Get MACH

Ready
Preparing Your Business For Digital Transformation

Get MACH Ready 1

Table of
Contents

03 20
Introduction Part 4: Make it MACH
Change Management
Order of Operations
04
Part 1: Start With Why 25
Part 5: Next Steps
06
Part 2: Order of Buy-in 26
Marketing/Merchandising
Sales Conclusion
Digital/Product Team
Development/Technology
Executive Leadership (CFO and/or CEO)

12
Part 3: Set the Stage for Success
Timeline
Defining Success
People Resourcing

Get MACH Ready 2

Introduction

Over the last decade, I’ve helped lead
numerous digital transformations at enterprise-
sized organizations, navigating the many
challenges that are met ahead of eventual
success, all of which have come with their
share of learnings. Alongside the vendor-
side expertise and experience of Orium,
commercetools, and Contentstack in this
white paper, I share my client-side knowledge,
not only outlining how to set up for success,
but specifically what roadblocks to look
out for and how to mitigate these risks.
existing gap? These questions are critical to
identify—and answer—early on. We’ll cover
all this and more in the following pages.
This guide will help you determine where,
when, and most importantly how to prepare
your business for the challenges of a digital
transformation, ensuring you’re able to avoid
the worst pitfalls and overcome whatever
is thrown your way so you can unlock the
incredible opportunities for growth and
scale that come with a move to MACH.

Nearly all successful transformations introduce

changes using the PPT framework: People,
Process and Technology. To paraphrase Jim
Collins from “Good to Great”, “First you get
all of the right people on the bus, then you
figure out where the bus is going”. One of my
biggest takeaways and lessons learned in
years of transformations is how critical it is to
have the right people on the initiative. Who’s
on board and can see and contribute to the
vision? Who’s actively resisting and shows
no sign of ever wanting to change from the
status quo? It’s equally important to avoid
having the wrong people join the endeavor
as it is to get the right people involved.

Adopting a MACH approach isn’t just about

learning a new technology set— it’s a
mindset change for your organization. Are
you moving from waterfall to agile software
development? Are you moving from a project-
based to a product-led culture, focused on
outcomes over output? Are you adopting Scott Canney
new technology that requires new skill sets Digital Strategy and Product Leader
and if so, what are your plans to bridge the MACH Alliance Ambassador

Get MACH Ready 3

Part 1:
Start With Why
Preparing your organization for the changes
and challenges that come with digital
transformation isn’t just about creating
checklists of what to do and working through
them. In fact, a successful digital transformation
begins long before the first line of code is
ever written or the first checklist is ever made.
Long before any of the what of the digital
transformation, you need to be crystal clear on
the why.
Why are you investing your resources—time,
money, and people—into this change?
Maybe you’re struggling to keep pace with
the market, your legacy software slowing your
ability to seize opportunities with complex (and
error-prone) workarounds as your competitors
make rapid changes and adapt to evolving
market needs.
Or maybe your development teams rarely even
get the time to work on new features, instead
spending time on fixing bugs and supporting
technical debt.
Perhaps you’re facing skyrocketing costs as
you maintain multiple platforms to support all
of the sites in your brand portfolio, as limited
resources make prioritizing each brand difficult.
Get MACH Ready
Worse, when one site releases a new feature,
it requires additional development work and
coordination for all brands to benefit.
For most businesses—possibly even yours—
it’s a combination of some or all of these at
once, and each day these issues become
more and more entrenched. The challenge to
even maintain the status quo becomes almost
untenable, and every bit of ground lost makes it
even harder to eventually replatform.
Luckily, these problems and many more can
be solved by adopting MACH technology. But
before your organization can begin to migrate,
you’ll need buy-in from various teams and
stakeholders, a clear business case, approval
from the C-Suite and a rock solid kick-off plan.
Identifying your challenges in advance will not
only help you build the business case and get
buy-in and approval across the org, it’ll help you
set the project on the path to success from the
very first step.
The why is at the heart of decision-making
at every stage. It’s what you’ll come back to
when you’re in the weeds, working through
challenges. That’s why your first step to MACH
success is to start with why.
4
 When people ask why I moved our brand to a headless, MACH-
based architecture, I always say it’s because it’s the hub of a
hub-and-spoke approach— and my customers demand lots
of spokes.

