Better data is the foundation for a unified retail commerce experience

Sponsored by Stibo Systems

Consumers are evolving faster than retail. For retailers looking to win business and outpace the competition, this is a big problem

Retail has weathered three perfect storms – a global health crisis, supply chain chaos and, most recently, high inflation. Throughout these storms, the customer has changed, and competing based on customer experience, rather than just product variety or quality, is the go-to strategy for retail.

For years, omnichannel was the de facto approach to shifting product. But today, it is time for a new vision. The promise of enhanced customer experience, more agile commerce operations and revenue opportunities have pulled unified commerce to the forefront, as retailers set goals to improve customer loyalty with better experiences.

Why transition to unified commerce?

The extreme retail environment of Covid-19 both exposed the shortcomings of the retail sector and raised the stakes for the customer experience. Omnichannel’s promise of providing a consistent experience across all retail sales channels no longer provides a single compelling reason for consumer loyalty. The old expectation focused on the shopping consistency of having the same items at the same price across channels is a given, but customers now expect much more – everything everywhere just needs to work.

Consumers’ expectations are getting more diversified. They don’t just want consistency across channels – they demand higher levels of convenience. They’re sustainability and community-focused, shopping with a purpose and requesting much more granular information than previously.

In short, consumers have evolved faster than retail. They’re often disappointed with the customer experience in returns, lack of customer service response and poor in-store integration with digital commerce. Besides the loyalty benefits, the omnichannel approach alone may create excessive operations and delivery costs, with problems such as inventory not visible and available for sale, or inflexible delivery models. For retailers looking to win business and outpace the competition, this is a big problem.

Unified commerce

The next logical evolutionary step for the omnichannel approach is unified commerce. Omnichannel retail has ensured that sales channels are consistent, but it lacks data integration and efficient backend processes and handoffs. With unified commerce, retailers achieve a unification of data and joint management of different data domains and processes. This enables retailers to feed consistent and coherent data into all channels and touchpoints, including backend operations.

The Unified Commerce Study for Specialty Retail describes unified commerce as combining “a retailer’s front-and back-end systems to have complete visibility of the customer, inventory and orders across all channels. This results in better decision making and a highly personalised customer experience, ultimately driving stronger loyalty and revenue growth.”

Supercharging omnichannel strategies with a unified approach

While each retailer follows their own evolutionary path based on their current situation, competitive environment, data maturity and strategic goals, McKinsey cites three major omnichannel strategies. With a unified approach, retailers can drive greater efficiency and cohesion to improve customer experiences.

First, create superior cross-channel shopping experiences online and in store. This means continuing the purchase journey – for example, starting the process on a phone screen and finishing it in the brick-and-mortar store with a unified basket.

The second strategy is personalisation, or tailored, targeted and relevant cross-engagement at scale. For example, taking a single customer view of purchases and conversations and making it visible and relevant to store personnel.

Lastly, consider the ecosystem. “Ecosystem” here means creating rich cross-channel platforms integrated with consumer lifestyle needs. That could mean, for instance, expanding sales opportunities for key customers outside of core retail capabilities.

Data – the foundation for transformation

Having trustworthy, accurate data at the right time, accessible to customers, internal teams and applications, is necessary to fully implement unified commerce strategies. Data must be governed and have quality management processes to ensure it is fit for purpose and customer-ready. Retailers are moving to ecosystems, but quality authoritative data (preapproved, following business rules) underpins the proper usage and confidence for this new way of working.

Multidomain master data management can provide the foundation to support four key components of unified commerce:

Integration

Integration is at the core of unified commerce. It involves connecting and synchronising various systems and processes across channels to create a unified ecosystem.

Centralized data

Unified commerce relies on a centralised data repository that consolidates customer information, transaction history, preferences and rich product data from all channels.

Consistent customer experience

A key aspect of unified commerce is providing a consistent customer experience across all channels. This means ensuring that customers receive the same level of service, product information, pricing, promotions and branding regardless of the channel. It starts with one source of truth for either B2B or B2C customers.

Operational efficiency

Unified commerce streamlines operations by consolidating systems and processes. This includes integrating point-of-sale (POS) systems, inventory management, order fulfilment, payment systems, customer service and other operational components.

Learn more about how Stibo System supports leading retailers with their data management challenges. For more details on how you can take a unified approach to commerce, take a look at our white paper.