How VAI Built a Successful OEM Partnership and Cut Deployments in Half
A modern OEM approach with Liferay helped VAI simplify portal management, reduce deployment effort, and empower customers with greater self-sufficiency.
Key Takeaways
- Simplicity became a competitive advantage: VAI needed to deliver a modern, self-service experience that matched evolving customer expectations while reducing operational complexity.
- Open standards reduced migration risk: Liferay’s flexible architecture enabled VAI to migrate existing applications with minimal redevelopment effort, accelerating time-to-value.
- Customer autonomy improved engagement: By making content and page management easier, VAI reduced support dependency and gave customers more control over their digital experiences.
- Faster deployments increased operational efficiency: Cutting implementation effort nearly in half allowed VAI to scale deployments more efficiently across its customer base.
- Flexible licensing supported long-term growth: Liferay’s licensing model gave customers greater confidence to scale infrastructure without worrying about rising platform costs.
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Background
VAI (Vormittag Associates, Inc.) is the developer of S2K, an ERP platform that supports wholesale distributors, manufacturers, pharmaceutical distributors, and specialty retailers across the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean. Serving more than 750 organizations ranging from regional businesses to billion-dollar enterprises, VAI provides a comprehensive suite of applications spanning financials, inventory management, purchasing, service and repair, and retail point-of-sale operations. It’s an all-inclusive suite of applications for customers to run their business.
As customer expectations evolved toward more modern, self-service digital experiences, the company recognized the need for a scalable platform that could simplify portal management, improve customer autonomy, and support future innovation.
Challenges
Before adopting Liferay DXP, VAI relied on IBM WebSphere Portal and HCL technologies to support customer-facing experiences. Over time, the platform became increasingly difficult to maintain due to its complexity, resource requirements, and evolving licensing structure. Customers often depended on VAI’s services team to make even basic portal updates, creating friction for both users and internal teams.
At the same time, VAI needed a modernization strategy that would not disrupt its large existing customer base. The company wanted a solution that could integrate with its current ERP architecture, reduce operational overhead, and create a more scalable experience for future growth — without requiring a complete rebuild of its applications. To achieve this, the solution would need to address several challenges:
- Complex and resource-intensive legacy portal infrastructure.
- High customer dependency on VAI for routine updates and content management.
- Licensing models that created scalability concerns for customers.
Need for a low-risk migration path for an established ERP ecosystem.
Giving clients total peace of mind that growth won’t mean extra licensing costs has been incredibly valuable.
Director of Ecommerce, VAI
Implementation
VAI selected Liferay OEM Solutions to modernize the digital experience layer surrounding S2K while preserving the strength of its existing ERP platform. One of the biggest advantages during the transition was Liferay’s support for open standards, particularly JSR standards, which made much of VAI’s existing codebase compatible with the new environment. This allowed the company to migrate applications using a largely “lift-and-shift” approach instead of rebuilding systems from scratch, significantly reducing complexity, risk, and redevelopment effort.
Throughout the implementation, VAI collaborated closely with the Liferay team and leveraged resources including Liferay Learn, technical bootcamps, DevCon sessions, community support channels, and Technical Account Management services. The result was a smoother implementation experience and a platform that gave customers far greater control over managing pages, layouts, and content independently.
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Results
The transition to Liferay delivered immediate operational improvements for VAI and its customers. Deployment timelines were reduced significantly, enabling the company to implement environments in nearly half the time previously required. This allowed internal teams to scale implementations more efficiently while reducing operational strain.
The customer experience also improved dramatically. Customers gained the ability to manage content and make updates on their own, eliminating much of the dependency on VAI’s support organization. The modernization effort also strengthened customer confidence by providing a more scalable and predictable platform experience as businesses continued to grow. As a result, VAI achieved significant business and customer outcomes:
- Deployment times reduced by nearly 50%.
- Near-zero support tickets related to portal content management.
- Greater customer self-sufficiency and autonomy.
- Improved scalability and licensing predictability.
- Increased positive customer feedback and stronger market reception.
It’s taking about half the number of man-hours to get a Liferay system up and running compared to HCL. Support tickets for Liferay almost go to zero because customers are just doing everything themselves.
Director of Ecommerce, VAI
Conclusion
By partnering with Liferay through its OEM program, VAI transformed the S2K experience into a more scalable, customer-centric platform. With faster deployments, greater customer autonomy, and a flexible foundation for future innovation, VAI is now exploring additional Liferay capabilities, including commerce functionality and future AI integrations, as part of its long-term product strategy.
