What is unified commerce? Unified commerce is a single platform that provides a consistent experience across all channels. This gives customers the ability to purchase products through any channel they choose, whether it’s in a store, online, or through a mobile app. Unified commerce provides a single view of the customer and a single inventory, making it easier for customers to purchase products and for brands to track sales.
The success of an ecommerce platform relies solely on the impression it leaves in the minds of its customers during their buying journey. Despite offering a smooth experience across all platforms, organizations following the omnichannel platform are unable to meet customer demands. Typically this occurs because every portion of an omnichannel platform is a stand-alone component. To solve this issue, online retailers need to shift towards the concept of unified commerce on a headless commerce platform.
In a research report issued by Business Wire, 86% of investments in retail software focus on unified commerce. Despite concepts such as multi-channel or omnichannel software, the retail technology industry is quickly changing towards unified commerce to improve the shopping experience. Perhaps the 2019 report by Ayden stating that $3T is available within the industry is what motivates organizations to adopt unified commerce practices. In this blog, explore the concepts and importance of unified commerce and see if it fits your organization.
What is Unified Commerce?
When implementing a unified commerce approach, organizations connect business systems such as order fulfillment, inventory management, customer relationship management, and point of sales through a single platform. The back-end and the customer-facing end connect via a single platform. Then, data is gathered from different points and stored in a single place. Unified commerce leaves behind no differences in the data received by the organization.
Why Implement Unified Commerce?
Organizations can keep an eye on the performance of each channel with their data stored in a single place. Therefore, reduces the time required to make business decisions because of the presence of a unified approach to the data. Utilizing the comprehensive and easy-to-understand insights received through such data, organizations understand and identify customer needs better.
Ultimately, the goal of every commerce platform is to improve the interaction between their platform and the customers. By implementing the unified commerce strategy, interactions are improved and hurdles or issues are minimized. In fact, research conducted by PwC indicates that 52% of customers pay more for a product if they anticipate an easy shopping experience. Implementing unified commerce is the most efficient way to approach capturing the above-mentioned 52% of the market.
Components of Unified Commerce
The process of adapting and implementing unified commerce is not a straightforward task. In fact, there are four different components that make the whole process workable.
Interactions
Speed, consistency, personalization, and ease of use are key to customers in the ecommerce and retail industry. Whether your customers purchase your products online or in person, your services must be consistent. The unified commerce approach allows you to cater to your customers.
Storing customer payment details on your platform will reduce the hassle of entering the same information repeatedly. This guarantees a smoother and more efficient customer experience.
Channels
Unified commerce ensures that customers do not face hurdles while going through the product catalog or buying items on different channels. They must go through a consistent number of steps and information about the product on mobile and desktop applications to make sure that there is smooth sailing for customers while shopping.
For example, if you are offering a 50% sale on specific items on the mobile application, the sale should be able to be redeemed on the desktop version as well.
Systems
Each part of the ecommerce platform such as POS, orders, finances, reports, and data needs to be unified. The customer end of the platform must connect with the back-end platform to a centralized platform.
For example, the sizes available in stock, and prices of the products across different channels of your ecommerce platform should be consistent. Therefore, change in one system should reflect in all the others.
Products
Presenting accurate product information in a unified and consistent manner across all channels is essential to create the best customer experience. The inventory management tool must be efficient enough to present the product information in the right manner and integrate any updates whenever necessary.
For example, if a customer cross checks the availability of the product through customer support after seeing availability of the product on your website, your support must provide a consistent answer.
Importance of Unified Commerce
Here are four reasons why it is important for ecommerce platforms to switch to unified commerce:
1. Manage Your Inventory Better
By having all the data present in one place, you can manage your inventory better. You can avoid issues with overselling inventory as data synchronizes between your front and back ends.
Managing the inventory can be such a hassle. Learn more about unlimited SKUS provided by UpStart Commerce to get a better grip on your inventory.
2. Seamless Communication Among Teams
Each end-point connects and the data updates in real-time. This results in each team knowing what is happening at the other end. Therefore, reducing the chances of mix-ups and miscommunications.
3. Smoother Process for Order Fulfillment
You may have opened warehouses in multiple places. One of the major benefits of unified commerce is that it allows you to keep track of the products in your warehouse. If a particular product is not available in one warehouse, using the unified system, you can figure out where it is actually available and ship the order to that place.
4. Better Data Collection and Usage
Lastly, personalization for individual customers is only possible if the data is gathered and then stored in a way that is helpful for the organization. With unified platforms, you can collect data in the most efficient manner, present it accurately to teams, and provide personalized experiences every step of the way.
Omnichannel Vs. Unified Commerce
There is a general mix-up between these two concepts. In some cases, ecommerce techs are unable to define the differences between the two. Here are some differences between omnichannel and unified commerce:
| Omnichannel Platform | Unified Commerce |
All the sales channels are not connected.
Communication is limited between all channels because there are no real time data updates.
They are implemented on a traditionally coupled architecture.
It does not gather the data or experiences from each channel to a single point.
Customization is not linear but rather updates and changes are made in each system step by step. | All the sales channels are connected.
Communication between all is possible because of real time data updates.
Headless or de-coupled approach is used to implement.
It allows the tracking of data and gains insight in detail across every channel from a single point.
The customization for each customer is almost effortless because the data is already unified. |
A Comparison Table between Unified Commerce and Omnichannel Platforms
A visual representation of the difference in customer interaction unified commerce and omnichannel.
Read our blog about API-driven architecture to learn more.
Conclusion
From the understanding of the concept and looking at where the online world is going, it is obvious that unified commerce is the future of ecommerce. The sooner organizations understand its importance, the more likely it is that they will increase their total number of customers. Even though it may seem like a large task, with the help of experts, you can easily migrate to a unified approach of business.
If your organization is looking to shift from the traditional monolithic architecture toward the headless, API-driven approach for unified commerce, consider the services of our consultants at UpStart Commerce. We provide the best solutions to make your transfer smooth and without any issues.
