Key Ways Modern Commerce Brands Accelerate Digital Transformation

Digital transformation is everywhere, and most of it is not going as smoothly as planned. Gartner reports that 94% of CIOs expect major changes to their digital plans within the next 24 months, while McKinsey estimates that 90% of all organizations are already undergoing some form of transformation.

Despite the momentum, only about a third of digital transformations succeed. Slow timelines, unclear goals, expanding scope, and unexpected technical complexity stall progress and erode value. According to Gartner, 35% of value loss during digital transformation happens during implementation.

However, commerce brands cannot opt out. Modernization is required to stay viable in a competitive, fast-moving market. Done right, digital transformation eliminates technical debt, unlocks agility, improves operational efficiency, and strengthens customer retention. And with careful planning and the right solution, speed is achievable. An independent consulting firm found that platforms like Shopify can implement up to 20% faster than competing solutions.

The real challenge for brands is not whether to transform, but how quickly and successfully it can be done. Accelerating digital transformation means compressing the time it takes to modernize systems, launch new digital experiences, and realize measurable return on investment (ROI).

This article outlines five practical ways enterprise commerce teams can accelerate digital transformation without increasing risk. Learn how to choose scalable technology, unify data and storefronts, and build the capability to continuously iterate on the buyer experience.

Why speed matters in digital transformation 

Digital transformation is common, but that does not make it easy. Many initiatives are slow, complex, and painful to execute. Even when they are labeled successful, they often underperform. Research shows that only 67% of successful digital transformations fully realize the financial benefits they could have achieved.

For commerce brands running on legacy platforms, the cost of delay is both immediate and cumulative. Every month spent waiting means lost revenue, eroded margins, and ground lost to competitors. Buyer expectations continue to rise while market dynamics shift faster each year. According to McKinsey, 67% of B2B buyers are willing to switch providers for a better purchasing experience. Standing still effectively hands that opportunity to the rest of the market.

Speed changes the equation. When transformation is executed quickly and deliberately, it becomes a growth lever rather than a disruption. In ecommerce, focused 90-day transformations are not only possible, they create value that starts at launch. Teams move from paying an inaction tax to generating surplus value as faster time to market, lower operating costs, and productivity gains begin to compound over time.

Five digital transformation accelerators that cut timelines 

In ecommerce, the fastest digital transformations are often the most successful. Leading brands regularly modernize core commerce experiences in as little as 60 to 90 days. But that level of speed is not the result of shortcuts. It comes from disciplined up-front planning paired with technology choices designed to remove friction, not add it.

Rapid transformation requires alignment across strategy, systems, and teams. When the right accelerators are in place, timelines compress without increasing risk or technical debt. The five accelerators below outline how enterprise commerce teams can move faster, launch with confidence, and start capturing value sooner.

1. Move away from legacy tech to modern commerce infrastructure

For many commerce brands, legacy technology is the single biggest drag on digital transformation speed. Custom platforms and heavily modified systems create a cycle of technical debt that compounds over time and quietly taxes the business every day.

If any of the following situations feel familiar, that cycle is likely already in motion in your business:

• Engineering teams spend more time on maintenance, bugs, and support tickets than on new features.
• Simple changes like adding products or updating storefronts take far longer than expected.
• Teams avoid new ideas because the effort or cost to build them feels prohibitive.
• Business decisions are made without a unified view of customer and commerce data.

When these symptoms show up, incremental fixes rarely help. Accelerated digital transformation usually requires a clean break from legacy infrastructure. Not all platforms are built for speed, and many older solutions cannot deliver the balance of usability, scalability, and technical agility modern commerce demands.

Modern, cloud-based commerce platforms are key to rapid transformation. They support faster deployments, automatic scaling, and continuous innovation without the overhead of custom infrastructure management. 

Platforms like Shopify run on a global cloud infrastructure with more than 330 points of presence across more than 125 countries. Shopify can handle hundreds of millions of infrastructure requests per minute during peak events like Black Friday. That foundation speeds initiatives before teams ever start building.

