This article was originally published on 22/07/2022
Having all your sales operations managed in a single place can make running a business much smoother, and one way to achieve that is via unified commerce. This eCommerce solution lets businesses simplify customer journeys so that the buying experience is unified from product discovery to final purchase and beyond.
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There are many ways running a unified commerce strategy as a small to midsize enterprise (SME) can lead to better internal efficiency and improved customer experience. For example, by helping businesses save time and resources when rolling out new products across multiple channels or launching promotional sales that reach all their customers simultaneously.
In retail, it is becoming more common as a strategy for bigger businesses. However, there are also numerous reasons newer startups and smaller companies can use it too.
Below, we explain how this organisational strategy works and what elements allow small-to-medium UK businesses to take advantage of its features.
What is unified commerce?
Unified commerce is a retail strategy that allows businesses to control their sales operations via a single tool. As a recent report from Gartner explains, it takes all the elements of a consumer's sales journey and touchpoints and merges them into a single continuous, centralised experience.
In short, unified commerce means you can manage your entire sales funnel from just one point or platform.
Retailer businesses use unified commerce to ensure consumers are prioritised and given a seamless customer experience, as well as the most flexibility possible when buying products via a store or service. It also helps companies capitalise on the data they collect from their consumers to provide insights into how users interact with a brand’s sales funnel.
Unified commerce definition: How does it work?
The goal of unified commerce solutions is to merge the management of sales channels.
This is achieved by using a single unified commerce software platform to establish and oversee all the channels and elements of your business's sales funnel to sell its products or services.
It, therefore, allows companies to group all their sales and marketing processes in one place. As a result, everything from the initial advertising to the final payment is managed through the same system.
This makes it possible to control numerous tasks from a centralised location, such as:
- Order management
- eCommerce
- Inventory management
- Customer relationship management (CRM)
- Point of sale (POS)
- Mobile commerce (m-commerce)
The four components of unified commerce
Unified commerce as a practice can be broken down into four core components. Each represents an area of focus that should be optimised to get the best results from switching to unified commerce solutions.
1. Systems
Frontend and backend systems must be in place and set up accordingly to create a unified experience for users and consumers. This is implemented across the business using software that provides marketing analysis tools, customer service technology or other functions in one place.
2. Channels
Every channel in your company must offer the same experience, no matter whether it is online or offline. Using the same sales strategies and a singular POS system, products and services will be available no matter the way consumers prefer to connect with your SME.
3. Interactions
Interactions with your customers must be optimised to create a responsive, fast and flexible buying process. This potentially creates an increased chance of converting interested customers and should inspire better loyalty from your client base, who are now less incentivised to be tempted by your competitors.
4. Products
Your product range needs to be presented to consumers so that they have a unified view of the stock available across an entire company. By doing this, you avoid customers running into a situation where one part of your business, say a shop, might not have an item in stock on site thereby potentially losing a sale.
Unified commerce examples
There are lots of examples of how a unified commerce strategy could be carried out. Of course, these vary depending on the type of business, its size and its sector.
However, it is also essential to consider how implementing a unified commerce approach works. Businesses can run such a system in many ways, especially in a hybrid online-offline environment.
Unified commerce for retail: A streamlined shopping experience
Commonly, unified commerce is used in retail by shops with an offline and online presence. A typical unified commerce example would be a store with a sales website offering a deal which consumers can access from both points of sale.
Another example of this in practice is managing product information. In this instance, a unified commerce platform allows users to enter product information, such as key features or prices, into the system just once, which can then be used across all sales channels.
From the customer's perspective, the experience is a singular one. If, for example, they go into a shop after receiving an offer email and there is no stock on site, they can be directed instead to the company’s website or app, where the product can be ordered with the same offers and prices in place.
If something turns out to be wrong with the product or, in the case of clothes, when the sizes are wrong, they can either take it to any retail location or post it back with little friction. Customer service technology makes the process more straightforward and unified from a buyer's perspective.
Unified commerce platforms
The way in which UK companies scale up a unified commerce approach gives founders a vital choice. There are a few ways that SMEs could unify their systems, which depend greatly on the type of business being managed and how it is structured.
This usually presents firms with three distinct options for ecosystem infrastructure when choosing unified commerce platforms.