Chris Ladd,
Chief Executive Officer, Coravin

Get MACH Ready 5

Part 2:
Order of Buy-in
Once you’ve established your reasons for
moving to MACH, every other piece starts
to take shape. As you dig deeper on the
challenges you’re facing, building a more
complete understanding of the existing state,
you can begin to tease out the issues MACH
will help your business overcome, as well as the
best approach for moving to MACH for
your brand.
A MACH transformation can happen several
ways, and we’ll dig deeper into each in
the Timeline section, but whether you’ve
determined you need a complete replatform of
an existing site, a brand new site, or a piece-
by-piece migration, starting from the ground-
up can create a groundswell of support from
several departments to the ultimate deciders in
the C-Suite.
But where do you begin?
Start with the business: What are the biggest
pain points, how can MACH help overcome
them, and perhaps most importantly, who will
be impacted. Your CFO is unlikely to be the
first to buy into the program, so build a base
of support with internal champions, the people
most likely to see the value and gain the most
from the change. By the time you do reach
Get MACH Ready
the CEO and CFO, you’ll have a wave of
champions helping buoy the cause and the buy-
in you need from all departments before the
project even begins— a crucial part of ensuring
success once it kicks off.
To help decide your path, consider the features
not currently on the site that can help drive
results. For example, decoupling the front and
back-ends in a headless architecture can allow
for faster page load times, which can boost
conversion rates. A MACH-based architecture
can reduce the time to develop and launch
changes, providing greater control and a more
expansive ability to experiment. What teams
can benefit from self-serve functionality? Where
are the greatest needs, and what is the priority
of change for supporting business growth?
The answers to these questions will be different
in every organization, depending on a host of
things from personal dynamics to org structure.
(There are even organizations where the CFO
is the champion!) But most will find greatest
success with a daisy-chain approach, going
from stakeholder to stakeholder to build the
business case.
6
The order outlined below is among the most • Marketing empowerment - own the
common for gaining traction, but you know creation and publishing of content on
your organization best, so adjust as needed. the site from blogs/articles, banners and
other digital marketing assets without
having to rely on developers to help
Marketing/Merchandising
• Personalization - deliver tailored
Your CMO and/or Head of Merchandising content, landing pages, product
often have the most ground to gain, and can recommendations and search results
be stalwart champions at every stage. Their based on user data and segmentation
job is to control the brand, from digital assets
• Support data-driven marketing
like blogs and articles to pricing and promotion
or CDP - integrate data across
efforts. Basically all content of any kind. Having
channels, leveraging a MACH-
control of the end-to-end content process for
based stack for a single view of
the homepage and marketing landing pages
the customer that can be used for
can be a game-changer for a group that, in
further personalization, advanced
most legacy scenarios, has to go through the
insights and predictive marketing
technical department to make anything happen.
• Run promos and personalized
We suggest starting your MACH campaign pricing based on the user,
with this group, because the list of reasons segment or general promotion
for them to switch is extremely compelling:
• Experimentation - test and iterate
more faster on marketing campaigns,
promotions, new experiences and more

• Automate campaign workflows -

help automate repetitive tasks like
social media posts, blog creation,
email marketing and more

• Create content once, push everywhere

for a true omnichannel experience

• Manage product information

including descriptions, images/
videos, reviews and more in a single
business-user-friendly place

Best-in-class marketing technology integrated

using a MACH architecture can simplify,
improve, or outright enable all of this in a
way that your existing legacy stack cannot.

Get MACH Ready 7

Sales others. Emphasize things like the ability to
deliver features faster, run A/B tests easily, and
The next area for buy-in: your CRO and/or react to the market more quickly. And especially
Head of Sales. for this group, highlight the ability to “rip and
replace” areas of the site on a modular basis,
The list of advantages may not be as long for rather than needing to completely replatform,
the Sales & Revenue departments, but they when it’s time for upgrades or changes.
are among the most impactful improvements
the business will see and are often a crucial
element in gaining CEO and CFO buy-in
down the line. Getting their support early
will provide a strong wind at your back.

For the bookings-focused team, demonstrate

how this technology can help automate
redundant and mundane tasks for the sales
team, how it can streamline the sales cycle
and allow the sales team to focus on what they
do best (build relationships, grow customer
counts, and close sales). Over time, data
from the various components can be stitched
together to give a true single view of the
customer in a CRM for the sales team.

Digital/Product Team

In many organizations, the CDO/CPO/Head of

Product is a make-or-break stakeholder. Their
team sits at the center of so many crucial and
overlapping activities, their pain points are often
a side-effect of another group’s primary pain,
and they bear a lot of the brunt of blowback
when things go sideways. Getting digital or
product team buy-in doesn’t just support the
business case— they’re arguably the single
most important group to have onside when
you go to do the actual transformation work.