Skullcandy’s 90-day migration away from legacy commerce

As audio accessory retailer Skullcandy grew, their commerce stack became increasingly complex. Custom elements piled up over time, and the system demanded constant care. IT teams focused on monitoring and maintenance instead of delivering new capabilities. Basic improvements stalled. Integrations with enterprise resource planning (ERP), third-party logistics (3PL), and shipping systems were fragile. Peak season brought real concern about outages and failures.

“There were limitations that really throttled creativity. It felt like we had to say no to a lot of things,” said Evin Catlett, global VP of Skullcandy.

With another holiday season approaching, Skullcandy set a clear goal. They gave themselves 90 days to select a platform and partner that could launch quickly and support their ideal customer experience. Speed mattered because they had endured slow migrations before.

“With previous migrations, moving to other platforms took nine months. With Shopify, we migrated in 90 days,” said Jenny Buchar, director of global digital experience at Skullcandy.

Their migration and transformation moved fast:

• Within 30 days, end-to-end test orders were flowing from Shopify into their ERP, NetSuite.
• At 90 days, they launched a new ecommerce experience with integrations and streamlined checkout built largely on out-of-the-box capabilities and apps.
• Two weeks later, their Canada site launched.
• Three weeks after that, their EU and UK sites went live using repeatable systems rather than custom code.

Even after these launches, the value continued to compound. Skullcandy simplified their tech stack, saved millions in technical overhead costs, delivered their most successful holiday sales period ever, and achieved 45% year-over-year revenue growth.

2. Strategically adopt composable commerce

Architecture decisions have an outsize impact on digital transformation speed. The difference between a nine-month replatform and a 90-day launch often comes down to whether teams choose systems that require extensive customization, or a composable approach built for flexibility.

To accelerate transformation, commerce leaders should look for composable commerce solutions that combine speed with scale, including:

• Robust out-of-the-box capabilities that reduce the need for custom development
• A large, well-supported ecosystem of apps and extensions
• Prebuilt integrations for core systems like ERP, customer relationship management (CRM), and 3PL
• Extensible APIs that support customization when required, like headless storefronts

Together, these capabilities allow brands to move quickly without taking on unnecessary technical overhead. Composable commerce shortens implementation timelines, simplifies launches, and creates a foundation for continuous improvement. Instead of building every new capability from scratch, teams assemble what they need, when they need it, and continue optimizing over time.

How Lulu and Georgia adopted composable commerce to streamline their transformation

Luxury home décor brand Lulu and Georgia faced growing limitations on an aging commerce platform. Frequent site crashes disrupted everyday transactions just as the business was preparing to scale. Each performance issue translated directly into lost revenue, and the cost of inaction was rising quickly.

The team knew change was necessary, but speed was a concern. With a catalog of more than 40,000 SKUs, a slow or overly complex migration could introduce new risks and significant costs. By using the composable tools available through Shopify, they were able to move much faster than expected.

Lulu and Georgia adopted an iterative approach. They launched quickly with a focused minimum viable product (MVP), then layered in essential integrations using Shopify’s built-in capabilities and app ecosystem. In many cases, functionality they expected to rebuild already existed or could be added with minimal effort.

“We were amazed at how quickly we could reintegrate the functionality we had on our old platform using Shopify,” said Anis Tayebali, VP of engineering at Lulu and Georgia.

As the business evolved, the team continued adding capabilities their previous platform could not support. Gift cards, returns, and other core features were introduced incrementally, without slowing the business or disrupting customers.

“With this approach, we initially installed essential apps and later added ones for gift cards, returns, and other fundamental needs,” said Anis. “Shopify’s rich ecosystem of apps meant we could quickly integrate various capabilities, which was crucial to our successful migration.” 

