KMS Bearings
KMS Bearings has been a client of Web Force 5’s since early 2022, and in early 2025, wanted to better understand how to streamline development and operational costs.
Challenge
KMS Bearings had for years been leveraging an open-sourced e-Commerce platform to help drive it’s online B2B business. While the features and functionality on this platform could generally handle their business and technical requirements, the inherent costs to maintain and just “keep the lights on” were becoming untenable & unsustainable. Not to mention the constant up-keep and patches needed to ensure a safe and secure website. Change was needed.
Step 1.
Requirements Gathering
As part of any new e-Commerce build, Web Force 5 walks our clients through a thorough Discovery schedule to ensure that all requirements are gathered and solved for with their new website. Even though KMS Bearings had been a client of Web Force 5’s for years, this step was still required to limit risk and ambiguity.
Step 2.
Platform Selection
Both teams knew that open source was not the best path forward for KMS Bearings’ e-Commerce platform. Introductions to various SaaS platform partners was completed, and ultimately BigCommerce was selected as their new e-Commerce solution.
Step 3.
Scoping
Requirements were gathered and the new platform selection process was completed, so the Web Force 5 Team was now able to fully and accurately scope the level of effort for KMS Bearings. Even though this was a “lift & shift” initiative, there were some use cases and complex front-end requirements that made this project less than straight forward. Nothing the teams couldn’t handle, of course.
Step 4.
Development
Development of the new KMS Bearings website was completed in approximately 12 weeks, which was almost to the day the estimated launch date from the original project plan. Expectations were set and ultimately met for both time-to-launch and budget.
Outcome
KMS Bearings had a brand-new e-Commerce website, which solved for their initial challenge: save on maintenance and operational costs. Overall, 400-600 hours a year were now being saved for general maintenance, which those hours were now allocated towards site enhancements & UX improvements.
Client Testimonial
“The team at Web Force 5 is very realistic about what level of investment we should be putting into our website based on the size of our business. Their suggestions were aligned with what we were looking for. They were great communicators, good listeners, and fantastic collaborators. That made the project run smoothly because we could have honest conversations about what we wanted to do, and they were able to steer us in a direction that made sense. This team truly cares about your success!”
Susan Dominguez, KMS Bearings