Start by breaking down the dependencies

caused by your monolithic legacy platform.
Focus on how a MACH architecture will enable
the organization to form self-serving teams
that can build and release without waiting on

Get MACH Ready 8

Development/Technology
The penultimate stakeholder is your CIO/CTO/
Head of Engineering. More often than not,
these folks hold the real keys to a yes or a no.
They’re facing the biggest effort in making the
change, and they’re likely facing some of the
greatest pain of having to manage and support
technologies that aren’t driving the business, or
their careers, forward.
Fortunately, MACH architectures can also offer
this group the most significant and abundant
benefits. Moving to MACH will mean your
technical teams can:
• Automate workflows and improve
deployments via devops
• Scale as needed with benefits of
the cloud
• Future proof your stack with an API-first
approach
• Decouple front-end and back-end with a
headless approach
• Accelerate the development lifecycle with
reusable components
• Reduce complexity and technical debt
often found with monolithic platforms with
a simplified architecture and codebase
• Improve the developer experience,
reducing turnover costs and ensuring
stability in your most crucial roles and
operational areas
There are no small items on this list. Each and
every one is a pain point your team knows,
and knows well. Alleviating even one would be
a major win, but the ability to find permanent,
workable solutions for all? Undeniable.
Get MACH Ready
But while your technical teams arguably have
the most to gain, they also have some of the
biggest fears. It’s important to have conver-
sations about these concerns from the
get-go. What does this mean for their people
(adjusting team size, upskilling, and change
management)? What does it mean for their
ways of working, both internally and how they
work with vendors? How will shifting their top
priorities away from “keeping it up and running”
to “supporting evolution” alter their operational
philosophy? Speak frankly about these
concerns early on to gain buy-in, and
to ensure you’ve identified pain points and
change management concerns for later on in
the process.
With the technical department on board, you’ve
reached the final group. Time to bring the busi-
ness case to the Executive Leadership Team—
more specifically, to your CFO and CEO.
Executive Leadership (CFO and/or
CEO)
Now that you’ve secured the buy-in from
other teams in your organization, the next
step is to put to paper why this is important
to the company’s strategy, how it benefits the
customer and bottom-line, and what resources
are needed to make it successful. You’ll
generally need to include financial metrics
like ROI, TCO, CLV and more. Each one of
these is listed out below in more detail.
• Return on Investment (ROI) - ROI
measures the amount of profitability
returned on the initial investment. For
most implementations, your break-
even point (100% ROI) should take
in the range of 6-18 months.
9
 • Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) -
TCO is exactly what it sounds like: the
total cost of the products and services
over the lifetime of their use. It goes
beyond the dollar value of a contract
and takes a more holistic view of costs.
Calculating TCO in a MACH world
requires a more nuanced approach;
refer to this masterclass and this
guide to help you build your case.
• Customer Retention/Churn - Customer
retention refers to your ability to retain
customers over a given period of time.
Since acquisition is typically quite
costly, a high customer retention rate
is desirable— relying on a returning
customer base instead of constantly
acquiring new customers is a much
more cost-efficient approach.
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) - CLV
measures the value your customer
brings to the organization not just in a
single purchase, but over the lifetime of
their relationship with your business.
To calculate many of these metrics, there
should be some high-level projections on
Get MACH Ready
the anticipated incremental revenue and
net income produced by the change. We
emphasize incremental here as shifting revenue
from one platform to another doesn’t equate to
ROI, but the additional lift generated from the
change is what drives value for the business.
Use your current legacy platform KPIs
(key performance indicators) as a baseline
and determine how the new technology
can incrementally benefit each KPI.
Next are associated costs, which can be
tempting to gloss over but need to be treated
with the same level of depth as the benefits.
False projections at this stage will sink the
project at a later stage— and by then it will
have cost more than just time and money.
Are there cancellation fees for ending existing
contracts early? What kind of retraining
programs do your teams (especially on the
technical side) need and what will they cost?
Will you need to hire for new roles? There are
a host of considerations to be made here.
It’s important to note the period of time where
duplicate costs are being incurred for the
10
legacy platform and new technology. Laying
out how long to expect both to be operating,
when to expect your legacy tech to be “sunset”,
and identifying any associated terms in existing
contracts is a vital step in the process.
In addition to these “hard”, easily measured
benefits, a migration to MACH often comes
with “soft” benefits that can be harder to
calculate. While they may resonate less with a
numbers-focused CFO, other leaders may pay
close attention to these benefits. This could
include things like business empowerment
(not needing to rely on dev for every change),
modern technology and processes that
help retain and attract new talent, speed
to market of newer features, reduction of
cross-functional dependencies, and more.
Your numbers may not be as definite for the
“soft” benefits, but don’t neglect to include
them in your business case because of that.
While the financial gains are significant and
compelling, it’s these soft benefits that can
pay the biggest dividends over time for the
business when switching to MACH, enabling
long-term growth as markets evolve.
With a clearly articulated business case
supported by financial models and buy-
in from departmental stakeholders, you’ve
given your executive stakeholders what they
need to approve the digital transformation
program. So what happens next?

One of the short-term benefits of MACH, since the architecture

is a microservices-based approach, is that it enables
companies to develop and deploy software much faster. In the
long-term, MACH architecture gives you the ability to scale,
compose and adapt rapidly, future-proofing your business.