3. Automate checkout, payments, and other core workflows

One of the fastest ways to accelerate digital transformation is to look for ways to automate any complex or manual tasks. Checkout, payments, and core commerce workflows are high-impact areas where modern platforms can remove friction immediately.

Legacy systems often rely on heavily customized, multi-step checkout flows and bespoke processes that slow implementation and limit change. Modern commerce platforms replace that complexity with standardized, optimized workflows. A five-step custom checkout can often be consolidated into a single step, and then enhanced with preintegrated checkout apps. Implementation moves faster because teams rely on native capabilities and ecosystem apps instead of building from scratch.

Automation also compounds over time. When a platform like Shopify continuously optimizes checkout and payments across millions of transactions, every brand benefits from those improvements. Conversion gains, new payment methods, and performance enhancements are delivered automatically, without additional development or ongoing maintenance. 

Beyond checkout, automation unlocks operational speed. Unified commerce platforms make it possible to automate even complex workflows, including B2B buying journeys that depend on real-time ERP data, pricing rules, payment terms, tax calculations, shipping, and logistics. The result is faster transformation, lower operating costs, and a smoother experience for both customers and internal teams.

How Rainbow Shops replatformed fast with optimized checkout and payments

Fashion retailer Rainbow Shops operates more than a thousand physical stores, but ecommerce is their largest channel. The team had no shortage of ideas, but platform limitations slowed everything down. New features could take months to build and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Innovation was gated by infrastructure.

But Rainbow Shops had experienced difficult transformations in the past, and their leadership team knew what was at stake.

“Replatforming decisions are really hard. People in my position lose their jobs when replatforming projects don't go well,” said David Cost, VP of digital and ecommerce at Rainbow Shops.

This time was different. By moving to Shopify, the team reduced complexity, lowered costs, and gained the ability to move quickly. Features that once required months of development could be launched in minutes, freeing the team to experiment, iterate, and execute before opportunities passed.

“We can stand things up in fifteen minutes that would have taken multiple months and hundreds of thousands of dollars on Salesforce Commerce Cloud,” said David. 

A key part of that acceleration was checkout. Most Rainbow Shops customers shop on mobile, making speed and simplicity essential. Shopify’s continually optimized checkout removed friction without requiring custom development. The team also adopted Shop Pay to further reduce steps and improve conversion.

“[Checkout] is a technology that can only work if you see enough people and enough transactions,” said David. “If you only have 100 or maybe 1,000 merchants, the scale just isn’t there. Shopify has millions of merchants. That number of transactions enables Shopify to be able to build the kind of expedited or digital wallet that its competition just can’t build. No one’s checkout approaches what Shopify can do.”

4. Unify data and systems into one platform

Digital transformation is a key opportunity for commerce brands to look for ways to unify systems and data. When a migration or replatforming starts to rely on middleware connectors or custom integrations, or leaves data siloed, you are just replacing one form of technical debt with another. A platform’s ability to unify systems and data is one of the clearest predictors of whether continuous transformation accelerates or slows after launch.

Unified commerce platforms bring ecommerce, POS, and core systems like ERP and CRM together in a single foundation. With platforms like Shopify, brands can automate more workflows, reduce administration and technical overhead, and gain a complete view of the customer. That visibility enables better personalization, stronger marketing performance, and faster, data-driven decisions that support ongoing innovation.

How Kendo unified their global operations and gained the agility to become industry trendsetters

Beauty brand Kendo operates in one of the most competitive categories in commerce. The team must move quickly to keep up with trends while managing complex global operations. Previously, regional sites ran on separate systems, making expansion slow and complicated. Every site was unique, and launches took forever.

Kendo initially wondered whether any platform could support their scale. What they found was that many of their existing partners, including warehouses, 3PLs, and data tools, were already integrated with Shopify. By unifying global commerce operations on Shopify, Kendo expanded to 191 countries in just two months.

