2026 MACH Impact Awards

Brand-led projects that demonstrate MACH principles in production and deliver measurable business impact.

Entry requirements:

• Live for at least 3 months
• Built using a multi-vendor composable approach
• Showing results from January 2025 onwards

Judging Criteria (Weighted)

1. Business Impact for the Brand (40%)
   Measurable outcomes (revenue, conversion, speed, cost, agility)
   Strong data to support with clear context and rationale
   Clear link between composable approach and results
   Total cost of ownership improvements (reduced maintenance, faster iteration)
   Customer experience impact (usability, satisfaction, reduced friction)
2. Composability in Practice (30%)
   Modular architecture
   Clear separation of concerns
   Interoperability via APIs/events
   Evidence of replaceability or extensibility
   Demonstrated scalability (traffic, markets, SKUs, or transactions)
3. Ecosystem Collaboration (20%)
   Multiple vendors working together
   Clear orchestration, no lock-in
4. Learning Value (10%)
   Patterns or lessons others can apply
   Activities or initiatives that encourage or support internal literacy
   Shared learnings through case studies, thought leadership etc

Clarifications:

1. Channel agnostic: Projects from any channel (B2C, B2B, B2B2C, marketplace) are eligible. Judges should assess impact relative to the channel's context.
2. Composable principles: Entries should demonstrate open, composable, connected principles rather than technical criteria.

Judging lens: "Does this deliver real business outcomes using composable principles in a credible, collaborative way?”

Example Winner: [European Retail Brand] implemented a composable architecture with four MACH-certified vendors (commerce, CMS, search, personalization), delivering 156% increase in mobile conversions, 40% faster page loads, and $8M in incremental revenue within 18 months. The modular approach enabled parallel market launches across 12 countries and reduced feature deployment from quarters to weeks, proving that best-of-breed composability drives both immediate ROI and long-term agility.

Deployed or actively piloted agentic solutions that show how autonomous systems are starting to work together across composable environments.

This track is for:

• Productised agentic capabilities that are live or in pilot
• Solutions that coordinate across multiple systems or vendors
• Real agents solving real problems (not just enabling infrastructure)

Judging Criteria (Weighted)

1. Agentic Capability & Innovation (50%)
   Autonomous or semi-autonomous agents operating across multiple systems
   Decision-making beyond rules-based automation
   Strong innovation roadmap showing how initial implementation unlocks future business opportunities (new use cases, expanded coverage, or compounding value)
   Clear line of sight from agentic capability to business strategy (how this enables competitive advantage, operational transformation, or customer value creation)
2. Execution & Impact (40%)
   Operational efficiency
   Improved experience or speed
   Reduced manual intervention
   Ecosystem Advancement (eg: cross-vendor coordination / contribution to shared frameworks or standards / reusable approaches)
   Customer experience improvements (usability, satisfaction, reduced effort)
3. Learning Value (10%)
   Patterns or lessons others can apply
   Shared learnings through case studies, thought leadership etc
   What obstacles did they encounter? What would they do differently next time? (build approach, integration complexity)

Judging lens: “Does this demonstrate both the importance of a strong composable foundation and tangible progress toward real-world agentic capability?”

Example Winner: [Global Fashion Retailer] deployed autonomous merchandising agents coordinating pricing, inventory, and promotions across three MACH vendors (commerce, PIM, CDP), automatically adjusting 50,000+ SKUs daily and reducing manual work by 60%. The system increased sell-through by 23%, cut overstock by 18%, and operates with human oversight for strategy while executing tactical decisions autonomously—proving that multi-agent coordination delivers measurable business outcomes in production.

Individuals or teams driving meaningful progress across the ecosystem.

You can nominate:

• End-user leaders
• Architects and technologists
• Strategists and consultants
• Community builders
• Rising leaders

Who can nominate: MACH Alliance members and MACH Ambassadors.

Judging Lens: “Does this individual or team demonstrate clear, recent impact in advancing open, composable, or agentic systems through actions, influence, and outcomes, not just their role or title?”

In practice: A strong Impact Maker nomination should clearly answer:

• What did this person or team actually do?
• What changed as a result?
• Who else benefited or was influenced?
• Why does this matter now?