In today’s fast-paced world of technology, businesses are looking for ways to meet and exceed the demanding needs of their customers. To stay competitive, MACH is becoming the top choice that provides them with the flexibility and scalability they need.

MACH architecture (Microservices-based, API-first, Cloud-based, and Headless) refers to a technological framework for building enterprise software in 2023 and beyond that helps organizations keep pace with customer behaviors. The MACH Alliance, consisting of more than 70 certified members, is a thriving community of independent technology companies that advocates for open, best-of-breed technology ecosystems.

What will be the direction of MACH in 2023? To give you more insight and help you stay ahead of the curve, we reached out to other MACH Alliance members and asked for their valuable insights and unique perspectives regarding the latest trends in the MACH ecosystem.

From the use of AI to improve the customer experience to the importance of delivering hyper-personalized omnichannel experiences, we will explore major trends MACH vendors expect to see from their customers and uncover the predictions for their areas of expertise in 2023.

Major trends in demand and expectations of MACH Alliance members’ customers

Incorporating brand values into messaging and communicating them effectively

“With more information at our fingertips than ever before, consumers, particularly Gen-Z consumers, are starting to base more of their decisions on how much their personal values align with a brand’s values. From social unrest to sustainability, what your company cares about matters, and incorporating your brand values into your messaging is a crucial way to connect with customers and build loyalty. Providing context and important information on how your organization runs or where your materials are sourced from establishes a deeper connection with your customer base, ensuring that your consumers feel comfortable and confident that the products they’re purchasing align with their personal values. In 2023 and beyond, brands and retailers who are able to effectively communicate what they’re passionate about are likely to see a boost in sales as more and more consumers prioritize ethical practices and sustainability when making their purchasing decisions. We expect to see more organizations incorporating their brand values into their product information and utilizing data platforms to better communicate their defining principles and processes.”

• Laetitia Korn, Senior Director, Regional Integrated Demand, Akeneo

No-code orchestration of MACH Alliance member technologies, a marketplace of MACH vendors, and more

“Some of the expectations from the MACH Alliance members will be:

• The ability to orchestrate various MACH Alliance member technologies in a no-code fashion 
• Alignment on standards for API inputs/outputs so that one vendor can be interchanged with another if there is a need 
• The adherence to the MACH Manifesto for Diversity in Tech 
• A marketplace of MACH vendors from which customers can purchase MACH technologies. 

This could theoretically be offered by an SI, an enablement platform such as AWS or Google, or even MACH Alliance itself.”

• Sana Remekie, CEO at Conscia.ai, MACH Alliance Ambassador

Migrating from monolith to headless architecture should be easier than ever

“The complexity and time required to implement the right technology can be a daunting task for many businesses. To overcome this, I believe customers will be expecting MACH vendors to provide not only clear guidelines on migrating from monolith to headless architecture but also outstanding support and services to overcome the transition challenge as quickly as possible.

In addition, I expect 2023 will be a year when businesses will strongly focus on operational excellence and efficiency; hence they will be looking for solutions that can help them deliver more with less.”

• Vojtech Boril, VP of Growth & Marketing, Kontent.ai

Much more focus directed toward the store

“Findings from the Pulse of Retail 2023 Report released at NRF’s Big Show in January (commissioned by MACH Alliance members Mercaux, Fluent Commerce, Commercetools, and Orium) show that composable architecture is important for 91% of retailers, yet only 2% claim to be “fully composable”. Additional to this is the big focus on deploying solutions that improve the in-store experience solutions such as Clienteling and Distributed OMS, which were recorded as high in the “Planning Phase.”

It’s not surprising that the customers of MACH Alliance members will inherently have a MACH-mindset, but what we expect to see in 2023 is much more focus directed towards the store. Business of Fashion highlighted why this might be in their annual report, The State of Fashion 2023, where they commented, “Another major, and growing, challenge is the rising costs of digital marketing as social media platforms become more crowded and competitive and new privacy regulations restrict customer targeting across digital channels.”

Retailers are recognizing the importance of stores as a crucial component of a seamless omnichannel shopping experience, as well as a cost-effective acquisition channel. To achieve this, they are implementing technologies such as Mercaux's in-store composable "Points of Service" platform to enhance the online-to-offline shopping experience and gather valuable data on customers' omnichannel journeys. This is achieved (in part) by extending the benefits of their MACH architectures and next-generation technologies, such as order management systems (OMS), into store.”

• David Miller, CMO, Mercaux

The ability to be agile to the changing market conditions

“Flexibility is the future of retail – and this is what the customers of MACH Alliance members demand and expect. When flexibility is inherent throughout a retailer’s business, it’s easy to adapt and evolve to new challenges, new behaviors, and new ways of shopping. 

To have this level of flexibility, retailers need an IT architecture that lets them create an ecosystem and workflows on their terms, based around what they need. Disruption is never going to end, and now one of the biggest things retailers need and want is the ability to be agile and nimble to the changing market conditions. 