With a single source of truth, the team gained instant visibility into what was trending and where. That insight translated directly into action. Unified, real-time data allowed Kendo to move faster than competitors.

“Shopify’s data is pure and consistent. We spend less time sifting through sources and more time understanding our customers,” said Nanette Wong, VP of global brand marketing, Fenty Beauty (which sits under Kendo’s house of brands).

That speed showed up in new channels as well. When TikTok Shop launched, Kendo was able to move quickly and capture a new revenue stream in under two months.

"To be agile and quick in jumping on trends is what sets us apart from competitors. Shopify empowers us to do this," said Sapna Parikh, chief digital officer, Kendo Brands.

5. Empower internal teams with the tools to innovate

One of the most overlooked ways to accelerate digital transformation is to empower the teams you already have. Adding more technical resources can seem like an obvious fix, but it does not scale as efficiently as removing the barriers that slow teams down in the first place.

Many commerce platforms require technical expertise for even minor changes. That dependency becomes a bottleneck during and after transformation. Platforms like Shopify take a different approach. They offer robust, ready-to-use capabilities through an intuitive interface that allows non-technical teams to add new functionality without waiting on engineering. Business users can explore and deploy tools from a large app ecosystem independently, keeping momentum high and roadmaps moving.

How Belstaff’s digital transformation empowered their internal teams

As they approached their 100th anniversary, heritage brand Belstaff set out to modernize more than their storefront. The goal was a unified commerce operation that connected online and in-store experiences while strengthening relationships with both long-time and new customers. Their existing technology stack could not support that vision.

Belstaff migrated to Shopify to unify ecommerce and POS while introducing a headless architecture. This gave the brand the flexibility to deliver a distinctive front-end experience while simplifying back-end operations.

What surprised the team was how quickly internal adoption followed. The platform’s intuitive interface lowered the learning curve and reduced reliance on external support.

“Sometimes, you get a level of resistance during a new implementation. That’s why system intuitiveness is essential. The user interface of Shopify was a real highlight. When I looked at it I was like, ‘Okay, I can actually pick this up really quickly,’ ” said Navid Jilow, director of technology at Belstaff.

With headless capabilities and clear APIs, Belstaff’s teams can now evolve the customer experience, integrate third-party tools, and iterate without reintroducing complexity. Teams are equipped to keep moving long after launch, driving continuous improvement and innovation.

Five steps to accelerate your commerce transformation

Once an ecommerce digital transformation begins, the biggest slowdowns come from unplanned scope creep and glacial implementation cycles. The following five steps help teams move quickly, reduce risk, and avoid yearlong timelines that drain momentum.

1. Scope your value stream 

Before selecting technology, identify the customer journeys that matter most. Prioritize based on revenue impact and efficiency gains. Define the experiences you want customers to have and what will move the business forward. Then choose solutions that enable that vision. Never reshape your goals to fit the technology.

2. Streamline data migration

Large catalogs and complex product catalogs or customer databases do not need to slow transformation. The right platform and partner can migrate data in parallel with development. Look for providers with proven migration tools and teams with deep experience so progress continues without blocking launch timelines.

3. Test and launch with the basics

With digital transformations, speed comes from focus. Launch with a clear MVP that includes a core storefront and checkout. 

Run test orders, validate workflows, and add integrations incrementally. This lets you move away from legacy systems as quickly as possible and lower costs immediately. With platforms like Shopify, teams can launch fast and continue adding functionality after go-live.

4. Continuously iterate after go-live

Transformation should not end at launch. The right technology partner supports ongoing improvement through app ecosystems, frequent product updates, and clear innovation roadmaps. Continuous iteration keeps you delivering new, optimized experiences that evolve alongside changing buyer expectations.

5. Measure outcomes and make data-backed reinvestments

Successful transformations change how businesses plan and invest. McKinsey found that companies with successful transformations are more likely to rethink annual planning processes. In ecommerce, this starts with tracking before-and-after performance across revenue, conversion, ordering speed, and efficiency. Clear metrics show where to reinvest for compounding returns.

