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Unified Commerce- The New Mantra for Retailers?

June 11, 2014

Just as retailers were recovering from the concept of multichannelism, they had omni-channelism thrust on them, and now it’s Unified Commerce. Fortunately, Unified Commerce is “old wine in a new bottle,” with an added emphasis on providing a seamless customer experience, regardless of where they are and the channel they use. According to a Benchmark Survey from the Boston Retail Partners, retailers are valiantly trying to grapple with this new concept of a single entity.


So why did Unified Commerce emerge? With multichannelism, there was support for voice, Web channels and email, but apparently that was not enough. Then omni-channelism surfaced, bringing social and mobile channels within the purview of customer support. But to ensure a more holistic customer experience, customers needed to be able to reach out to retailers in a unified manner from anywhere. Unified Commerce was born.

According to Ken Morris, principal, Boston Retail Partners, “To deliver the seamless experience, retailers need to gather, analyze and disseminate customer, product, pricing and inventory data in real-time.”

Enhancing customer engagement, collecting and analyzing customer behavior, and personalizing the experience are initiatives that retailers are willing to pursue with greater zeal- clear indications that they are viewing the industry’s shift to Unified Commerce with great optimism. A survey by PRWeb also confirms this trend.

Survey results indicate that customer experience and engagement are top priorities for 95 percent of the respondents. Real-time retail from POS and real-time analytics appears to be finding more favor with retailers- greater interest is being invested in mobile marketing and more than 81 percent of surveyed retailers have implemented some type of customer database as part of a CRM or loyalty platform. More importantly, within five years, 75 percent of retailers plan to identify customers when they walk into the store.

“It was impressive to learn how many retailers are now focused on implementing the technologies to deliver Unified Commerce, but there is still a lot of work to be done to deliver these capabilities,” said Walter Deacon, principal, Boston Retail Partners.

Though gears have shifted and retailers have got their engines moving, delivering Unified Commerce is a challenge: it requires seamless execution of the right strategy, technology, and business processes. Retailers need to identify how they can unify marketing and IT better to succeed in their efforts.

Can retailers pull it off? 

 



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