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Interview

MACH interview with Tikamoon

In this interview, Romain Piasecki, Product Owner at Tikamoon, provides an in-depth account of his company's journey with the Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, and Headless (MACH) approach.

Interview with Tikamoon
Written by Romain Piasecki
Product Owner at Tikamoon

In this in-depth interview, Romain Piasecki, Product Owner at Tikamoon, delves into the company’s exploration and adoption of MACH technology. From the initial stages of understanding MACH to the implementation of specific solutions, Romain provides a detailed account of Tikamoon’s journey. He discusses the challenges, successes, and future plans, offering a rich perspective on how MACH technology is shaping modern business solutions.

Tell me about your role and your experience with MACH technology?

Our MACH experience is really at its infancy. We started hearing about MACH and MACH Alliance last year. After learning more, we realized it aligns with our goals, especially around microservices and headless architecture. We’re now educating ourselves more on this topic, and I even went to Amsterdam in June to learn more. We’re considering MACH certified vendors for our next big solution, and it’s a starting point for our future implementations.

Did you have any MACH technologies in your stack already?

Yes, we’ve been using Algolia for search recommendations. Being a furniture reseller, we initially had a fairly antiquated local platform with tons of Excel files. We decided to upgrade to a more modern solution, choosing Akeneo for Product Inventory Management (PIM). This approach worked really well, and we’re thrilled with Akeneo. We’re now looking at more MACH solutions for order management and stock.

And did you find Akeneo through MACH Alliance or were you already looking at Akeneo before that?

We were exploring Akeneo before MACH Alliance because they are quite famous in France. They were the leader in this market, so it was a no-brainer to at least ask Akeneo, but we also met other vendors.

Is time to value a primary reason for looking at MACH technologies?

Definitely. MACH reduces risk and time. When implementing internally, you start from scratch, and it often takes three times longer than expected. With an external solution like MACH, the challenges are already solved. So yes, the biggest value is time to value and really reducing the risk in overspending.

How big is your development team?

We have an internal team of ten developers. They handle some issues and develop parts of the stack, but for massive projects like product and order management, doing it internally would take years and at a high risk. That’s why we prefer external solutions.

Does the rest of the business understand MACH's value?

They’re starting to get it, especially after our success with Akeneo. I’m the internal evangelist of MACH, and I believe it will change how we do things. Now, they at least recognize MACH alliance certified vendors, and we’re considering more MACH projects, like DAM and CMS solutions.

What would you tell someone considering a monolith route?

MACH solutions are better for business, addressing specific challenges and facilitating a best-of-breed approach. You’ll get more value and features more frequently. Our experience with Akeneo, especially the import and export feature, showed the benefits we would have struggled to develop internally.

Do you anticipate trade-offs for marketing users with MACH?

Possibly, but our marketing team is tech-savvy and used to dealing with many platforms. They might benefit from more exposure to MACH Alliance members, but overall, we expect more value and alignment with our web performance goals.

Are there boundaries for MACH?

I don’t see any real boundaries. MACH Alliance vendors cover many solutions. If there are limits, they’re on the business side, depending on readiness for MACH or preference for off-the-shelf solutions.

Are you tracking improvements with MACH?

We’re focusing on efficiency and speed but need to look at standard marketing KPIs like conversion and add-to-cart rates. We release new versions daily but aren’t strict about tracking performance uplift. Our major focus is making sure we improve our processes and deliver results more efficiently.

What would you ask others on a similar MACH journey?

I’d like to know the most difficult part of the MACH journey and the most complex MACH component to implement. Understanding these aspects would help us evaluate and prepare better for our ongoing journey with MACH technology.

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