The Reinvention of Retail

Retail must be reinvented to meet the shifting needs and expectations of today’s customers. Today’s consumers consider the overall experience with a brand the key differentiator in selection and brand loyalty. According to research conducted by PWC, up to 86% of buyers are willing to pay a premium for great customer experience and up to 49% of buyers make impulse purchases as a result of an individualized customer experience.

The consumer has never had more choices and as such, past markers of differentiation like inventory, selection, price, convenience, and quality are less focal. The reality is that given a little time and a device, most consumers can find what they want, at a price they can live with, with the quality they expect, delivered quite conveniently. Hitting those benchmarks is a given, the modern consumer wants more.

The question then becomes - what is the most effective way to provide an intelligently personalized, exceptional customer experience? Prior to the digital revolution, the answer might have been a generous return policy or an especially helpful sales agent, but with the web becoming the primary marketplace, businesses require a more connected solution.

Connected, or unified commerce provides the ability to manage every aspect of a business through a single platform or software designed to link all of the elements of the business. This gives a wider view and the ability to integrate and coordinate every aspect of your business - from production to delivery, to provide your customers a personalized, fast, seamless, frictionless, and secure service. A connected commerce strategy utilizes a central platform to create connection and functionality at every single customer touchpoint.

Connected Commerce: Understanding the 4 Cs

In order to compete, survive and thrive, businesses must have the capability to conduct commerce through a multitude of connected devices in a way that creates on-brand, real-time, seamless, frictionless processing of data and transactions. Success and continued growth for retailers require a unified strategy across these varying channels, points of contact, and experiences along the customer’s path to purchase.

Connected commerce is the goal but how do we get there? There are four critical pieces of connected commerce: culture, customer, connection, and cover. Because these are foundational, just one missing pillar can make or break your attempt at creating connected commerce. And as important as all of these pillars are, culture is the single most critical.

Culture is composed of the values, behaviors, and decisions that your company embodies. Culture is how we engage our people, how we lead, and how we represent ourselves in the market. It is the values that drive our decisions. The right culture is critical to innovation and a necessary ingredient for successful connected commerce.

Another cornerstone of connected commerce is the customer. Future-facing brands put the customer first. The customer is at the center of every connected commerce opportunity. The most customer-centric brands strongly identify with their customers, develop deep insight about what they want and need,  and then give it to them.

With connected commerce, you can’t just show up, you must connect and turn presence into engagement. Strategy in connected commerce must go beyond advertising and a presence on a variety of social media channels to a true integration of multi-channel e-commerce to create seamless, anywhere commerce. Connection requires a winning strategy, leading-edge technology, the judicious use of data all connected by a culture focused on the customer.

Finally, customers need to feel covered - you can’t develop a relationship with customers if they don’t trust you. Security has never been more important than in today’s digital landscape. Connected commerce gives retailers the ability to be wherever their customer is and personalize experiences based on customer data, but it can also leave both retailer and customers vulnerable. For this reason, cover is critical. You and the customer must be covered in terms of privacy, security, and external threats like bot attacks.

Scalability, Agility, Experience & Analytics

Scalability, agility, experience, and analytics work in tandem with the 4 C’s to provide a data-driven, intelligently designed service with a focus on accelerated personalization and exceptional customer experience:

1. Stability and Scalability: Create services that are designed for your specific size requirements and that are built to be robust, scalable systems to handle varying capacity requirements.

2. Agility: The commercial marketplace is a rapidly evolving force that needs an equally agile business solution to quickly meet needs for new functionality, innovation, and an ever-changing set of customer demands.

3. Experience: Tailor your service to each customer to promote and reward brand loyalty and drive consistent revenue. Create experiences for your customers.

4. Data and Analytics: Back your business decisions with a powerful data analytics platform. Better digital commerce starts with better data and gives you a framework for innovation and improvement.

Connected commerce requires a unified approach. 2020 PWC data shows that companies are investing heavily in a more omnichannel model of commerce with nearly 80% of commercial businesses making the switch. 

Connected Commerce: Need It, Get It

There are three key steps in transitioning your business to a connected commerce model. First, you need to identify the current capabilities and capacities of your business and use them to create a roadmap for the transition. Not every business is going to be ready for an immediate switch to unified commerce - identifying and properly transitioning is critical for success. Next, tools to unify processes, software, and other systems need to be designed according to your specific needs. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to creating a coherent unified system.

Once a unified system is created it needs to be maintained, refined, and improved. The marketplace is constantly evolving, for instance, a Walker study found that by the end of 2020, customer experience will overtake the importance of cost and product identity as the key distinction between brands. Unified commerce requires constant monitoring and adaptation so that you can best match the demands of your customers. 

To learn more, download the whitepaper here.

A Unified Commerce Implementation Expert

The TechSparq Unified Commerce solution will accelerate your company’s digital transformation. We work with you to create a customized roadmap for your transition that matches the specific needs of your business. As connected commerce experts, we will help you navigate the implementation and process changes to minimize threats and maximize opportunities. Finally, we offer our extensive experience to manage your commerce services effectively using an intelligent data-driven approach to business decisions. Talk to us about uncovering your customer DNA and transforming your commerce efforts.