UNIFIED COMMERCE: WHAT IS IT & WHY YOU NEED IT!!!!!!
From Point of Sale (POS) to e-commerce, from CRM to inventory management, most retailers put together a jerry-rigged combination of disconnected business applications to run their business. These software systems are often custom integrated or even homegrown, and as a consequence, they cannot communicate seamlessly with each other. When this happens, retailers are crippled and unable to deliver the personalized, omni-channel experience customers expect wherever and whenever they decide to shop. Today’s retailers are compiling an unprecedented amount of data throughout their various touchpoints, from e-commerce site, to loyalty program, to Point of Sale, and more. To deliver personalized communications and offers, retailers need their software systems to give them the ability to organize all their data, analyze it, transform it into meaningful insights, which should then be delivered to various stakeholders across the business. Unified commerce combines in a single platform, e-commerce, m-commerce, order fulfillment, inventory management, customer relationship management, Point of Sale (POS) capabilities — and much more. In the words of Brian Brunk, Principal at retail industry consulting firm Boston Retail Partners (BRP), “unified commerce goes beyond omni-channel, putting the customer experience first, breaking down the walls between internal channel silos and leveraging a common commerce platform.” Here are eight ways a unified commerce platform will make your life easier – and support your business growth.
Learn more about retail management system LS Nav, our unified commerce platform.
Benefits
You don’t need to spend time and money on integrations
You get a single version of the truth
Management gets real-time, accurate information
You get a 360-degree view of your customers
You reduce the risk of errors
Staff training is quicker
You can offer a true omni-channel experience
You only need to work with one vendor
Omni Channel
Omni-channel is past news and retailers are now moving into a different and more futuristic view, as Hector Negron, from Optimus Business Transformation explained, “ I have been in retail for over 20 years, being hands on from both ends; the client end and the partner end and you never get everything with one piece of software, that’s why with the unified commerce world, the real time connectivity gives you both views and the futuristic “unified view”.
A recent BRP survey revealed that 85 percent of retailers see creating a true unified commerce environment as their top priority. The main functions retailers are interested in are:
Unified commerce helps overcome today’s challenges to deliver tomorrow’s retail, enabling businesses to deliver the fluid retail experience that customers expect.
The cloud, LS Retail and unified commerce
Learn more about how the LS Retail solutions can help you deliver unified commerce. Discover how and why the LS Retail products are migrating to the cloud, and what benefits the cloud and hybrid cloud can bring your business.
