What is Unified Commerce? Whatever ?
Unified commerce represents a set of technological solutions that make it possible to converge distribution channels and facilitate the sharing of information in real time from one to another.
The goal of unified commerce is to reduce friction and other pain points between channels by centralizing all information about the customer journey in one platform. The goal is to know and store in one place the data related to the different stages of the purchase journey (search for information, order, delivery, payment, consumer service) and to list all the entry points that customers use according to their needs (physical store, e-commerce, mobile site, call-centers, etc.)
One way to understand unified commerce is to see all distribution and communication channels as entities that must collaborate in order to improve customer knowledge. In this way, the experience omnichannel can then be optimized by personalizing contact with the target audience.
Unified commerce aims to enable companies to better organize their customer knowledge and thus better use it in order to offer a “meta” experience valued by customers. Note that a positive shopping experience is a factor of satisfaction and impacts loyalty to your company. The stakes are therefore particularly interesting.
What is the connection between omnichannel and unified commerce?
The link between omnichannel and unified commerce is particularly simple to understand. Indeed, omnichannel corresponds to the multiplication of sales channels in order to offer multiple and varied points of contact to consumers.
Unified commerce, on the other hand, is more related to technology and seeks to create a single reality for the consumer. The idea is therefore to synchronize all the distributor's channels in real time in order to offer only one reality to the consumer (rather than offering a reality for each channel deployed).
The real challenge, however, remains in unifying all transaction information and customer interaction systems within the company. The different technologies used must converge in order to offer an experience with greater added value for customers.
Catalogs, physical points of sale, websites, mobile applications are contact points that the customer can activate whenever he wishes in order to build his journey. I'omnichannel contributed to the evolution of behaviors by integrating the connected store and all associated services such as click & collect. By mixing physical and virtual, companies have understood the challenge of providing a simple and pleasant shopping experience.
Concretely, the objective now is to learn how to set up technological solutions allowing the convergence of the silos hitherto separated from the company. That's what unified commerce is all about.
