Replatforming Made Easy: How to Migrate from Legacy Systems to Modern CMS Solutions

By Bluegrass Digital

In today’s fast-moving digital world, businesses can no longer afford to be held back by outdated content management systems. Legacy platforms are often slow, costly to maintain, and lack the flexibility required to meet modern customer expectations. Replatforming to a modern CMS solution is not just a technical upgrade — it’s a strategic move that can drive performance, streamline operations, and future-proof your digital presence. 

At Bluegrass Digital, we’ve helped enterprises across industries transition from legacy systems to scalable, modern platforms. Here’s how we approach CMS migration to ensure it’s efficient, secure, and impactful. 

Why Businesses Are Moving Away from Legacy CMS Platforms

Legacy systems can hinder growth in several ways:

Poor performance and scalability: Older platforms often struggle under growing traffic and content volumes.

Security vulnerabilities: Legacy systems may no longer receive updates or patches, leaving your business exposed.

Limited integration capabilities: Modern marketing and CRM tools require seamless integration, which legacy systems can’t easily support.

High operational costs: Maintenance and support for outdated platforms can drain resources better spent on innovation.

Our Replatforming Approach: Strategy Before Software

Replatforming is not just a plug-and-play exercise. It requires a tailored strategy aligned with your business goals. Our approach includes:

1. Discovery & Requirements Gathering

We begin by understanding your current infrastructure, content architecture, user journeys, and business requirements. This enables us to recommend the best-fit CMS — whether that’s Umbraco, Optimizely, WordPress, or a headless solution.

2. CMS Selection & Architecture Planning

Based on your needs, we guide you through CMS selection — prioritising scalability, ease of use, and integration flexibility. We then design a robust architecture to support long-term growth, using proven best practices in security, performance, and SEO.

3. Content Migration & Clean-Up

Legacy platforms often contain outdated, duplicate, or poorly structured content. We help clean, map, and migrate content into the new system in a way that improves both manageability and discoverability.

4. Front-End & Back-End Development

We build responsive, accessible, and performance-optimised templates while ensuring the CMS back-end is intuitive for content editors and marketers. We also integrate with third-party tools such as CRMs, analytics platforms, and marketing automation systems.

5. Quality Assurance & SEO Preservation

Migrating platforms can risk SEO rankings if not handled properly. We ensure that URLs are redirected appropriately, metadata is preserved, and analytics tracking is migrated. Our QA process includes rigorous performance and compatibility testing.

6. Training & Handover

We don’t just deliver the platform — we empower your teams to use it effectively. We provide CMS training and documentation so content authors and digital managers feel confident post-launch.

Why Choose Bluegrass Digital?

Proven experience in complex replatforming projects across industries including financial services, healthcare, and entertainment

Umbraco Gold Partner with expertise in both open-source and enterprise CMS platforms

Optimizely Silver Partner with expertise in both open-source and CMS platforms

Cloud-native architecture and infrastructure planning with Microsoft Azure, and headless CMS frameworks

End-to-end service from strategy and design to development, migration, and support

Real Results: A Recent Example

We recently worked with a leading African media brand to audit and optimise their CMS and Azure infrastructure. The result? A faster, more reliable platform that supports millions of users and prepares the business for future growth.

Final Thoughts

Migrating from a legacy CMS may seem daunting, but with the right partner and a well-defined process, it can be smooth, efficient, and strategically transformative. Whether you’re looking to modernise your tech stack, improve site performance, or enable omnichannel content delivery — we’re here to help.

Let’s talk about your replatforming journey.

Contact Bluegrass Digital