UNIFIED COMMERCE
This is a writing sample from Scripted writer Christina Jarvis
As reported by Gartner, 89 percent of businesses will soon expect to compete
primarily on customer experience. Customer experience, over price and product, is
becoming a key differentiator of the brand. However, as retailers add more channels
to sell, their customer experience for each customer touchpoint becomes more
difficult to manage.
Many retailers realize the need for channel-wide seamless customer experience. Many
admit, however, that they are not doing it well at the moment. They don't have the
technological capabilities necessary to make it happen.
Because of looming bad experiences, retailers are looking for unified commerce with
fear of customer churn. In this article, we're going to explain what is unified
commerce and its merchant benefits.
Unified Commerce vs, Omnichannel
Unified trade, as defined by the Boston Retail Partners (BPR) report., prioritizes
customer experience by leveraging a single trading platform. A single internal channel
platform rids operating in their own silos. Instead, merchants leverage a single,
centralized, real-time platform for all points of customer engagement.
Some may think that unified commerce sounds a lot like omnichannel but that is not
the case. Omnichannel also aims to create a consistent customer experience across all
channels of sales. Merchants, however, have separate systems for each channel. They
are often stand-alone systems. This leaves their own silos operating in disparate
systems. This leads to organizations sharing inconsistent and inaccurate data. There is
no single, easily shared version of master data.
Unified commerce depends on a single data of veracity. It is accessible to the
customer and merchant whenever and wherever, when data is shared in real-time.
That's unified commerce vs. omnichannel's value.
What are the Advantages?
Unified commerce has many advantages. They all come back, however, to create a
better customer experience. Present day shoppers want to buy, receive, and return
anywhere. They want to return or exchange in-store if they buy online. If an in-store
item is out of stock, the employee should be able to order something for them from
the online database.
Shoppers also need product information that is accurate and consistent when
shopping online. They should see the availability of inventory throughout the stores.
Product descriptions throughout the channels should be detailed and consistent.
Recommendations for a product should be relevant and timely based on the past
history of purchase. Some of the main advantages of unified commerce that help
create a better customer experience include:
• Inventory Visibility
• More Delivery Options
• Simplified Multichannel Options
To learn more about real-time inventory and order integration between your sales
channels and fulfillment channels, check out the articles listed below.
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