Kelly Goetsch,
Chief Strategy Officer, commercetools

Get MACH Ready 11

Part 3:
Set the Stage
for Success
With the leadership and decision-making team
aligned around the business case and the
organization committed to making the move to a
MACH-based architecture, part three can begin.
Because you laid a strong foundation—working
through the business needs and gaining
support from key stakeholders—you’ll be in
a strong starting position, with team leaders
bought into the change and how it will help
them in their jobs. But there are still a number
of important considerations, actions, and steps
to ensure the program is a success.
From rallying internal team members (not just
the leaders) to assessing skills gaps to ensuring
you have clear timelines, this is your chance
to prepare, plan, and proactively adjust so that
your entire business is primed for a successful
transition. First up: aligning on timing.
Timeline
There are two big questions at the outset of
any project:
1. How long will this take?
2. When will I see value?
Get MACH Ready
In your initial discussions with stakeholders,
you identified expectations around the length
of project and time to value. But let’s dig in a
little deeper on approaches you can take to
transition to MACH, weighing business priorities
against time to value and benefit of
the approaches.
A popular approach to launching new
technology is to create an MVP, or Minimum
Viable Product. MVP is the concept of building
a product (for example, a website) that is simple
(minimum) that customers can use (viable).
When possible, taking an MVP approach allows
companies to release a new experience, get
feedback, and make ongoing iterations to
perfect the product rather than building too
much at once that might miss the mark.
Some popular examples of MVPs include
AirBNB and Uber. Both started out as
smaller products and after initial learnings
and validations, were each able to grow their
experiences into the behemoths they are today.
Even large and established brands may find
this the best option for things like entering
new markets, launching new products, or
replatforming simple or smaller market offerings.
12
Taking an MVP approach might not be feasible
for some, especially in cases of “lift and shift”
from a legacy platform, where a like-for-
like migration is needed to ensure customer
expectations are met. In these cases, we’d
still recommend reviewing all features and
functionality to justify what needs to move over
on day 1 versus a future iteration.
Another option is the so-called Strangler
Approach, where parts of the legacy platform
are “strangled” out as new technologies are
incrementally added in. This approach reduces
risk by limiting how much is in flight at once,
and it concentrates change management and
effort around a central, usually high-value area,
giving teams limited scope while providing a
high-impact result.
Common use cases here would be replacing
on-site search and discovery, swapping to
a new checkout and payments experience,
or taking a content-first approach to starting
with MACH. Each of these doesn’t require a
complete replatform, but can drastically improve
operations, customer experiences, or both,
leading to an outsized ROI for effort.
Biting off smaller pieces can make the move to
MACH more doable for almost any company,
but keep in mind that it does often add to the
timeline and can impact costs.
The final option you may be considering is the
Big Bang Approach, aka a full replatform.
It might sound the most daunting—tackling
everything all at once—but for some brands, a
whole-system switch can actually be the most
straightforward option. Trying to work with legacy
and homegrown solutions can make an MVP
or Strangler Approach more complicated, and
especially if you’re facing a contract expiry and

Adopting a phased approach to MACH readiness can offer

substantial advantages. It enables companies to methodically
plan their transition, leverage the appropriate frameworks and
tools, and minimize potential risks. Pro Tip: Concentrate on
one element at a time. That ensures a successful integration
and maximizes the value of your investment. A step-by-step
approach guarantees each component is robust and effective
before advancing to the next.

Jasmin Guthmann
Head of Corporate Communications, Contentstack

Get MACH Ready 13

know you’ll be looking to shift off of your current
solution in the near future, a full replatform
would be a wise choice.
(One thing to keep in mind: Even if you’ve opted
for option 1 or 2, there’s often a medium-sized
bang required at some point to fully remove
yourself from the legacy technology in the end.)
In all of these cases, a knowledgeable system
integrator or professional services team can
recommend what the best approach would be
Get MACH Ready
based on the unique needs of your business.
Their expertise is in enabling brands like yours
throughout the transformation process, and they
can guide and support your approach to help
you meet your business goals.
One last piece of advice here: identify quick
wins and celebrate often. As you release and
iterate on the new technology, it will keep
your team motivated and build confidence in
stakeholders of the strategic direction.
14
 MVP (Minimal Viable Product) The ‘Strangler’ Pattern Big Bang

Replace parts of the legacy

Build the simplest viable solution A full replacement of an entire
Description platform over time, adding in new
that add or create value. platform or system at one time.
technologies incrementally.

