Unified commerce – What's it all about?

28 January

Omni Channel vs Unified commerce

Most people chase omni channel sales and in doing so often create more workload and costs than it is ever worth, so end up losing. The main issue is getting everything to talk together at the same time and at any point of interaction, this can be costly, challenging, infuriating and even once all is humming along, will have quite considerable ongoing costs.

Simply throw all of those channels into one place and you have a unified commerce solution, no messy integrations to create gaps or endless support loops. No repetitive processes or need for constant monitoring leading to a more effective and happier team just as a starter.

This begins to spiral and you might already have an idea where to. Once you have all those channels pumping away in a nice easy format the logic starts to replicate in multiple areas. Things like warehouse management, product creation, staffing management, distribution and lots more fall into place with every one bringing a powerful array of benefits. In many cases they are actually just a by-product, something that is just there as you started out the right way round!

Unified Commerce
THE POWER OF TRUE HARMONY

So in a nutshell without having to integrate anything 2 examples of truly unified commerce for a customer journey and a product journey….

CUSTOMER JOURNEY

You buy a sandwich online/instore from a promotion/advert
You scan or use a code to buy
Because we know that code was used on xxxxx online platform or printed/distributed in xxxxx area
We open up the journey directly from new acquisitions and returning customers
Followed with a portion of loyalty points we can also now build up ongoing habits and do a lot more cool stuff (Monitoring TRUE marketing ROI, geo effectiveness and other things just fall into place here too)

Whether they buy in store, online, mobile store, popup, headless or anything else they have a simple, familiar route to purchase and you start to build the most detailed picture of your business possible. Do not forget this is all effectively just happening on auto pilot as your business runs day to day if everything is unified.

PRODUCT JOURNEY

So now for the sandwich – we can actually tell you:-

When/where the ingredients were bought, stored
When they moved from being an ingredient into a sandwich
Who/where/when made that sandwich
Where it was stored before distribution and for how long
When it was distributed, the driver, route, times
And then store/trader acceptance
Finally, sold to end consumer either online or in store.

There are more layers to this still that run into areas like HR and accountancy but hopefully this highlights how simple things can become and in doing so, actually produce a whole host more benefits for your team and customers alike. It also reduces overheads in so many areas and to many it is actually an essential way back to better margins.