- All-in-one platforms: In this type of unified commerce platform, companies manage everything through a single system with all the features necessary to create a singular experience for end users and staff managing the sales process.
- Microservice platforms: Companies may choose to unify their systems via a conduit platform, which can connect to third-party software to manage individual processes (for example, content management or social media posting).
- Modular platforms: A modular approach is similar to microservice and all-in-one platforms. The difference is that they let companies decide what modules to use within the vendor’s family of products, allowing owners to bolt on the parts they need for their specific business.
How can UK businesses benefit from unified commerce?
Both big and small retailers can run unified commerce services successfully. However, British SMEs may have some significant benefits if they adopt this system.
- Easier scale-up for SMEs: For UK SMEs, a major advantage is the relative simplicity of implementing unified commerce. Startups are usually simpler and less rigid in nature, meaning unified commerce can be easier and faster to set up compared to much bigger rivals. This is still a significant undertaking, but with fewer channels, building a unified process is more accessible from the ground up.
- Improved internal efficiency: A unified system relies on good internal efficiency to run smoothly. This focuses companies on creating systems that operate with as little effort and waste as possible. In many cases, this is done using automated processes to save time and energy.
- Seamless experiences for customers: Unified commerce can help make the buying experience much smoother. This improved customer-centricity creates a scenario where there are fewer chances to lose sales to competitors who provide more straightforward buyer journeys and ways to access offers online or offline.
- Improved data capture: Collecting customer data cannot rely on cookies like it used to. Data must be obtained with permission. Using unified commerce practices, however, gears a business to put data collection at the heart of its processes and to focus on creating optimised and GDPR-compliant ways to obtain first-party data
- Better forecasting: Improved data transparency, in turn, allows business leaders the chance to understand their customers and their spending habits better. This allows firms to see a clearer picture of where their best opportunities to target their audience lie.
- Simplified sales: The most noteworthy overall advantage of unified commerce, regardless of company size, is using a singular system to simplify sales management. This means that, rather than relying on a multitude of different platforms, there is a central location where everything within the sales funnel can be managed.
Are there any disadvantages to unified commerce strategies?
Whilst many advantages of unified commerce exist for SMEs and startups, there are some important downsides to consider.
Firstly, an essential factor to take into account is the initial required investment in both time and money. Unified commerce can make things simpler down the line, but it requires a lot of effort upfront to implement.
Another significant issue is that SMEs can face losses if the platform they choose isn’t correctly optimised for their sales funnel.
Many contenders offer systems, and some are better adapted to specific products and sales than others. It’s, therefore, essential to compare possible eCommerce platform providers carefully before committing to a purchase.
Differences between unified commerce and omnichannel strategies
Unified commerce is sometimes confused with omnichannel strategies in retail. However, the two methods are distinctly different from one another.
This is because omnichannel strategies, which Gartner defines as ‘the seamless integration of digital and physical assets’, also rely on consolidating user experience across multiple channels into a single buyer's journey.
Omni channel vs unified commerce strategies
The critical difference between omni channel vs unified commerce is that omnichannel commerce doesn’t usually use a single platform. Instead, it may utilise many to achieve a cohesive customer experience across multiple channels.
Unified commerce solutions, on the other hand, usually centralises all the customer data and channels within one software platform. This creates a continuous customer experience regardless of the sales channel they interact with. It also has the added benefit of offering businesses better insights by showing customer engagement across all available channels.
What are the key takeaways for UK SMEs?
As we’ve explored until now, unified commerce as a business strategy focuses on unifying processes within one software platform. The key takeaways SMEs should consider when planning its implementation are the following:
- Unified commerce is a strategy that British SMEs can use to their advantage by organising all their channels from a single place. This means that everything within a sales funnel leverages and uses the same software platform and shares the data collected in this process within the infrastructure. However, this comes with high upfront costs in terms of time and money.
- SMEs are particularly well placed to capitalise on this style of sales management system due to their smaller scale and the relative simplicity (compared to any much bigger rivals) it takes to set up. However, this can still be a long, complicated and detailed process to put in place.
- The end goal of implementing unified commerce approaches is a singular and smoother customer journey. This starts from their first touchpoint until conversion across all channels. It can also give businesses keener insights into how consumers interact with their brand.
