Unified commerce

What is unified commerce?

Unified commerce is a retail/eCommerce strategy that’s about centralizing all retail, POS, CRM, and backend systems into one integrated platform. This means that data is consistent and up to date across every touch point, source, and system, as they are all connected to one virtual system.

An example of unified commerce is this: a customer browses an eCommerce store, makes purchases through a different device, and then reach the store for an in-person, personalized support, all of which being seamlessly and automatically tracked and updated through the centralized system.

Industries that need unified commerce experience & why they need it

1 - Luxury retail – for seamless in-store and hyper-personalized experiences. 2 - Grocery chain and convenience stores – to manage stocks and delivery efficiency. 3 - Home and lifestyle shops with eCommerce platforms – to check online-to-offline purchases (online order & show-room pickup) & showroom behavior and experiences. 4 - Fashion and apparel – to sync inventory and manage offers and discounts. 5 - Omni-channel brands moving towards D2C models

Unified commerce vs omnichannel experience

Unified channel is completely different from omni-channel; but both of them are built towards improving customer experiences across different touch points. Omni-channel is where multiple channels run in parallel, whereas unified commerce is tightly coupled. Here are some more differences between unified commerce vs omnichannel.

Unified commerce vs multi-channel

Likewise, unified commerce is different from multi-channel experiences too. Multi-channel is where different channels—store, web, and mobile run separately, but unified commerce hold data from multiple touchpoints in one place.

Companies running multi-channel ops often find themselves at crossroads, for example: which warehouse shipped this? Why is loyalty discount not applied at a particular store? But unified commerce holds answers to all these, eliminating operational-level and decision-making level chaos.

Why is unified commerce important in retail?

Unified commerce is becoming the future of retail. Why? Because retailers need to stay relevant in a fast, agile, and experience-driven market. When retail companies can connect different digital and physical points, they could make better decisions, run lean operations, hold 360-degree insights, and empower more effective marketing campaigns with that. Here are other reasons unified commerce is crucial for retail, eCommerce and D2C businesses.

1 - Can run better forecasting of future demand and store the right stock levels in right locations. 2 - Can maintain up-to-date retail analytics systems and do end-to-end tracking of entire operations in one place. 3 - Have real-time visibility inventory, sales, and customer experience. 4 - More connected systems and less chaotic data. Not having to struggle with spreadsheets, reconciliations, and partial, outdated versions.

How to build a unified commerce system in retail?

Building a unified commerce system for retail, eCommerce, and D2C models requires connecting tools, data sources, and systems. Here's step-by-step instructions for it.

1 - Set up retail analytics foundation: get started with a single-source-of-truth or a basic retail analytics with the help of Tableau, Thoughtspot, Power BI, or any similar BI tool. 2 - Enable real-time data movement: with the help of ETL tools like Fivetran or Stitch
3 - Integrate POS and eCommerce in a unified system: this step involves connecting both POS and eCommerce systems with the help of cloud-based centralized data warehouses, if the current eCommerce and POS platforms have native or API integration capabilities. This is a big step for many, as it means integrating online and offline transactions and experiences in one central location. Your channels may still run independently, but backed by strong, unified analytics. 4 - Implement centralized order management: integrate the above set up with your existing order management system, so you can have synced inventory—across stores, warehouses, and other channels. 5 - Use modern cloud data warehouse systems to store the data, query, generate custom reports, and power dashboards.

So, here are the tech stack involved in unified commerce: existing POS and eCommerce platforms, analytics systems, inventory management systems, CRM, and data warehousing for data storage.

Unified commerce – the need of the hour for retail

Unified commerce solves many challenges for retailers: inventory mismatches, customer service breakdowns (unable to locate past purchases, can’t trace down duplicate accounts, etc), lost sales opportunities, lagging reports, poor decision making, inconsistent pricing, and other performance blindspots of channel-based operations.

Unified commerce not just solves the above challenges but allow retail and eCommerce companies to enjoy the following benefits too.

1 - Maintain consistent pricing and promotions. 2 - Facilitate fast check outs and redemption, no matter what the channel is. 3 - Make it convenient for customers, where they could check out products anywhere, buy online, pick up from offline, return in a different store, and more. Flexibility for customers and ease-of-operation for the company. 4 - Maintain a customer 360, that not just involves transactional data but behavioral patterns too. 5 - Achieve personalization with purpose.

By connecting all customer and inventory systems into one source of truth—and visualizing that data through retail dashboards—you empower every team, from the sales floor to the boardroom, to act faster and with full context.