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Unified Commerce: The Key To Winning The Race Against Customer Expectations

Rob is a Partner at Artisan, an innovation consultancy supporting global leaders with technology strategy and solution services.

No one will deny the fact that customer expectations are changing today at a rapid pace. While retailers have always sought to keep up with shifting consumer needs, the increased rate of change initiated by digital technology forced organizations to become even more adaptable. In today's digital economy, the agility to keep up with the speed of change now overshadows the importance of any one change or market disruption. The pandemic revealed this reality in a punishing way. When customer behaviors drastically shifted in March 2020, the retailers unprepared to adapt simply did not survive.

Ultimately, swift adaptation in the retail space requires a solid technical infrastructure that unifies the enterprise around the customer experience. While in previous decades it may have been acceptable for retailers to have siloed systems that serve in-store and online customers, today's customers expect a cohesive experience with a brand. A desire to craft meaningful, unified customer experiences led the retail industry to adopt omnichannel approaches to commerce. Yet, research conducted by Periscope reveals 78% of retailers recognize they are not delivering omnichannel experiences fast enough. For this reason, the concept of "unified commerce" entered the scene.

Omnichannel: No Longer The Standard

Unified commerce is often defined as providing flexibility, continuity and consistency across channels — both digital and physical — to deliver the best customer experience possible. Ultimately, it is an architectural approach and mindset shift.

Unlike an omnichannel approach that leverages external systems to connect different business sections, unified commerce aims to connect all areas of the business with one integrated platform. Serving up a unified commerce experience requires a technical structure that connects data and systems across the entire enterprise. Picture a wheel or a hub-and-spoke model with customer data at the very center and key customer touchpoints like e-commerce, in-store point-of-sale and email marketing extending out from a single, unified view of the customer. A hub-and-spoke model unifies all systems, enabling the enterprise to respond quickly to changes in customer and business needs.

Think of a wagon wheel used by explorers navigating the American frontier. They needed a solid hub or axle to support the surrounding spokes in order to make the journey across the Wild West. A broken or disconnected spoke meant an uncomfortable ride at best and, in most cases, involved losing valuable time, energy and materials in the race to explore new lands. Those riding on wheels with stable hub-and-spoke connections benefited by the dependability, gaining speed on their competition. Similarly, the solid structure of a unified commerce architecture can give a retailer a significant speed advantage in the industry.

An interconnected infrastructure equips retailers with the ability to compete in today’s commerce race and keep up with the rapid pace of changing customer expectations. Here’s how:

Consistency For Customers

Customer preferences come in an endless number of combinations, yet they still expect a brand to serve up a seamless experience regardless of their shopping preferences. Customers are not concerned with the system integrations required to ensure all touchpoints produce a single, unified experience. Still, the business carries a heavy burden to serve up an unbroken customer journey across every combination of shopping platforms. When internal systems are separate, any change or upgrade could result in dozens of inconsistencies and many frustrated customers. A unified commerce model allows changes and innovations at the core to be pushed out simultaneously to all channels, creating less margin for error and a consistent experience.

Additionally, when retailers place customer data at the very center of the hub-and-spoke model, it enables a single, 360-degree view of the customer, allowing the retailer to craft cohesive brand experiences for each customer. When the e-commerce and mobile platforms, point-of-sale system and email marketing systems share and contribute to the same set of customer data, they can serve up consistent messages across all touchpoints.

Ease Of Innovation

Organizations oriented toward unified commerce can find innovation more accessible and practical. In today's digital business ecosystem, innovation requires a breakdown of internal silos. Almost by default, a unified commerce system does precisely that. It unifies the internal organization and opens inroads to change by paving the path for cross-functional collaboration with a shared data source. For example, when marketing and IT have a natural crossroads in the customer resource management system, they can more easily collaborate in developing a digital customer loyalty program.

A unified commerce model also enables the integration of new market innovations like purchase options through social media platforms or AI-enabled devices like Amazon Echo or Google Home. When customer data and all other systems are unified on a single platform, “plugging in” a new spoke is much easier than layering it on top of a disjointed infrastructure.

Evolving Toward Unified Commerce

Unified commerce can enable the speed of change required for retailers to win the race against rapidly changing customer expectations. Still, evolving from older models of commerce toward a unified commerce approach can be complicated. In the coming months, I plan to share recommendations for enterprises seeking to shift to a more unified approach to commerce and customer experience.


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