UNIFIED COMMERCE FULFILLS THE PROMISE OF OMNICHANNEL RETAIL
What does it take to make a retail enterprise successful in today’s environment? It was not that long ago when retailers only considered their product, brand, pricing, promotion, and a single sales channel. In the current retail world, the shopping experience itself is just as important. Today’s shoppers are technically savvy and expect to use all retail channels with ease. They seek a fully integrated shopping experience where they can shop, purchase, and return fluidly across all channels.
New Retail Supply Chain Terminology
Terminology associated with the retail supply chain like e-commerce, multi-channel retail, omnichannel retail, and unified commerce often confuse businesses because the terms are used interchangeably (sometimes erroneously).
E-commerce is purchasing or selling goods using the internet by computer or mobile device. The execution of these transactions includes a transfer of data and money.
Multi-channel retail is a strategy that puts your product in many places where your product can be purchased. In-store, your website, other websites (like Amazon), your mobile app, click-to-buy on social platforms, pop-up stores, or out of the trunk of a car are examples of the various channels which allow your customer to buy your products.
These channels revolve around where your product is placed. Customers just go to where they regularly shop to make their purchases. Each channel is often independent of each other. However, products could be out-of-stock in one channel and the customer will not know where to go to find it in a different channel. This can cause cart abandonment which immediately impacts sales. Out-of-stock items impact demand forecasting and inventory management.
Other glitches can also impact your bottom-line. Sometimes offers and coupons function differently in different channels. If the discounts can’t be applied in the shopping cart, the customer may have to start over with their shopping effort (product identification, etc.) when switching channels. Often, channels have different offers and coupons. If the offers are different, the customer may need to check different channels for the best offer leading to making multiple purchases and returns. Inventory is impacted. Also, it can lead to customer dissatisfaction when they see a better offer for similar products online or on social media.
Omnichannel retail strategy is a business model that places the customer at the center of the strategy regardless of whether the purchase is by computer, mobile, in-store, or buy-online-pickup-in-store (BOPIS). Creating a consistent shopping experience across the many customer-facing shopping channels puts the customer at the center of your brand strategy. Customers want to have the same look and feel of their shopping experience regardless of the channel that they are using to make their purchase.
One of the problems with omnichannel strategy without truly unified commerce is that the channels may not be well-connected. Management of how the channels work may be quite different and present an inconsistent brand and shopping images. Customers expect consistency and they expect the brand to know them. The messaging must be similar in each channel. The same offers must be in all channels to avoid alienating your customer.
Benefits of Unified Commerce
Unified Commerce enables retailers to deliver the modern, fluid, and predictable shopping journeys that today’s shoppers demand. This is how retailers make the expectation a reality. Retailers have to integrate their processes and systems to provide seamless customer experiences that allow shoppers to move across all consumer touchpoints (online, in-store, mobile, etc.).
Unified Commerce is essential for an omnichannel strategy to work optimally. The key is that the channels need to be well-connected through their systems. When a customer finds that a product is out-of-stock in one channel, the sales associate or system app needs to know where to find it in a different channel or even bring it up in another app. There is a seamless function to capture the sale. Also, customers expect consistency in the look and feel of the shopping experience and the messaging and offers must be similar in each.
Channels are connected and fully integrated with unified commerce to deliver the same messaging, offers, coupons, and rewards across all channels. This improves demand forecasting and inventory, reduces out-of-stock items, and reduces cart abandonment from glitches in how offers and coupons are applied. Unified commerce has customers connected with all of the channels for a robust seamless shopping experience.
Unifying all systems and channels for a retailer is the central concept of unified commerce. This allows the retailer to truly focus on the customer. Management of how the various sales channels work, technically, maybe quite different but the presentation of the brand and shopping image must be the same. Purchases by computer, mobile, in-store, or buy-online-pickup-in-store (BOPIS) must create a consistent shopping experience across the many customer-facing shopping channels. This truly puts the customer at the center of the strategy.