Modern Commerce Day Recap 2021

Modern Commerce Day recap: The inside scoop on the biggest commerce event of the year

commercetools author image Stephanie Wittmann
Stephanie Wittmann
Head of Communications & Content, commercetools
Published 24 June 2021

On June 16, commercetools held our annual Modern Commerce Day, and it was an overwhelming success. The agenda was chock full of eCommerce visionaries – from Mike Lowndes, Sr Director Analyst at Gartner to Anjali Subburaj, Digital Commerce Chief Architect at Mars – who helped their organizations zoom forward and succeed with Modern Commerce. Read on to discover the major highlights, most important insights and top transformation tips from the event.

As the inventor of MACH (Microservices-based, API-first, Cloud-native, Headless ) technology and founding member of the MACH Alliance, commercetools hosted Modern Commerce Day as a one-day event (with this year’s event being virtual) to bring retailers, manufacturers and brands together with practitioners, thought leaders, industry analysts, advisors and best-of-breed solution providers to discuss next-generation commerce. Attendees discovered how to transition to commercetools’ MACH-driven commerce solution from tech leaders and insiders who have shut down their old, monolith platforms. 

While most speakers shared their transition story, some focused on simply explaining the world of possibilities MACH opens up for digital commerce. Regardless of industry, company size, business model or path to transformation, the categorical message across the board was clear – MACH defines what modern commerce is today while enabling brands to be well-positioned in the future, and provides the speed, flexibility, performance and scalability brands need to meet the demands of consumers.

Modern Commerce Day Recap 2021

The good, the great and the amazing

This year’s Modern Commerce Day consisted of 34 sessions that included some of the biggest organizations in the world, such as Danone and Google, and speakers from nearly a dozen industries. The speakers not only shared insights, ideas and advice, they raved about the benefits of transitioning to MACH technology and advocated the many, many advantages of adopting commercetools’ headless commerce platform. 

We also heard from passionate tech leaders talking about their journey to digital transformation and how commercetools helped turn their technology into a friend instead of a foe and opened up limitless commerce possibilities. They shared real data regarding boosting their customer base, lowering the total cost of ownership and achieving a high

return on investment that generates revenue. There were funny anecdotes, horror stories (about monoliths) and quite a few ah-ha! moments along the way.

While some participants recognized the need for digital transformation before their technology became a roadblock, for others the frustration of working with an inflexible, non-scalable, slow system drove the change. Those who went through it shared their best transformation tips, but regardless of their path, there was one resounding conclusion: MACH architecture is the replacement of the monolithic platforms of the past.

MACH insights straight from the Audi, Boohoo, Express and Co.

We were fortunate enough to host an abundance of extraordinary speakers who gave their take on how best to transition to MACH technology and what value a MACH approach brought their organizations. Here are some of the best soundbites. 

Jo Graham, CIO of Boohoo, a UK-based online fashion retailer that owns 13 brands. She focused on facilitating the transformation process with sage advice: “Recognize the solution, empower your team, get the hell out of the way.”

Tina Lykke Kristensen, Senior Manager, Non-Food eCommerce, Salling Group, pointed to a multitude of ways in which MACH enables the company to run more efficiently and effectively: “We have lowered our operations costs, reduced our time-to-market, made it easier to recruit talented employees and vastly improved our mobile experience. We received an award for the best German connected retail solution and…we’re just getting started.”

Greg Fancher, CTO, Express explained how within 3 months of fully transitioning to MACH, Express added 5 major capabilities to their digital experience: “These are pretty exciting things to do. To do them in such a short time is something we never would have been able to do on our old system.”

Andreas Lederwascher, Business Solution Architect, Audi, believes guiding autonomous teams to the target lane starts with staffing your project with people who share the same mindset and vision: “Give everyone a voice and the possibility to improve your organization and your product. You will be surprised how many good ideas and improvements we have recognized with that approach.”

Did you miss out on attending Modern Commerce Day? Not to worry! You can still watch all the highlights that we’ve recorded. For an even more in-depth summary of the event, read our Modern Commerce Day Report.

commercetools author image Stephanie Wittmann
Stephanie Wittmann
Head of Communications & Content, commercetools

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