What is unified commerce?
Unified commerce is the logical next step for brands and retailers’ omnichannel communication strategies.
After understanding that their customers need to be able to contact them through different channels (physical or digital), brands need to ensure that their responses are consistent and that their history is recorded.
Why is unifying the relationship a challenge for retail?
The global centralization of customer relationships is a major challenge. It involves entering all customer interaction data into a single platform. This concerns the exchanges recorded throughout the pre-purchase seduction phase, but also during the conversion and transaction phase, as well as during after-sales service and the post-purchase evaluation phase.
The goal of a unified commerce strategy is to allow the customers to switch from one interaction mode to another without losing the quality of their exchange. During a store visit, a customer who agrees to identify themselves can thus interact with a salesperson who has access to their profile and can use this information to provide more appropriate advice and recommendations. This same customer, once on their mobile phone, must be able to find the exchanges they had in the physical store… and this information concerning them must also be able to feed the “after-sales” relationship to continue personalized marketing solicitation or understand a use during a case of after-sales service…
How to unify your commerce ?
Achieving a truly omnichannel customer experience requires integrating all your sales and customer interaction channels into a single platform. This data, coupled with “offer” data such as stock levels, prices, product information, and store information, can be used to automate a significant portion of product recommendations in a high-quality and instantaneous manner.
What platform should you use for unified commerce?
Given the current proliferation of new communication solutions, customer data management tools, ERP software, and multiple databases, no single platform can claim to natively and sustainably integrate all unified commerce services. Instead, it is essential to have an aggregation and centralization platform connected to all these “specialized” platforms, one that allows for global control through a high-precision dashboard. And it is necessary to verify that each specialized platform can be connected.
Benefits of a unified commerce strategy for customers
• a more qualified and therefore more satisfying relationship with the brand
• single entry of information and preferences
• historical record of all interactions, which can help with after-sales service
• privileged solicitations, fewer but very relevant
Benefits for the company
• a better conversion rate
• a gain in efficiency in the cross-functional, “desiloed” consideration of customer requests
• interconnectivity between different data sources that facilitates activity monitoring throught centralization
Omnipublish by ARISTID enables unified commerce
The SAAS software suite developed by ARISTID for its retail customers plays a major role in the implementation of unified commerce. The data-centric vision of the implementation of the OMNIPUBLISH by ARISTID tool allows the retail’s various teams, purchasing, marketing and IT, which simultaneously constitute the product offering, to centralize their information on a single platform.
This centralized data is structured and organized in the Omnipublish by ARISTID tool so that it can be made available to meet the needs of other services and other business scenarios.
Retailers using automated performance solutions achieve an average revenue growth of 15%.
Francois Loviton, managing director retail of Google France
• OMNIPUBLISH
The entire commercial offer of food retailers is therefore available via API feeds that can be connected to the various user platforms. These media platforms such as Bonial, Armis, Mediapost, TheRamp, Alcméon and the media themselves such as Google or Meta can thus, according to the retailer’s wishes, be connected to the instantaneous feeds of promotional offers and can push the generation of graphic content adapted to their distribution formats.
• Digital Hub
Promotional “impressions”, and therefore exposure opportunities for the retailer, are therefore multiplied. In the context of the return of the price war in 2023, these traffic-generating tools allowing wide exposure at lower costs are real advantages for large retailers.
DISCOVER OUR DIGITAL HUB INTEGRATED WITH OMNIPUBLISH
Why unified commerce must be automated commerce?
The unification of the retailer’s response to a customer is only possible through the automation of data exploitation. There is no one customer profile equal to another and even “purchasing journeys” are now totally individualized. Commerce has become protean and faced with this infinity of dialogues to be emitted, personalization only exists through technology.
Brands must now be ready to get in touch with their targets at any time, even if its means deploying promotions and digital campaigns well in advance of the traditional commercial chestnuts.
Francois Loviton, managing director retail, Google France.
In order to propose not just a commercial action plan, but billions of PACs adapted to the profiles/searches/matching of each retail customer, it is essential to have a technological approach to its processes, to implement APIs, to be helped by artificial intelligence and machine learning. Thus each interaction will refine the customer/brand relationship.
The multiplication of APIs makes it possible to enrich consumer experiences, to create links between all sources of product information, to aggregate the “social media content” concerning them, to enrich product sheets… all this know-how from e-commerce has become the new standard for all purchases, even the most everyday ones, such as our food purchases.
Promotion being an ultra-important driver, especially in these times of inflation, it was also necessary to be able to link product knowledge to its promotional formatting. Thus, interest is created and the transaction is consolidated since the consumer is offered a product that interests him, via the digital platforms that he is used to visiting, with a relevant promotion and quality product information.
On average, only 17% of data is exploited in companies, and even then, not always effectively.
If today there is still a long way to go for many companies on this subject, retailers are in a permanent sprint in 2023 to win this race. Internalization of knowledge, de-siloing of data and expertise… it’s a big upheaval!
Unified commerce: a strategic approach for a personalized customer experience
Unified commerce is an essential strategy. It aims to centralize and harmonize customer data and interactions across all channels, whether physical or digital. This strategic approach offers retailers the possibility of providing a personalized, seamless and consistent customer experience while optimizing their operational efficiency.
By adopting unified commerce, retailers can offer an exceptional customer experience, regardless of the channel chosen by the consumer. This approach improves operational efficiency by centralizing customer data and interactions, thus reducing costs, improving productivity and facilitating informed business decision-making.
The implementation of a unified commerce strategy requires the collection and centralized management of customer data, involving the creation of an adapted IT infrastructure and the establishment of data management processes. Channel integration, a key element, ensures the consistency of customer interactions across various physical and digital channels. Finally, the personalization of offers, based on customer data, allows for more relevant and effective customer experiences. Thus, unified commerce is positioned as an essential approach for retailers seeking to offer a personalized customer experience while maximizing their operational efficiency.