A seamless migration to Adobe Commerce Cloud

Following its acquisition by JJ Roofing Supplies, Sterlingbuild, a multi-million turnover business, faced the immediate challenge of modernising its existing website. Launched in 2014, the legacy, bespoke .NET platform had become increasingly unstable and difficult to manage. Years of inconsistent in-house developer contributions had resulted in a disorganised backend with thousands of tables and a complex product catalogue.

This lack of internal understanding and control over the site’s intricacies meant that even routine management and updates were a significant hurdle.

“The old website was a challenge: with multiple in-house web developers coming and going, regulating and quantifying the quality of backend work became very difficult and unstable.”

David Mayo, E-commerce Manager, Sterlingbuild

The primary challenge was to migrate Sterlingbuild’s extensive and complex product catalogue (40,000 SKUs with intricate parent–child relationships) onto JJ Roofing Supplies’ existing Adobe Commerce Cloud instance. This migration needed to happen without disrupting the live JJ Roofing Supplies environment, while maintaining data integrity and ensuring distinct brand experiences for both businesses. Crucial integrations with existing payment gateways, marketing email platforms and the ERP system were also required.

Another key objective was to make Sterlingbuild’s internal team more self-sufficient in managing their e-commerce operations, moving away from relying on external developers for every task.

“Upgrading our 10-year-old website to an off-the-shelf platform, Adobe Commerce, was essential. This would finally allow us to influence our design and products through its established framework.”

David Mayo

objectsource implemented a comprehensive data transformation and migration strategy, carefully planning the import of all 40,000 SKUs and their complex relationships into Adobe Commerce. This involved careful export and import to the live database, protecting JJ Roofing Supplies’ existing data.

The front end of the Sterlingbuild site was completely redesigned and deployed as a separate site within the existing Adobe Commerce Cloud instance, with no impact on the live JJ Roofing Supplies site. objectsource integrated Sterlingbuild’s existing payment systems and marketing platforms, and built an API integration with its ERP system for accurate data flow on stock updates, new products, pricing and orders, while maintaining strict data segregation between the two businesses.

“The relaxed way the objectsource team operates is excellent. We treated them as extended staff members, communicating openly via Slack, and they responded quickly, keeping things moving forward. This adaptability built immense confidence and reassurance.”

David Mayo

The result is two distinct, high-performance websites operating within a single Adobe Commerce Cloud instance, with significant cost efficiencies from shared infrastructure and consolidated development resources. The new platform’s flexible payment options and improved stability are already benefiting customers, and a planned B2B account area will add even more self-service.

“Having two websites managed by the same team, operating with the same backend, is a huge benefit. We can test and learn on one site, and if it’s successful, we can quickly implement the same strategy on the JJ Roofing Supplies site.”

David Mayo