How Filtrous accelerated digital transformation to just 63 days 

Laboratory supply retailer Filtrous set out to modernize their wholesale buying experience with faster checkout, streamlined fulfillment, and less friction for buyers. Their first attempt failed. After choosing BigCommerce, the team spent a full year on custom development only to end up with a site that underperformed and was difficult to manage.

"We did a full year of custom development for our site, but walked away unhappy with the way the site looked and performed. BigCommerce lacked the flexibility for us to fully control our site, and managing the customer experience was time-consuming,” said Yin Fu, director of ecommerce at Filtrous. 

After reassessing their strategy, Filtrous migrated to Shopify, a platform with a 20% faster implementation rate. In just 63 days, they launched a fully featured B2B buying experience using native functionality and the app ecosystem. Automation across purchasing workflows improved operations, and the customer experience improved immediately. Organic conversion rates increased by 27%, unlocking new revenue and setting the business up to scale.

With the right platform in place, innovation did not slow down. Filtrous now participates in early access programs and works closely with the product teams building B2B capabilities.

“The constant updates to B2B on Shopify have left us pleasantly surprised. It seems like these releases are highly tailored to the needs of B2B merchants, and they’re always delivered on time. It makes us feel like we’re being heard,” Yin says.

Overcoming common objections to accelerated transformation

Digital transformation has rightfully earned a difficult reputation. Many initiatives are costly, slow, and fail to meet expectations, driving hesitation and resistance. But for ecommerce brands, avoiding transformation is rarely the right answer. Competitive pressure, rising customer expectations, aging systems, and rising costs make standing still a risky bet.

But that shouldn’t hold you back from ambitious transformation goals. Research from McKinsey shows that companies with higher aspirations for digital technology achieve stronger outcomes than those that aim conservatively. If you are ready to advocate for a big technology change, here’s how to overcome the most common objections and build your business case.

Objection 1: Fast implementations create risk

In practice, slow implementations carry more risk than fast ones. Extended timelines increase costs, introduce scope creep, and raise the likelihood of failure. Fast implementations signal platform maturity, strong native capabilities, and proven delivery models. 

Independent research shows that Shopify implementations are 66% more likely to launch on time than competing solutions. Speed actually reduces exposure and keeps teams aligned around clear outcomes.

Objection 2: Budgets will expand too fast

Budget overruns are a real concern, but they are usually caused by poor scoping and technology misalignment, not speed itself. A focused launch followed by iteration helps teams control spend while delivering value early. 

The right platform lowers long-term costs by reducing custom development and maintenance. Shopify implementations are 3x more likely to stay on budget than competitors, reinforcing that discipline and speed often go together.

Objection 3: Performance will suffer

Modern platforms outperform legacy stacks by design, enabling rapid transformation and immediate performance boosts. Moving away from custom infrastructure to a globally optimized, cloud-based platform improves speed, reliability, and scalability without added investment. 

Shopify stores render an average of 1.8x faster than other platforms and can handle an average of 284 million infrastructure requests per minute during peak events. Performance improves because it is built into the platform, not bolted on later.

Speed up your commerce transformation with Shopify

Digital transformation does not have to be a multi-year slog. The brands winning today are moving faster than their markets. They launch in months, not years. They iterate in production, not in planning decks. And while competitors debate roadmaps, they start capturing surplus value that compounds over time.

This kind of performance is not accidental. Shopify merchants have outperformed the broader market in 38 of the last 39 quarters, a pattern often described as time-to-value resilience. Thriving through disruption is not luck. It is the result of infrastructure designed to adapt, scale, and improve continuously.

Accelerated transformation does not mean cutting corners. It means choosing experienced partners, proven technology, and a delivery model that reduces risk while increasing speed. With Shopify, commerce teams get a foundation built for change, so they can move faster today and stay competitive tomorrow.