MACHtales: Voices from “The Composable Conference” with Jared Smigelski of Benco Dental

Jared Smigelski isn’t a dentist, but he’s doing his part to improve smiles.

That’s not easy when you’re modernizing a digital ecosystem that’s been in place for decades. It’s a bit like performing dental work that’s long overdue. Where do you start? How do you ensure a pain-free outcome?

When I met Jared at “The Composable Conference” a few weeks ago, I was immediately drawn into his career arc at Benco Dental. He's spent the last 13 years supporting and incrementally improving his company’s digital properties, starting as a software engineer and moving into product and application ownership. 

Now, he and his team are embarking on a “composable cleaning” that aims to transform his company’s IT posture with a MACH architectural approach – a move that could improve Benco’s competitive agility while future-proofing it for the next wave of tech innovation.

“We’re a hundred-year-old company, maybe more, and the site’s been around since there’s been a site,” Jared said. “So it’s heavily monolithic, heavily legacy. All the logic is all over the place, and a lot of it lives on the front end, so we’re looking to pull a lot of that apart. In theory, MACH principles are perfect for what we’re trying to do.”

This initiative is exactly why Jared and two of his key practitioners were attending the annual MACH Alliance event in Chicago. They had already started down the composable path by assessing a move to the cloud, embracing an API-first approach, and even procuring several tools to begin “drilling” into their strategy. 

“We’re in a position right now where we’re integrating a lot of these tools that are already within the Alliance,” he explained, mentioning Bloomreach and Contentstack by name.

But going composable can be like pulling teeth, fraught with challenges and mired by the looming potential of failure. For Jared, the MACH Alliance community provided a bit of Novocain for his concerns, and hearing the successful use cases from other practitioners made him hopeful about their prospects. 

For me, this is a fantastic story and a compelling use case. First, it’s an opportunity to hear from a digital leader at the very beginning of his MACH journey, starting with an aging monolithic legacy system – and one that’s homegrown. It's brownfield with a bit of green on the edges. It’s also an example of an enterprise application within the B2B healthcare vertical, which gives it a differentiated spin from the typical retail examples we’re accustomed to in MACH. 

Finally, Jared’s frankness captured some of the real stakes at play when considering a composable path. In our chat, we delved into his selection of Contentstack as a CMS foundation and what influenced his decision. We also discussed how their roadmap for AI is already beginning to take shape as they consider the possibilities of a MACH-powered future.

Will it be easy to realize this vision? Not likely – and he knows this is a years-long gamble for both his team and the company. Getting there could, at times, feel like a mouth full of braces. 

But with the right planning, mindset, and execution, a more structured and (dare I say) beautiful smile awaits. 

Avoiding digital “tooth decay”

Benco is a storied brand in the dental industry. As the largest privately owned, full-service distributor of dental supplies, equipment, consulting, and equipment services in the US, it has a rich heritage built on almost a century of success. 

Founded by Benjamin Cohen, the company has remained family-owned and laser-focused on its mission of "delivering success smile after smile."​ Based in Pittston, Pennsylvania, Benco is also the nation's fastest-growing dental distributor with more than 50 regional showroom locations and five distribution centers servicing more than 30,000 dental professionals in all 50 states.

As you might imagine, this unabated growth is driving more dependency on Benco’s digital properties, which feature e-commerce shopping capabilities. And while legacy and longevity are key attributes for a brand, Benco’s aging website and infrastructure have been a key source of pain as it looks to scale. 

To avoid this digital “tooth decay” and get to the next step of digital transformation, Jared has embraced a composable strategy – and tapping the MACH Alliance and its community of expertise is one way he’s hoping to achieve success as he begins to execute.   

“The principles, they’ve been around since modern development architecture has been around,” he said, referencing the tenets of MACH. “But actually having some place that pulls it all together is really helpful. We’re here to try to learn more about these principles, get some actionable content when we go back, so we can implement a CMS successfully on the first try.”