• Replacing specific customer

• Entering new markets
• Launching new products
• Replatforming simple or smaller
market offerings
Most suitable for
• Proof of concept for stakeholder
buy-in
• Making incremental moves
• Controlling TCO
experience tools (e.g., on-site
search and discovery)
• Preparing operational
• When a platform contract is
infrastructure for broader
expiring or a platform is moving
transformation (e.g., adding a
to end of life with an inflexible
PIM or OMS)
end date
• Enabling custom experiences
• When an incremental approach
for guests
to replacing a legacy and
• Providing marketing team with
homegrown solutions Is too
control and autonomy
complicated or risky
• Allowing for a roadmap to be
• Launching the most “different”
developed, and internal systems
experience, not focused on
to become micro-services and
feature parity
roll out over time
• Offering a lower-risk approach
for stakeholders and project
sponsors

• Entering new markets

• Replacement of a single tool
tied to an existing platform or
Least suitable for operational infrastructure
• A ‘lift and shift’ from a complex
legacy platform
• Launching new products
• Launching a complete MVP
• Replatforming simple or
solution (e.g. new market, brand,
smaller market offerings
or product line)
• Preparing operational
• A ‘lift and shift’ from a complex
infrastructure for broader
legacy platform
transformation (e.g. Adding a
PIM or OMS)

Time to Market Moderate Urgent Flexible

Scope of Change Moderate Incremental Complete

Innovation and Feedback

Rapid Iterative Long-term
Cycle

Customer Expectation
Manageable Important Critical
Management

Risk Tolerance Moderate Low High

Legacy System
Moderate High Low
Dependency

Resource Availability Moderate Limited Abundant

Budget Constraints Moderate Low High

Get MACH Ready 15

Defining Success
The business benefits come from the work
being done, but there are important steps
here. You likely set targets in your initial
conversations around how fast you’re
able to build new features and what the
incremental revenue is for those new
features, you now need to figure out how
you measure and present progress toward
those targets back to your stakeholders.
First up, you’ll need to prepare a dashboard
to track key outcomes like ecommerce KPIs,
engagement, traffic—whatever your team
has prioritized as the metrics that matter
most—using analytics or other business
intelligence tools. Determine what’s being
tracked, how often you’re reporting on it,
when certain milestones are expected to be
hit, and how you’re tracking towards them.
your systems every day. Your CIO and
COO need to work closely together to figure
out who you need, what roles are shifting,
where the gaps are currently, and how many
people need to shift, retrain, and be hired.
Transforming Team Structures
Step one is figuring out what a successful
transformation team looks like. Think about
how you’ll need to work in the future, with
a PMO, Product, Architect, Devs, and QA
operating in lock-step in this new approach.
Stakeholders are a crucial part of the team, too,
and need to be present for demos to secure
ongoing buy-in and clarify expectations. The
challenge lies in striking the right balance:
casting too wide of a net with the wider
ecosystem can slow progress, while siloing

With a clear, shared, single line of sight

into the key drivers of success, you can
also set the parameters for risk mitigation.
Identifying cost creep or timeline delays
early on means you can course correct
before they derail the program.

People Resourcing

The final part of the prep stage is examining

your teams, their skills, and what your needs
will be going forward. A move to MACH is
a paradigm shift and some roles and job
requirements will change as part of that. With
effective up-front planning and management,
you can ensure your new system has the
right people and processes to succeed.

Remember, regardless of the technologies

you choose for your stack, people are the
ones implementing, operating, and optimizing

Get MACH Ready 16

 Moving to a MACH architecture isn’t just about implementing
new technologies; it’s a transformation in how your teams
work. There is effort in that, but when done correctly, it will
make your business more efficient, more agile, and more
successful.

Becky Parisotto
VP Retail and Commerce Platforms, Orium

leads to missed requirements and a lack of
buy-in. Focus on establishing a framework
that allows for quick, agile work while being
collaborative and incorporating perspectives
from SMEs and others. This approach
will empower your team to adopt an MVP
mindset and prioritize effectively for launch.
Culture Shift: Project vs Product
The second aspect of people resourcing
hinges on the nuanced difference between
a project- and a product-based culture
that comes with a move to MACH. Taking
advantage of training and organizing
around “products” helps shift towards the
domain or self-serve based approach.
Technology teams have been shifting from
a traditional project management model
that tends toward silos, to a more modern,
product-led approach, which fosters
greater cross-functional team operations.
This shift enables the transformation of
business processes, such as QA and project
management, within an agile framework.
Product-led organizes the team around
a product—in this case the technology—
where outcomes drive the prioritization of
work and the software development life
cycle shifts to agile from waterfall. Product
managers are key to this model, acting as
the conduit between business stakeholders,
customers, and the development team.
Even with a product manager to lead
prioritization, gather requirements, and own
the roadmap, having a delivery manager
or PMO is critical to success. Balancing an
agile approach, with a high-level project
plan that gives a sense of what to expect
can help align cross-functional teams. Some
organizations use PI Planning (SAFe), some
use Gantt charts in a typical project model,
but whatever approach is used, it’s critical to
identify dependencies and plan far in advance.
Another key question is how will quality be
managed? Is there a dedicated QA team? Will
testing be automated or done manually? Has
the organization taken a “shift-left” approach,
putting more ownership on developers to

