Composing a better commerce future: Key takeaways from MACH 3

As commercetools is one of the founding members of the MACH Alliance, it's gratifying to see how much the community has grown and accomplished over the past three years. Attending the annual MACH 3 conference hosted by the non-profit industry organization is a good reminder of how many businesses have benefited from transitioning to MACH® architecture and embracing the composable approach. It’s a great opportunity to hear from so many different companies who are more than happy to share their transformation stories. They love to talk about how everything is so much easier and faster now, and how their technology is so much more flexible and responsive. Instead of the conversation being about why they can’t keep up with change and technology advances, meet customer expectations or grow revenue, the focus is on, “How can we improve even more to better serve our customers. What should we do next?”

There were a lot of great insights, best practices and new ideas packed into the two-day conference. My top three takeaways offer a good glimpse of how MACH is making a difference in commerce today.

There were a lot of executives, including many of our customers, who presented on stage and told fantastic stories of their composable transformation. While some of them shared challenges they faced during the implementation process, it became clear that the technology wasn’t the issue. For example, Cepheid’s story proved that it’s completely possible to go from zero to go-live quickly. Amelita Ebuña, Director of eCommerce at Cepheid shared how the company worked with EPAM and commercetools to launch eCommerce capabilities in just six months across multiple countries.

There is still a misconception in the industry that because the technology is more sophisticated than that of a monolith platform, it simply takes longer. From our perspective, this isn’t the case. What defines your journey has a lot more to do with strategic planning and leadership.  With MACH, there are multiple activities, software vendors and SIs involved along with internal and external contributors. However, you don’t have to take a “boil the ocean” approach — you can implement incrementally and make the process much more manageable.

Even those who had challenges with migration agreed that you can reap the benefits of MACH even during the implementation. Unlike replatforming with a monolith, implementing MACH delivers flexibility from the start. Multiple presenters talked about how great it was to be able to respond to business changes throughout their implementation. The fact that they could make adjustments and be either more cautious or more aggressive with their launch plans based on timing, activities occurring in the business, market changes or any other issue was a huge benefit. The agility they gain during implementation and as a result of the transformation can be directly attributed to the composability of MACH.

The speed at which a company that has transitioned to MACH can operate was an often-repeated theme at the event. Casper, Clarks, Cepheid and others shared examples of how they’re now able to innovate faster, deliver customer experiences at speed and adapt to the changes in the market more quickly. The Clarks' story was particularly interesting as the speaker, Meriel Neighbour, Head of Digital Product Delivery and Transformation, stressed that their technology is no longer holding them back from achieving high business outcomes. 

Meriel shared that in 2023 the company experienced 30 hours of downtime on their monolith platform — that’s just unacceptable. Clarks worked with Grid Dynamics to migrate to commercetools Composable Commerce and is benefitting from both speed and consistent performance. Where previously it could take a day or more to update store inventory stock, it now happens in real-time so the business and its customers can instantly access accurate product availability at any time. The success of Clark’s transformation contributed to the company being recognized with two MACH 3 Impact Awards at the event, winning for Best Retail Project and Grand Prix — Best Overall Change.

The MACH Alliance made a strong statement this year when they added, “The Composable Conference” to the event’s tagline, solidifying the message that these modern technology terms are intrinsically connected. As MACH specifically refers to the combination of microservices, APIs, cloud and headless technologies that establish the open architecture framework necessary to enable composability, the synergy is undeniable. 

Multiple signs reinforced that the Alliance wants business leaders to think of the two terms together. In Retailers Focus on Composable Technologies to Drive Loyalty, a Forbes article recapping the event, the writer explained that the conference was focused on brands collaborating on the importance of moving away from legacy systems that don’t provide the agility and flexibility to keep up with technological advances. She called out composable technology as tje the solution to the problem.

Another event recap, MACH THREE: Composability Takes Center Stage, pointed out that the movement to transition to modern commerce is expanding beyond retail, calling out the recent announcement that JP Morgan had joined the MACH Alliance as a member supporter. 

Merging these two terms will aid companies in understanding how they are different, yet complement one another,  hopefully removing some of the fear of digital transformation. With the Alliance dedicated to advocating for these supporting organizations on their journey from legacy to composable infrastructure, this small change is already having a big impact.

To learn more about MACH, how it compares to monolithic platforms and where composable commerce fits in, read MACH® architecture unveiled: Powering modern digital commerce experiences.