From SAP Hybris to Commerce Cloud in 90 Days: A Migration Playbook

When we tell people we migrated Franke from SAP Hybris to SAP Commerce Cloud in 90 days, the first reaction is disbelief. Ninety days sounds aggressive for what most companies consider an 8–12 month project.

But we did it. And SAP recognised the project with a Quality Award. This post shares the playbook — not the marketing version, but the actual methodology, timeline, and decisions that made it possible.

TL;DR: We migrated Franke from SAP Hybris to Commerce Cloud in 90 days (SAP Quality Award). The key: 30 days of preparation before kickoff, ruthless scope management (35% of customisations eliminated), parallel workstreams, and iterative delivery. Agile approaches show 42% success rates vs 13% for waterfall (Standish Group, 2020). This playbook covers every phase from audit to go-live.

Why Is 90 Days Achievable?

83% of data migration projects fail or exceed their budgets (Bloor Group, 2023). But in our experience, most long migration timelines are inflated by waste, not complexity. A 90-day migration isn’t about cutting corners. It’s about eliminating three things:

1. Analysis paralysis. Teams spend months documenting requirements that already exist in the running system.
2. 1:1 replication of unnecessary customisations. Moving code that isn’t needed on the target platform.
3. Sequential phases with handoff delays. Waiting for sign-offs, handovers, and context switches between teams.

Remove these, and the actual work — data migration, platform configuration, integration reconnection, and testing — fits into 90 days for a mid-size commerce platform.

What Happens Before the Clock Starts? (Weeks -4 to 0)

The 90-day clock starts at kickoff. But 30 days of preparation before kickoff makes the difference between a controlled sprint and a chaotic scramble. Agile projects succeed 42% of the time compared to just 13% for waterfall (Standish Group, 2020). That advantage starts with preparation.

Platform audit (week -4 to -3)

We map everything in the current SAP Hybris instance:

• Custom extensions: Count, classify (still needed / replaceable / obsolete), estimate migration effort for each.
• Data models: Document custom types, relations, and attributes. Identify what maps directly to Commerce Cloud and what needs transformation.
• Integrations: List every inbound and outbound connection — ERP, PIM, CRM, payment, shipping, tax. Document protocols, data formats, and frequencies.
• Customisation hotspots: Identify the 20% of custom code that handles 80% of the business logic.

For Franke, this audit revealed that 35% of custom extensions were workarounds for on-prem limitations. We removed them from scope immediately, saving 3 weeks of migration effort.

Data profiling (week -3 to -2)

Before you touch the migration tools, understand your data. 64% of organisations cite data quality as their top data integrity challenge (McKinsey, 2024). Profile every entity for completeness, consistency, and quality. Identify duplicates, orphaned records, and data not accessed in 2+ years. Build and test your ETL pipeline with a small sample set.

Environment setup (week -2 to -1)

Provision SAP Commerce Cloud environments (development, staging, production). Configure CI/CD pipelines. Set up monitoring and alerting. Establish access for all team members.

Team alignment (week -1)

Finalise the backlog with prioritised work items. Assign clear ownership for each workstream: platform, data, integrations, frontend, testing. Agree on Definition of Done for each increment. Establish daily standups and weekly stakeholder demos.

What Gets Done in Sprint 1? (Days 1–21)

The first three weeks focus on getting the core platform running on Commerce Cloud with your data models and base configuration.

Data model migration. Transfer custom types, enums, and relations to Commerce Cloud. Validate against the platform audit.

Core business logic. Migrate the critical 20% of customisations identified in the audit. Cart calculation, pricing rules, promotion engine configuration, tax calculation.

Base storefront. Deploy Composable Storefront with your product catalogue. No custom styling yet — functional correctness first.

First data load. Run a full data migration to staging. Validate record counts, data integrity, and key business flows.

What does NOT get done: visual design refinements, non-critical integrations (analytics, review platforms, loyalty), performance optimisation, edge-case business logic.

Milestone at day 21: A working storefront on Commerce Cloud staging with real data, core business logic, and basic checkout flow. Stakeholders can browse products, add to cart, and complete an order. It doesn’t look perfect. It works.

How Do Integrations Come Together in Sprint 2? (Days 22–50)

With the core platform proven, sprint 2 reconnects the ecosystem and refines the experience. Work through integrations in order of business criticality:

1. ERP/order management: Order export, inventory sync, pricing updates
2. Payment provider: Reconnect payment gateway with Commerce Cloud’s payment extension
3. Shipping/logistics: Rate calculation, label generation, tracking updates
4. PIM/content: Product data feeds, media asset sync
5. CRM/CDP: Customer data synchronisation

For each integration: validate the existing API contract, update endpoints and authentication, run end-to-end tests with real data, and document any behavioural differences.

In parallel: apply brand styling to Composable Storefront, implement custom UI components, optimise for mobile, and handle SEO requirements (meta tags, structured data, URL redirects from old paths).