Get MACH Ready 17

ensure quality? We strongly recommend taking
advantage of your transformation to change
how you approach quality, using automation
and establishing clear ownership of quality.
Leadership Support: An Ongoing Approach
The third step is making sure all involved
leaders remain bought into the approach.
Getting the initial groundswell of support helps
ensure the business case is successful in
getting approved, but once the project kicks off,
your job isn’t done.
We recommend creating an Executive
Steering Committee. It’s important to build a
strong approach with this group, anchored by
meetings that are frequent, well attended by
execs, and that feature representation from
key partners in the transformation (e.g., tech
partners, SIs, etc).
Get MACH Ready
When it comes to tailoring messaging to this
group, we’ve outlined a few areas to ensure
you’re building ongoing leadership alignment
and support:
1. Engage them early and often. Keep
them up to date on the latest milestones,
address any risks/concerns, and welcome
their feedback and questions.
2. Align with their individual priorities. You
likely already did this during the business
case, but are their priorities still the same?
Are there quick wins you can deliver
during the first phase to keep their ongoing
support?
3. Address any conflicting priorities. Is
the transformation a top priority for all? If
not, is there a risk of competing resources
working on multiple things? Identifying this
with your project manager and establishing
a clear escalation path (ideally to C-level)
can help align the team and avoid risks.
One part of ongoing updates—demos—is worth
highlighting. What may appear like a small
detail can make or break your ability to launch.
Leaders need to attend demos, be bought
in, and share feedback regularly to avoid any
potential late-stage surprises.
Finally, make sure your updates aren’t just
about the “project status”. The people part of
your change management approach is a core
piece of this as well. Where are you seeing
resistance? Where is collaboration sticky?
How is that move from waterfall to agile going?
How is tech upskilling going? These are often
the big topics to be discussed with important
business outcomes directly attached to them,
but get swept over by focusing on timelines and
technical dependencies. Include them in the
agenda every time you meet.
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Talent Assessment
The last piece of the people resourcing puzzle
is talent assessment— a critical step during the
discovery and kick-off phase, ideally completed
before kick-off. Below are some key questions
to have answered to ensure the team is
organized for success:
1. What are the roles and gaps that the
system integrator (SI) is covering?
2. Is there a plan to train and upskill current
employees to learn the new technology? If
so, is it baked into the project plan or will
it happen after go-live? Is there a budget
earmarked for this?
3. Is there any low-hanging fruit that can give
in-house associates small wins as they
learn the new technology?
4. Do you need to hire new talent that
understands this technology? If so, how
long will they need to ramp up before they
can begin to offset the work being done by
the SI?
Get MACH Ready
5. Do you need to replace associates who
don’t plan to learn the new skillset or can
they work in tandem?
6. Do incentives for teams need to change
to align with new approaches and support
manager and individual contributor buy-in?
7. What will the role of the SI be after go-
live? Will they remain on, move to a staff
augmentation model, or ultimately hand
off ongoing support and optimization to
employees at your company?
One of the benefits of the product-led versus
project-based operating model is that it
generally calls for an ongoing budget to support
the product, versus start-and-stop project
funding. Project-based funding poses risk in
that if ongoing support and development is
needed, it can leave the sponsor going back
to leadership asking for more money or having
to say “no” to new features with a half-baked
product. Because of this, it’s critical to make
sure your existing team members are ready
to take on new work or that you can find
necessary offsets to continue working with a
system integrator or third party.
19
Part 4:
Make it MACH
With the preparation stage complete, you’re
ready to start making the move to MACH. If
you’re being thoughtful about how you do this,
this isn’t the start at all: you’ve been doing some
of the hardest and most important work of the
transition in the earlier stages. But this is where
the rubber hits the road, so to speak— it’s go
time, and all your systems need to be ready.
Change Management
The first aspect of change management hinges
on returning to the “why”. All parties involved
should already understand the importance of
the work, but be ready to revisit that reasoning
throughout the project to bolster buy-in. Keep
teams in the loop so they know what to expect
and by when, and highlight wins and feature
releases as a regular part of your discussions to
boost perceptions.
While a great deal of change management
hinges on people and communications, the
nuts and bolts of the transformation can’t be
overlooked. Risk mitigation and prioritization
are key parts of change management, too.
Consider your must have versus nice to have
lists. Are there features that can be deferred
to a future iteration if needed, due to time or
Get MACH Ready
budget constraints? Identify them up front and
prioritize the work accordingly.
Similarly, are there workarounds if an
integration gets too complex or drawn out? For
example, rather than integrate PIM in your MVP,
could a script be run with product information
and images? What can you do to support
speed-to-market to get customer feedback
and see ROI sooner while the longer term
integration is being worked on?
Effective change management requires you
to a) clearly identify the objectives of your
program, and b) deeply understand current
operations. Digital transformation is a fluid,
evolving thing, and being able to adjust on the
fly to changing circumstances is only possible
when you have deep contextual understanding.
Maegan Murphy, Retail Technology Lead at
Orium, specializes in change management and
boils down her recommendations to these three
focus areas:
1. Rally the leadership team. There’s no
faster way to kill progress than to hear
powerful voices nay-say it. If members of
the leadership team aren’t bought in, and
their communications about the new
20
 technology are negative or dismissive,
you’re fighting an uphill battle at best.
2. Find your daily super-user. Daily
users aren’t usually heavily involved
in the lifecycle of a large-scale digital
transformation, but their involvement is
key to your change management strategy.
These super-users are the day-to-day
platform users that the rest of the team
leans on when they can’t figure things
out. Get these superusers involved,
trained, and convinced of the benefits as
early as possible; they will be your best
advocates for widespread adoption.
3. Document your own training manuals.
The training documentation that comes
with your new platform is great for
general how-tos, but it’s likely you will be
customizing and configuring your tech to
serve your business needs. Invest time
in mapping out new processes, where
the technology is involved, and how it’s
used to suit your business’ needs.
Step 1: Planning Ahead
What APIs will be used? Is there document-
ation? Are teams staffed and prepared for the
integration? Are there alternatives in earlier
phases if integrations aren’t ready (e.g., script
versus integration)? What are your priorities,
and what dependencies exist that you need to
have in place before you can begin executing
towards them (e.g., getting data models set)?
Step 2: Data Mapping & Documentation
Ideally, these should be in place 2 weeks in
advance of any implementation, to ensure you
have all the information set and ready for teams
to start work with all the resources
they need.

