What is unified commerce?

Unified commerce is the logical evolution of the omnichannel communication strategies of brands and retailers.
After understanding that their customers need to interact with them through various channels (physical or digital), brands must ensure the consistency and historical tracking of their responses.

Why is relationship unification a key challenge for commerce?

The global centralization of customer relationships is a major challenge. It involves recording all customer interaction data on a single platform. This includes exchanges captured during the pre-purchase seduction phase, as well as during the conversion and transaction phases, and also during the post-purchase support and evaluation phase.

The goal of a unified commerce strategy is to allow the customers to switch from one mode of interaction to another without losing the quality of their exchange. During a store visit, the customer who agrees to identify themselves can then 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 device, should be able to retrieve the interactions they had in the physical store… and this information should also feed into the post-purchase relationship to continue personalized marketing efforts or to understand usage when dealing with a customer service issue.

How to unify your commerce?

To achieve this level of customer omniscience, it is essential to have integrated all your sales and customer interaction channels into a single platform. This data, coupled with the “offer” data such as stock, prices, product information, and store details, allows for highly qualitative and instantaneous automation of a large part of the commercial recommendation.

What platform for unified commerce?

At the current pace of the proliferation of new communication solutions, the tools necessary for the management of customer data, ERP software, and multiple databases… No platform can claim to natively and sustainably integrate all the services of unified commerce. However, it is important to have an aggregation and centralization platform connected to all these “specialized” platforms, one that allows for global management through a highly accurate dashboard. And it is necessary to ensure that each of the specialized platforms can be connected.

Omnipublish by ARISTID enables unified commerce

The SAAS software suite developed by ARISTID for its retail clients plays a major role in implementing unified commerce. The data-centric vision of the OMNIPUBLISH tool by ARISTID allows different retail teams; purchasing, marketing, IT, which simultaneously constitute the product offer to centralize their information on a single platform.

This centralized data is structured and organized in the Omnipublish tool to be made available for the needs of other services and other commercial scenarios.

Retailers who use automated performance solutions achieve an average revenue growth of 15%.

Francois Loviton, Managing Director Retail at 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 mediation platforms, such as Bonial, Armis, Mediapost, TheRamp, Alcméon and the media themselves like Google or Meta, can thus be connected to the instantaneous feeds of promotional offers according to the retailer’s will, and they can push the generation of graphic content adapted to their broadcast formats.

• Digital Hub
Promotional impressions, and thus the exposure opportunities for the merchant, are multiplied. In the context of the return of the price war that we are experiencing in 2023, these traffic-generating tools allow for broad exposure at lower costs. These are real advantages for major retailers.

DISCOVER OUR DIGITAL HUB INTEGRATED WITH OMNIPUBLISH

Why unified commerce must be automated commerce?

Unifying the retailer’s response to a customer is only possible through the automation of data exploitation. There is no single customer profile that is identical to another, and even the “purchase journeys” are now completely individualized. Commerce has become multifaceted, and in the face of this infinity of dialogues to be issued, personalization can only exist through technology.

Brands must now be ready to engage with their targets at any time, even deploying promotions and digital campaigns well ahead of traditional commercial envents.

Francois Loviton, Managing Director Retail at Google France.

To offer not just a commercial action plan, but billions of CAPs tailored to the profiles/searches/matching of each retail customer, it is essential to have a technological approach to processes, to set up APIs, and to be assisted by artificial intelligence and machine learning. Thus, each interaction will refine the customer/brand relationship.

The multiplication of APIs enriches consumer experiences, creates links between all product information sources, aggregates the “social media content” concerning them, and enriches product sheets… All this expertise from the e-commerce sector has become the new norm for all purchases, even the most everyday ones, such as our grocery shopping.

Promotion being an extremely important driver, especially in these times of inflation, it was necessary to also link product knowledge to its promotional presentation. This way, interest is generated and the transaction is consolidated since the consumer is offered a product they are interested in, via the digital platforms they are accustomed 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.

While there is still a long way to go for many companies in this area, retailers are in a constant sprint in 2023 to win this race. Internalizing knowledge, breaking down data and expertise silos… it’s a major 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 ability to provide a personalized, seamless, and consistent customer experience while optimizing 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, reducing costs, improving productivity, and facilitating informed business decision-making.

Implementing a unified commerce strategy requires collecting and managing customer data centrally, involving the creation of an appropriate IT infrastructure and establishing data management processes. Channel integration, a key element, ensures the consistency of customer interactions across various physical and digital channels. Finally, offer personalization, based on customer data, provides more relevant and effective customer experiences. Thus, unified commerce positions itself as an essential approach for retailers seeking to offer a personalized customer experience while maximizing their operational efficiency.