Mastek and CORT Business Services won the 2026 ISG Paragon Partnership of the Year award for North America. The recognition highlights a decade-long strategic alliance focused on digital transformation and measurable business outcomes.

The partnership, which began with application modernization, has evolved into a comprehensive engagement spanning digital engineering, AI-led transformation, and managed services. The award was accepted at the ISG Paragon Awards North America 2026 ceremony on September 24, 2026.

Key performance metrics from recent initiatives

A significant component of the recent collaboration involved the launch of CORT Furniture Outlet, a B2C eCommerce platform designed by Mastek. The platform's immediate impact on key digital metrics is summarized below:

Evolution of the partnership

The relationship between Mastek and CORT has progressed through several distinct phases over the last ten years:

• Initial phase: Application modernization and digital commerce transformation.
• Expansion: Strengthening customer experience across B2C, B2B, and international markets.
• Current focus: Embedding AI across customer journeys, engineering, and operations to accelerate decision-making.

The partnership is now advancing toward an AI-led business transformation roadmap. This includes exploring a "Services as Software" model that combines AI, automation, and reusable digital capabilities to deliver technology services with greater speed and scale.

Executive commentary

Sourabh Mukherjee, President of Americas at Mastek, stated that the decade-long relationship reflects strong leadership and a shared commitment to business outcomes. Dennis Crawford, VP of Product Development at CORT, noted that Mastek has been a strategic partner in navigating complex technology challenges and modernizing digital capabilities.

What the numbers show

The data from the CORT Furniture Outlet launch indicates a strong correlation between technical deployment and immediate commercial traction. The 69% increase in purchase volume alongside a 37% rise in conversion rates suggests that the new platform not only attracted more visitors (evidenced by the 30% traffic growth) but also significantly improved the efficiency of converting those visitors into buyers. This divergence between traffic growth and volume growth points to enhanced user experience and checkout efficacy rather than mere traffic acquisition.

Mastek Limited announced its Services as Software (SaS) strategy, introducing AI-native solutions designed to deliver measurable business outcomes while significantly reducing enterprise software subscription costs. The move aims to shift organizations from traditional platforms to intelligent systems that simplify technology landscapes.

The strategy rests on three core principles: delivering tangible business results rather than usage metrics; transforming systems of record into systems of intelligence; and optimizing costs by replacing underused SaaS applications with AI-native experiences. Industry studies cited by the company estimate that enterprises actively use only around one-third of the SaaS applications they license.

First Proof Point: MastekCRM

As the initial implementation of this vision, Mastek developed MastekCRM, an AI-native platform that replaced its legacy CRM environment. Designed at the Mastek AI Center of Excellence, the solution was deployed internally using a Customer Zero approach to support global sales and marketing teams in live production. This internal validation confirmed the platform's scalability and usability before external rollout.

The company targets a 10% improvement in win probability by leveraging contextual data to transform the CRM from a static record-keeping system into a dynamic engine for intelligence and execution.

Strategic Vision and Executive Commentary

Umang Nahata, CEO of Mastek, emphasized that applying AI merely to accelerate existing processes yields limited benefits. He stated that organizations must reimagine processes and reskill talent, combining frontier models with contextual data to generate specific intelligence. Adoption requires close collaboration with sales teams to address grassroots nuances.

Ritwik Batabyal, CTIO at Mastek, highlighted the role of Mastek Hub, the company’s centralized knowledge platform. MastekCRM integrates customer case studies, project experience, and proposal assets to enable AI-driven decision-making. The platform assists sales teams in preparing for client meetings, improving forecasting, and capturing institutional knowledge automatically.

Expanding Beyond CRM

Mastek is extending this AI-native approach to other enterprise functions. The company has developed an AI-native Intelligent Document Processing solution currently replacing legacy SAP Procurement, Accounts Payable, and Expense Management applications. These solutions focus on faster, simpler processes and tangible cost optimization.

Nahata clarified that Mastek’s strategy is not to become a software product company but to represent a new services-led model where domain expertise, AI, data, and engineering converge to deliver continuously evolving business capabilities.

What the Numbers Show

The disclosure highlights a divergence between typical enterprise software utilization and Mastek’s proposed value proposition. By citing that enterprises use only one-third of licensed SaaS applications, Mastek positions its SaS model as a corrective to significant capital inefficiency. The targeted 10% improvement in win probability serves as a quantifiable metric for the operational impact of shifting from a system of record to a system of intelligence, suggesting that contextual data integration directly influences sales conversion rates.