Order of Operations

The final piece of the MACH transition puzzle is

here: what happens when?

With a monolithic implementation, your order

of operations isn’t much of a concern, since
the whole system is more or less locked in
place. But the freedom and flexibility you
get with MACH architectures also means
it’s possible to put the proverbial cart before
the horse when you’re setting up your tech
stack. A little up-front planning, however,
and you’ll be able to avoid the potential
pitfalls of an out-of-order implementation.

Get MACH Ready 21

Step 3: Kick-off Step 5: Start Sprinting!

You want to cast a wide net for this. Have
all stakeholders and cross-functional teams/
vendors/integration teams involved— ideally
in person. The purpose of this session is to
align on proposed scope, establish norms
(RACI, agile processes, cadences), and
identify next steps with each team. As part of
that you’ll want to interview stakeholders for
areas of focus and their vision of success.
And remember: kickoff isn’t just about the
project, it’s about the team. The connections
you make between team members can
have a dramatic impact on team success.
The Pre-Mortem Meeting
One great kickoff option is the
“pre-mortem” meeting. It’s a
look at what could go wrong
at the outset of the project—
instead of at the end, when you
can no longer take preventative
measures. This gets at fears
that people have, helps to
understand challenges earlier in
the project, and mitigates risk on
a number of fronts.
You’ve planned the work, now it’s time to
work the plan. Start executing your Stand
up, Sprint Planning, Backlog Prioritizing,
Demo/Sprint Review, and Retro practices
right away, and hold to the agreed upon
cadences to maintain alignment and meet
the expectations you agreed to in Step 3.
This is obviously the lengthiest step in terms
of time, and no matter how perfectly you’ve
planned your transformation, you’re likely
to experience some set-backs during this
period. Making adjustments and being able
to remain agile throughout this stage hinges
on successfully working through the first four
steps. With the knowledge and alignment of
priorities, the shared context and systems in
place, and the agreed-to norms and processes,
you’ll be able to triage issues as they arise.

Step 4: Sprint Zero

This is your prep and discovery deep-dive

phase, aka the work of getting everything set
up, and it happens between kick-off and the
actual start of the new tech implementation.
You’ll need 1-2 weeks to get technical
environments set up, get JIRA set up, get
the process and systems in place to ensure
all those agreed-to norms can be met.