The MACH community: A retainer for knowledge

As Jared mentioned, the goal of attending “The Composable Conference” was to seek insight and walk away ready to take action. The education piece continues to be a shining example of where the Alliance excels, and that came through in spades during the first day’s keynote sessions and focused workshops. 

That said, I spoke to a number of attendees who felt that the conference's content was on point, but that “actionable” component might not have been fully realized. This is one area where the Alliance can continue to improve its value to members and the market at large. 

This year’s session tracks did provide a clear and concise framework for attendees, allowing them to select a path that best fits their current status – from early-stage “MACH Curious” to “Active” or “Pro.” 

I asked Jared what sessions stood out for him and why they made an impact. 

“Hearing Andrew talk from Zoro on that first day, that keynote was really pertinent because we’re a similar company,” he said. “We’re a B2B selling to offices, and hearing about that transformation was truly impressive.”

He was referring to Andrew Goodfellow, CTO at Zoro – an online provider of tools, parts, and supplies. As CTO, Andy took attendees through the digital retailer’s early adoption of MACH, and how it ultimately enabled Zoro to go from 2 million SKUs to 15 million and double revenue. You can read more about it in my conference overview. 

Jared also mentioned how the use case for VF, the company behind brands like The North Face and Timberland, struck a chord. It was real and relatable, and gave him perspective on where things are at – and the potential for them to go off the rails. 

“They had a 1.0 version of a MACH approach, which is where I feel we’re at,” he reflected. “We’re kind of new to this, and you hear the candid truth about their story, right? He said it took them three years to release one site the first time, because they jumped in, rushed it, and didn’t do it right. So it’s cool to hear that other companies are having these same challenges.”

A new CMS crown with Contentstack

Benco doesn't have an actual CMS – and never has. Instead, they have what Jared described as a homegrown “CMS-like” solution. So the prospect of moving to a mature platform is novel… and even a little nerve-racking.

“I almost wish we could skip past that first phase where we picked the wrong one and we try to migrate to another,” he said, laughing. “We’re in the very first phase of this. We’ve never integrated a CMS.”

Jared mentioned that he had already settled on Contentstack, a composable DXP with a headless CMS as its foundation. While the platform already presented key advantages based on their goals, some soft attributes added confidence to his decision.

“We had some really good experiences with their sales team and technical folks,” he said. Relying on experienced voices has been key for Benco as early questions arose like, Where’s your data map? or Where’s your architecture diagram? They simply weren't prepared.

The MACH Alliance community has been pivotal to supporting education within the composable category, and platforms like Contentstack have helped bridge the awareness gap from the very beginning. “The Composable Conference” helps to crystallize things over a two-day period, but programs like rideMACH are shepherding the cause throughout the year with courseware, certifications, and real-world insights from people who have done the work. 

“This has been really helpful to see and get to connect with people who’ve had those experiences," Jared remarked, "and help talk through what you do the first time.”

Removing the legacy plaque to make way for AI

Composable is already proving its value as a key conduit for AI innovation and adoption. Enterprises that have a composable posture are arguably better equipped to shift, experiment, and deploy new AI solutions, and the MACH Alliance is focusing more attention on this – specifically with the advent of its new MACH AI Exchange.  

While Jared and his team are consumed with the elemental steps of their composable strategy, I asked him about AI and where it fits with his organization’s plans. From his perspective, he sees early gains within Benco’s content operations practice and how they leverage the new CMS.

“The biggest use case that comes right to mind for AI, especially in something like a CMS, is getting our titles, blog posts, articles, all that stuff SEO optimized,” he said, reflecting how humans aren’t the best at knowing how to game the algorithms for search. This is one way that AI could have a solid impact on performance in the near term.

But the future? With a composable architecture, Benco could certainly dive into the realm of more advanced personalization and optimization, akin to what Zoro achieved – something Jared and his team are eager to sink their teeth into.

Here’s five minutes of brain floss to sharpen your smile: