A five-month path off Sitecore XP: How eight25 helped Qlik migrate to Contentful faster

For many teams on legacy CMSes, the pain points are familiar: slow publishing cycles, rigid workflows, heavy operational overhead, and a platform that makes even straightforward changes feel bigger than they should. 

While those issues are common, many organizations choose to stay put because the perceived risk of migration feels too high. That fear is understandable when most replatforming stories sound long, risky, and disruptive. 

But it doesn’t have to be that complicated or drawn out. The conversation I had in a recent webinar with Contentful Solution Partner eight25 and leaders from Qlik, a global leader in data integration and analytics, shows how straightforward it can be.

After more than 15 years on Sitecore XP, Qlik’s team, including Michael Weston, Director of Web Strategy, and Phillip Gore, Senior Web Production Manager, had dealt with the same slow, restrictive workflows at a time when the business needed more speed, flexibility, and room to scale.

Working with eight25, Qlik moved off Sitecore XP and onto Contentful in under five months, with clear upfront scope, lower migration risk, and a faster path to value.

Setting the foundation for a successful replatforming

Rather than asking Qlik to commit to a long, open-ended transformation, eight25 positioned the migration as something that could be understood, planned, and managed down to the smallest detail. That changed the conversation from “this will be painful” to “this is possible.”

Before the replatforming began, eight25 helped Qlik evaluate multiple platform options. Rehan Fernando, Founder and CEO of eight25, began by asking the question, “What does a new experience on a new platform look like?”

The list started broad and was narrowed to three finalists, including Sitecore’s cloud offering and the Contentful Digital Experience Platform. The recommendation came down to Qlik’s long-term needs, not just the immediate replatforming requirement.

Contentful stood out because it aligned with what Qlik’s leadership wanted next: a stronger foundation for experimentation, faster changes to market-facing content, better scale for a large global team, and the flexibility to support future needs around APIs, automation, and AI readiness. What they didn’t want was to escape one legacy platform only to land in another system with a different set of limitations. 

In other words, the platform decision and the migration plan were tightly connected from the start. eight25 was helping Qlik move faster and in the right direction.

"What does a new experience on a new platform look like?”

Rehan Fernando, Founder and CEO, eight25

Demystifying the migration process from day one

A big reason migrations like this can move so quickly is that eight25 treats discovery as a concrete, structured process from the outset. Just as importantly, the team resets expectations early. As Rehan Fernando explained, “One of the number one things clients are refreshed to hear is that we can move them off their existing platform fairly quickly… most of our clients, regardless of size, can do it in about five months.” For many teams, that alone changes how the entire migration is perceived.

For Qlik, that meant accounting for thousands of pages, consolidating two brands, including a recent acquisition, and bringing content from two CMS environments into one. The approach itself is grounded in a combination of people, process, and platform, supported by a clear, repeatable methodology.

The first step for eight25 is understanding scope in detail. This starts with a site crawl and page inventory to create a complete view of the content landscape. That work feeds into a centralized control panel that acts as the project’s command center. From there, teams can see what exists, what should be kept, what can be retired, and how each page maps to the new environment. This level of upfront visibility reduces ambiguity and makes the migration feel far more manageable.

From there, the process moves into a component audit and project planning. The team at eight25 defines what needs to be built at a modular level, then translates those findings into a project plan shared at the start of the engagement. That combination of structure and transparency is what helped remove uncertainty for Qlik and made a faster timeline feel achievable from the start.

The approach in action with Qlik

The speed of Qlik’s migration from Sitecore XP to Contentful came down to how the work was structured. Design, build, and migration ran in parallel rather than in sequence. That concurrency made a shorter timeline possible, but only because everything had been clearly scoped upfront. That early clarity stood out to Qlik’s team.

Michael Weston described how many redesigns begin without a clear sitemap, defined components, or confidence in the final vision. In this case, those questions were answered early. Qlik knew how many pages were in play, which components would carry over, which new modules would be needed, and where content could be consolidated or removed. That early confidence helped reduce risk before budget and timing were locked in.

The Contentful Solution Partner also brought tooling to the process that accelerated manual migration work. Rehan showed a workflow in which crawled pages could be mapped to new components through a visual interface, allowing content to be assigned and moved into Contentful far faster than through traditional page-by-page rebuilding.

We saw how that work that might typically take an hour or more per page could be reduced to about five minutes, including quality assurance. That is the kind of operational advantage that turns a fast migration from a promise into a practical delivery model.

“Don’t be afraid of change.”

Rehan Fernando, Founder and CEO, eight25

What changed for Qlik after the move

After the migration, Qlik has been able to move faster with fewer constraints. Michael described the difference at a macro level as “scale, velocity, and quality.” That summary points to more than efficiency alone. It speaks to what the team can now do that was previously too difficult, too slow, or too limited to attempt.

Phillip Gore added a hands-on production perspective. Before the switch, he said, the typical response to web change requests in Sitecore XP was, “We’ll get back to you in six weeks.”

Post-launch, the benefits were plainly visible: faster page creation, easier content reuse, more self-service across teams, simpler reordering and version management, no deployment downtime, and easier support for locales. Phillip also noted the broader operational shift: more collaboration in the system and fewer workarounds.

That speed has compounded over time. Qlik shared that since the migration the team has built 3,500 pages in two years, averaging around 150 pages per month. More importantly, Qlik is now positioned to rethink information architecture, publish more incrementally, and support higher-volume content operations without waiting for a major redesign cycle. That shift has fundamentally changed what the organization can deliver.

What other teams can take away from Qlik’s migration

One of the clearest themes from our conversation is that migration fear is often rooted in outdated assumptions. Teams assume the move will take most of a year. They assume the process will be opaque. They assume disruption is unavoidable. Qlik’s success suggests otherwise when the right partner, structure, and platform are in place.

Rehan’s advice to other teams was direct: “Don’t be afraid of change.” He also made the business case in practical terms. Delaying the decision does not simply preserve the status quo. It slows the business down, and in an environment increasingly shaped by AI, automation, and fast-moving content demands, that delay can become more costly over time. A strong partner can shorten the journey, simplify the process, and help teams see value much sooner than they expect.

For readers weighing a move off Sitecore XP, that may be the biggest takeaway from this story. A migration does not have to be daunting to be significant. With clear scope, an upfront plan, the right tooling, and an API-first platform underneath it, a move in five months is not just possible. It is achievable.

To hear the full discussion and get more detail on the process, watch the webinar in full.

Take a tour

Chat with our team

Your experiences should wow, not wait. Let's talk.