Get MACH Ready 22


MON TUE
Sprint Planning
4 hours max, target 1 1/2-2 hours
Daily Scrum
Max 15 minutes
Backlog Refinement
1-2 hours
Step 6: UAT & Go-live
As you near the end of your sprints, it’s time
to start thinking about launch planning. For
some, this step can feel like standing at the
cliff’s edge, but as with everything in this
guide, preparation makes all the difference.
Perform a full end-to-end with stakeholders
and hold a go/no-go meeting— is everything
in shape to launch, or are there too many
lingering what-ifs and pieces not operating
correctly to launch safely? Did your launch
plan have any holes in it that need to
be resolved? What contingencies are in
place for if something goes awry?
Where possible, perform a soft launch not
exposed to customers until proper “smoke
testing” has been validated. Where it makes
Get MACH Ready
Sprint Schedule
WED THU FRI
Backlog Estimating Retrospective
15-30 minutes, as needed hours Max 3 hours, target, 1/2-1 hours
Prioritization
Sprint Review
Max 2 hours, tagret 1 hour
sense, roll out the new experience to a
smaller subset of traffic via A/B testing, pilot
groups or other means that allow you to
ramp up as you gain confidence. The idea
here is to mitigate risk by testing in stages
to provide both a buffer against issues and
the confidence for moving on to Step 7…
Step 7: Launch and Post-launch
The big day is here. The time has come. It’s
go-time.
Launches can be stressful, but a stress-tested
launch plan goes an extremely long way to
minimizing risk and keeping the team on track
for success. As long as you’ve done your
homework, almost any hurdle on the day can
be overcome with a focused, aligned team and
a clear plan of action.
23
Where things get truly interesting is Day 1 of
your new platform or system. What happens
after the launch?

The answer is simple: Optimize, optimize,

optimize.

Very few—if any—launches will be flawless,

so it will be important to identify any quick
enhancements or bug fixes needed to fine
tune the experience. You should generally
plan for at least 1 sprint for this, but be ready
to be flexible as this is the most crucial time
for ensuring the success of your launch, and
you need to be agile in how you manage
and respond to any priority updates.

Even before you’re through the immediate

post-launch window, start obsessing over
the metrics. Often, issues can be identified
through analytics long before you hear from
customers, and holding regular business
review meetings can make sure your
investment is on track to hit its goals.

Get MACH Ready 24

Part 5:

Next Steps

Congratulations! You’ve successfully navigated and get ahead of competitors by running

the complex, exciting, challenging, growth-
enabling path of transitioning your business to a
MACH architecture.
The good news is abundant: first and foremost,
you’ll never have to replatform again. You’ve
also made an important change that will
empower your brand to seize opportunities
when they arise, keep pace with changing
market norms and consumer expectations, and
unlock new growth channels for years to come.
experiments and trying new approaches.
Your SI can support ongoing optimization and
enhancement, and customer success managers
at each vendor can help you use their solutions
to the full potential.
With the right tools you can explore new
channels, new business models, maybe even
new geographies— and you now have the right
tools at your disposal.

But how do you keep the momentum going?

How do you optimize the investments you’ve
made, and even more challenging, how do you
make the right next investments?

The answer is to follow the steps again— sort

of. Identify the outcomes or key results that
you’re looking to hit, and then build a product
roadmap for the features or enhancements that
will move the needle.

Launching a new platform is never a one-

and-done activity. Incremental improvements
are often where brands see the biggest gains
and with a MACH-based stack, your ability to
swap out solutions and make enhancements
has skyrocketed. Use that to your advantage

Get MACH Ready 25

Conclusion

Making the move to a MACH-based

architecture can drive enormous growth for
your organization in both the near and long
term. With a modular tech stack, you gain
control over your omnichannel capabilities
like never before, empowering your team with
best of breed tools and the ability to swap and
make changes as needed. You can create
experiences that meet customer expectations
and enable your business to keep pace with the
ever-evolving market landscape.

Shifting to a MACH approach isn’t as easy

as turning on the lights. Careful planning
in advance—with an emphasis on clear
communication and alignment across
stakeholders throughout your organization—
can ensure the entire company understands
and is ready for change. By following this guide,
you’ll be able to minimize the risks of a digital
transformation and maximize the ROI of your
move to MACH.

Get MACH Ready 26

 Orium is North America’s leading composable
commerce consultancy and system integrator.
Specializing in composable commerce, customer
data, and retail platform engineering, the biggest
brands trust Orium to build future-ready retail and
commerce experiences today.

commercetools, inventor of headless commerce, is

a digital software provider that empowers organiz-
ations to embrace innovation and thrive by providing
flexible APIs that enable an agile, customizable
commerce infrastructure at scale. Relied on by some
of the world’s most iconic brands, commercetools
enables continuous innovation by connecting digital
channels to physical stores, and optimizing every
new channel, from in-car and video content to AR/
VR and voice to IoT-enabled machines, as well as
future devices yet to be developed.

Contentstack – the Composable DXP leader –

empowers marketers and developers to deliver
composable digital experiences at the speed of
their imagination. Contentstack has the industry’s
highest customer satisfaction rating and is a
founding member of the MACH Alliance, advocating
for best-of-breed composable technology that is
Microservices-based, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS,
and Headless.

Get MACH Ready 27

Get MACH Ready 28