundamentally rethink their operations. This doesn't mean abandoning everything that works—it means critically evaluating what should stay and what should go.

Before discussing migration planning or tactics with a customer, I like to start the conversation with a simple thought experiment: If you were launching your business today with no legacy constraints, how would you design your processes? The gap between that ideal state and your current operations represents your opportunity for transformation.

Using Shopify's native capabilities often eliminates the need for custom solutions that were previously considered essential. One of my favorite examples of this is Filtrous, who migrated to Shopify from BigCommerce after a difficult year of development that ultimately never shipped. After switching to Shopify, Filtrous was able to quickly configure customer-specific catalogs, custom discounts, and payment options. Filtrous also took advantage of core features like Shopify Flow and vaulted credit cards, which helped them streamline back office operations and launch their B2B storefront quickly. Yin Fu, Director of Ecommerce at Filtrous, says the company’s organic conversion rate has jumped a whopping 27% since migrating to Shopify.

“Thanks to an exceptional self-serve experience and features like Shopify Flow, the team can spend more of its time selling.”

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Start with a minimum viable product, then iterate

Rather than attempting to replicate everything perfectly from day one, focus on launching a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) that handles your core business requirements. Then iterate and optimize over time.

Shopify's architecture makes this approach particularly effective and faster to accomplish. You can deploy your core experience quickly, then gradually integrate additional functionality as you validate its importance. We saw this play out when TileCloud switched to Shopify in 2020. TileCloud launched several expansion stores, including a dedicated B2B online store for its wholesale customers. Over time, the TileCloud team wrote custom code to streamline its B2B checkout process and eventually launched a feature that allows shoppers to apply multiple automatic discounts at checkout.

“Shopify was like an Excel spreadsheet; we didn’t realize how much it could do until we started exploring its features. And with a combination of clearer access to our numbers and support of our merchant success manager, we have been able to make a series of changes, elevating our online experience for both retail and trade customers.”

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This phased approach reduces risk, accelerates time-to-value, and creates space for you to reconsider which legacy processes truly deserve to be carried forward.

The path to modern B2B commerce

The most transformative B2B migrations I've witnessed share a common trait: the merchants approached them as business transformations first and technical projects second. They used the migration as a catalyst to challenge assumptions, eliminate inefficiencies, and reimagine their customer experience.

The path to modern B2B commerce isn't about finding a magical platform that accommodates all your legacy processes. It's about having the courage to question those processes and the vision to build something better. Your platform migration can be the foundation for genuine business transformation—if you're willing to let go of "the way we've always done things" and embrace the possibilities of the future.