And this is where software built with MACH principles plays a huge part. Having a MACH mindset means waving goodbye to monolithic, legacy solutions. One big monolithic service that tries to do everything (and more often than not fails) isn’t the answer. 

Instead, software built on MACH principles gives power and speed of evolution to retailers and lets them run their businesses on their terms. MACH Alliance members’ customers want this, and they want to stay ahead of the curve. They want the tech they use to work seamlessly and to help them deliver exceptional experiences for shoppers.”

• Jens Levin, Co-founder and CEO, Sitoo

Creating outstanding customer experiences and empowering customers across their entire journey

“Engaging customers and delivering deep value to them is essential to driving retention and repeat customers and fueling a healthy business in 2023. As a result, customers now expect seamless, proactive, and personalized interactions that are efficient at scale. This means that MACH Alliance members are expected — more than ever before — to show how they are able to help their customers reach business results that were not achievable due to legacy tech stacks and siloed data.  

Informed by the economic outlook, MACH Alliance members need to highlight why adopting MACH technology is key to engaging, nurturing, and empowering customers across the entire customer journey. The businesses that embrace MACH technology and unite their tools and resources to create outstanding customer experiences will win — and emerge stronger than ever.”

• Thorunn Devoy, Head of Partnerships, Talon.One

More pre-built, out-of-the-box vendor-integrated relationships

“Customers that are currently implementing tools based on MACH technology tend to have a higher maturity and can accept the longer procurement process and evaluation as they spend the time and effort to select multiple best-of-breed vendors.

That said, more and more partners are now shifting practices to be more MACH-focused to a wider set of buyers, but procurement is still more difficult and time-consuming than it needs to be. I would expect that customers will start to demand more pre-built out-of-the-box vendor-integrated relationships (i.e., CMS + DAM + CDP) in both evaluation/sales and service in order to simplify these processes to get started quickly while still gaining the benefits of long-term composability down the road.

Similarly, customers new to MACH may also struggle with the transition away from more creator-friendly tooling in favor of developer-centric approaches, so they will expect some innovation in balancing those needs.”

• Mark Demeny, Head of Product Strategy, Uniform

Collaboration between MACH alliance members

“I think we will see a much larger expectation of collaboration between MACH alliance members. There is a lot of content around composability and drawing on the skills/technology of multiple vendors in order to create the ideal solution. However, this not only requires integrated tech, but it also requires integrated support, solutioning, sales & account management.”

• Dan Spencer, Head of Partnerships (EMEA), Vue Storefront

Trends the MACH alliance members are the most excited about

Delivering diverse and hyper-personalized omnichannel experiences

“With advancements in technology and deeper insights into customer shopping behavior, delivering personalized shopping experiences is no longer a luxury but a need in order to stay competitive in 2023. Brands and retailers are starting to offer highly personalized product recommendations and customized experiences to their customers, which can build loyalty and drive sales as customers are more likely to make a purchase when they feel that an organization understands their needs and preferences. With 71% of consumers expecting companies to deliver personalized interactions, we expect software companies, particularly MACH Alliance members, to focus heavily on how to deliver diverse and hyper-personalized experiences through product information and customer data across every channel.”

• Laetitia Korn, Senior Director, Regional Integrated Demand, Akeneo

Composing intelligent experiences in a composable stack

“Conscia.ai offers an Experience Orchestration platform that enables Marketers to compose intelligent experiences across all channels in a composable stack. With forward-thinking organizations transitioning from monolithic/all-in-one DXPs to composable architectures, I'm very excited about the opportunity that this creates for Conscia.ai as the 'Brain' of the Composable stack.”

• Sana Remekie, CEO at Conscia.ai, MACH Alliance Ambassador

Artificial intelligence will be adopted across all phases of the content lifecycle

“When it comes to future trends in content management, I can’t choose anything but AI. With the current rise of ChatGPT and other AI technologies, I’m very excited to see how AI will change not only content creation but also other phases of the content lifecycle. I don’t foresee AI replacing SME copywriters and content editors but rather enabling them to create high-quality content faster. Who likes doing manual tasks in CMS, such as content categorization or labeling? I’m very excited and proud that we at Kontent.ai are already exploring different avenues to bring AI to CMS.”

• Vojtech Boril, VP of Growth & Marketing, Kontent.ai

The focus to improve checkout, the last step in a customer’s path to purchase

“Some of the most exciting developments we have seen in the past 6-12 months have been a focus by some retailers to improve the last step in a customer’s path-to-purchase – checkout. Seen by a lot of customers as the most painful part of the whole in-store experience, some customers of Mercaux have decided to start their transformation journey here rather than with the more popular in-store experience solutions such as Clienteling, Floor Runner, and Digital Fitting Rooms.

Given the business-critical nature of in-store transaction capabilities, Legacy POS is no longer relevant in the modern retail environment – basic functionalities, exceptionally high cost of ownership and slow upgrade schedules are prohibitive to a retail industry that needs to transform quickly.