Milestone at day 50: A fully integrated Commerce Cloud deployment with all critical integrations live, brand-consistent frontend, and end-to-end order flow from browse to fulfilment.

What Makes Sprint 3 Different? (Days 51–90)

The final phase is about confidence. You already have a working system. Now you prove it’s production-ready.

Performance testing (days 51–60). Load test with realistic traffic patterns (peak day simulation). Identify and resolve bottlenecks. Validate auto-scaling behaviour. Benchmark page load times against targets.

User acceptance testing (days 55–70). Business users test every critical flow. Test with real customer accounts and real product data. Verify all integrations under realistic conditions. Resolve all P1 and P2 issues.

Data migration dress rehearsal (days 65–75). Run the full data migration pipeline end-to-end. Measure elapsed time — this defines your cutover window. Validate delta migration for data created between the rehearsal and go-live. Test rollback procedures.

Go-live and stabilisation (days 85–90). Execute the go-live runbook. Run delta data migration. Switch DNS. Monitor for 48 hours with the full team on standby.

What Made the Franke Migration Succeed?

90% of businesses that migrated e-commerce platforms reported revenue improvements (commercetools, 2024). But not every migration delivers those results. Looking back at the Franke project, five factors made the 90-day timeline possible:

1. Ruthless scope management. We didn’t migrate everything. We migrated what the business needed. The 35% of unnecessary customisations stayed behind.
2. Parallel workstreams. Platform, data, integrations, and frontend ran in parallel with daily sync points. No sequential handoffs.
3. Early data investment. Data profiling started before kickoff. By day 1, we knew exactly what we were migrating and what we were leaving behind.
4. Iterative delivery with weekly demos. Stakeholders saw progress every week. Issues surfaced early. Course corrections happened in days, not months.
5. Experienced team. Our team had done this before. We knew the platform, the migration patterns, and the common pitfalls.

SAP awarded the project a Quality Award — their recognition for excellence in methodology, stakeholder engagement, and delivery quality. It validated that speed and quality aren’t opposites. A focused, well-planned migration delivers both.

When Should You Start?

The playbook works. But the 90-day clock only starts ticking once preparation is complete. If you’re facing the July 2026 EoMM deadline (SAP Help Portal, 2026), the math is straightforward:

• 30 days preparation + 90 days migration = 120 days total
• To go live by July 2026, start preparation by March 2026 at the latest
• To go live comfortably with buffer, start by January 2026

The later you start, the more compressed the timeline becomes. And compressed timelines cost more.

For a broader look at what SAP Commerce Cloud delivers — including pricing, industry use cases, and implementation methodology — see our SAP Commerce Cloud solution page.

We’ll review your SAP Hybris instance, map your customisations, profile your data, and build a realistic 90-day plan tailored to your specific situation. Get in touch — let’s turn your EoMM deadline into a 90-day success story.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is 90 days realistic for every SAP Commerce migration?

It depends on complexity. Ninety days works for mid-size commerce platforms with a clean preparation phase. Larger deployments with multiple storefronts, complex integration landscapes, or heavy data volumes may need 4–6 months. The key variable isn’t platform size — it’s how much unnecessary customisation and tech debt exists. Our structured audit typically identifies 25–35% of customisations as removable, which directly shortens the timeline.

What’s the biggest risk in a 90-day migration?

Data migration, without question. 83% of data migration projects exceed budgets or schedules (Bloor Group, 2023). That’s why we start data profiling in the pre-migration phase — before the 90-day clock begins. By day 1 of Sprint 1, we already know the data volume, quality issues, and transformation requirements. The dress rehearsal in Sprint 3 validates the full pipeline before go-live.

How many people does a 90-day migration require?

The Franke team was lean: 3–4 Spadoom consultants plus 2–3 client-side resources (product owner, business analyst, IT liaison). Total of 6–7 people. The key isn’t team size — it’s parallel workstreams with clear ownership and daily sync points. A larger team with sequential handoffs would actually be slower.

What happens to SEO when you migrate from Hybris to Commerce Cloud?

URL structure changes require a comprehensive redirect plan. We handle this in Sprint 2: map all old URLs to new paths, implement 301 redirects, update structured data and meta tags, and submit the new sitemap to Google. When done properly, organic traffic recovers within 2–4 weeks. The Composable Storefront also gives you better Core Web Vitals out of the box, which often improves rankings post-migration.

Can we run the old Hybris platform and new Commerce Cloud in parallel during migration?

Yes, and we recommend it for the transition period. During Sprint 3, both systems run simultaneously. The old platform handles production traffic while we complete UAT and performance testing on Commerce Cloud. The cutover window (DNS switch) is typically 4–8 hours, during which we run the delta data migration. If anything goes wrong, the rollback is a DNS revert back to the old platform.