Unified Commerce. What Is After Omnichannel?

Today people have more access than ever to the best products, the latest technologies, and the best brands for practically any need readily available; however, they do not always have access to a seamless shopping experience largely since companies have been slow to adopt an omnichannel or unified commerce strategy.

The unified commerce strategy is considered the evolution of omnichannel to guarantee more fluid communication between the company and the client, unifying the management of the company’s different sales channels in a single system.

Unified commerce should be a strategy that all businesses should start implementing because it is designed to provide businesses with a single source of truth to help engage customers effectively, rather than simply connecting the different systems in use such as omnichannel does a unified commerce strategy leverage a centralized business platform to enable consistent and accurate information across every organizational channel.

The main components to consider in the unified commerce strategy are:

1. All systems within an organization need to function consistently, whether, from an ERP, POS solution, e-commerce platforms, or channel management solution, each is important for specific business functions and as part of a broad ecosystem remembering that it will be the source of information.
2. Information consistency and smooth navigation is key and is the core focus of Unified Commerce to provide the right information to your customers, and your sales teams. A good example is having the same prices and promotions available in person, online, or through a mobile app, so a customer does not have to check, say, Amazon for a better deal before paying.
3. Customers will be interacting with many different sales channels in your business, such as eCommerce, mobile, and in-store, so it is critical that you track their behavior in a unified way across each. Interactions are the source of information that should be taken as a reference to improve the user experience and decision-making.

Now that we have an idea of the differences between an omnichannel experience and unified commerce, we deduce that unified commerce is managing customer interaction with physical stores, mobile applications, the web, and the telephone in a unique, centralized, and real-time way. The customer must be able to start their purchase process in one channel and finish it in another without any inconvenience. Unified commerce is a step further in customer knowledge because it allows businesses to have more data and information about their consumers in one place.