As a result, retailers are now turning towards best-in-class composable architectures to bring a better in-store experience and deliver additional business benefits with speed and agility through Self-Service, Assisted-Service, and Checkout-as-a-Service solutions. This differentiates innovative retailers from their counterparts in an industry that is competing for customers. This exciting development introduces functionalities that have been long-awaited but impossible to make happen through Legacy POS, such as omnichannel Universal Basket creation (building a basket in-store of products across channels), fluid basket transfer between channels (supporting ROPO by creating a basket in one store and picking it up in another) and flexible fulfillment (a single transaction, fulfilled through multiple channels).

In fact, The Pulse of Retail found that 79% of retailers believe it is ‘highly important’ to transform their Legacy POS into a Next Generation solution.”

• David Miller, CMO, Mercaux

Retailers prioritizing investment in tech to give customers what they want

“Despite global economic uncertainty and fears around soaring levels of inflation, we know ambitious retailers are prioritizing investment in tech, and this is hugely exciting. People want seamless real-time cross-channel shopping, more effective and rewarding loyalty programs, to shop with brands who have a strong social conscience and who champion sustainability and flexibility so they can shop on their terms, when they want to and how they want to. 

More and more retailers are realizing that, in order to give their customers what they want, they have to unify their data and their sales channels – and this is exactly what Sitoo does. With Sitoo cloud-native Unified Commerce platform anchored by POS, retailers enable one 360° view of the customer experience. Allowing shoppers to start buying online and finish in store or vice versa in real-time 

Brave, courageous retailers who believe in creating the best customer experience want this and are prepared to make organization-wide system changes which is a mindset we love.”

• Jens Levin, Co-founder and CEO, Sitoo

Promotional solutions that deliver personalized and engaging customer experiences

“In today’s highly competitive landscape coupled with a “perilously close” economic downturn, we expect more businesses to emphasize customer retention and loyalty using promotional solutions that deliver personalized and engaging customer experiences. We are excited to see more enterprises using our Promotion Engine in order to build and execute rich and flexible loyalty and promotions campaigns that meet — and exceed — customers’ unique needs in 2023.  

Promotions will be essential in enabling businesses to adopt an omnichannel approach to customer engagement, uniting retail and ecommerce teams in organizations to think more holistically about creating unique CXs.  

In terms of loyalty programs, we expect more enterprises that own multiple brands to switch to group loyalty programs — loyalty schemes that connect all their brands, creating a frictionless customer experience for loyal customers in the entire ecosystem of the business.”

• Thorunn Devoy, Head of Partnerships, Talon.One

More approaches for composable and embeddable UIs from headless vendors

“MACH approaches to technology have enabled some major advances in how quickly development teams can bring infrastructure and projects live, but they have often left marketers and content creators relying on developers for more common tasks.

Obviously, Uniform is interested in Digital Experience Composition as a way of addressing this imbalance, but at the same time, we can hope to see some more approaches for composable and embeddable user interfaces from headless vendors to ease integration – not just from the technology perspective, but ensuring consistent user experiences across different tools that are integrated as part of a larger MACH effort.

Similarly, I would personally like to see accessibility start to be more on the forefront of vendors' roadmaps. Given that channel-agnostic content is the core of MACH approaches, improving accessibility would be far easier (compared to layout-centric systems), and therefore as an industry, we should have fewer excuses not to do this work.”

• Mark Demeny, Head of Product Strategy, Uniform

Shift to a multi-channel, customer-centric, front-end first approach

“We are seeing a trend from customers of moving from a platform-centric, back-end first approach. To a multi-channel, customer-centric, front-end first approach. What this means in practice is that customers are beginning to realize that the CX magic, which ultimately impacts conversion and the bottom line, all happens at the front end. So why has everyone been starting with the back end and working forward? This shift was confirmed by Gartner, who said, 'To orchestrate and unify wider customer journeys, organizations are taking control of the presentation layer, making it the point of integration of capabilities, instead of the commerce platform'.”

• Dan Spencer, Head of Partnerships (EMEA), Vue Storefront

In conclusion

To help you predict the direction of MACH in the upcoming year, here are some significant trends that the MACH Alliance members expect to see across their areas of expertise:

• Incorporating brand values into messaging and communicating them effectively will be crucial to connect with customers
• No-code orchestration of MACH Alliance member technologies and the alignment on the standards for API inputs/outputs will be some of the expectations
• Migration from monoliths to headless architecture should be easier than ever
• The focus of retailers will be directed to the store much more
• To be agile to the changing market conditions, retailers will need IT architecture that lets them create an ecosystem based on their needs
• Providing seamless, proactive, and personalized interactions at scale to empower customers across their entire journey will be key
• More pre-built, out-of-the-box vendor-integrated relationships will be in demand in both evaluation/sales and service
• Collaboration between MACH Alliance vendors will be increasing not only on the tech but also contracting, customer enablement, and support side

We hope this blog has provided you with valuable insights into the trends that will be shaping the future of MACH in 2023. Are there any trends you expect? Tweet us at @kontent_ai!