What is unified commerce?
Unified commerce is the logicial extension of omnichannel communication strategies for brands and retailers.
Having understood that their customers need to be able to contact them via different channels (physical or digital), brands need to ensure the consistency and historization of their responses.
Why is the unification of customer relations an issue for the retail sector?
Global centralization of customer relations is a major challenge. This means providing a single platform for all customer interaction data. This concerns exchanges during the entire pre-purchase seduction phase, but also during the conversion and transaction phase, as well as during after-sales follow-up and the post-purchase evaluation phase.
The aim of a unified commerce strategy is to enable customers to switch from one interaction mode to another without losing the quality of their exchange. During an in-store visit, a customer who accepts to identify himself can thus exchange with a sales assistant who has access to his profile and can use this information to provide more appropriate advice and recommendations. This same customer, once on his mobile, must be able to find the exchanges he has had physically in the store… and this information concerning him must also be able to feed the “post-purchase” relationship to continue personalized sales solicitation or understand usage during an after-sales issue…
How to unify your commerce ?
To achieve this level of customer omniscience, it is essential to have integrated all sales and customer interaction channels into a single platform. This data, coupled with “offer” data such as stock, prices, product and store information, enables you to automate a whole part of the merchandising recommendation process in a highly qualitative and instantaneous way.
Which platform for unified commerce?
With the current proliferation of new communication solutions, customer data management tools, ERP software and a wide variety of databases, no single platform can claim to natively and sustainably integrate all the services required for unified commerce. On the other hand, it is important to have an aggregation and centralization platform connected to all these “specialized” platforms, one that enables global management thanks to a high-precision dashboard. And it’s essential to ensure that each of these specialized platforms can be connected.
The customer benefits of a unified commerce strategy
• 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
• fewer, more relevant, privileged solicitations
Benefits for the company
• higher conversion rate
• greater efficiency in the cross-functional, “unbundled” handling of customer requests
• interconnectivity between different data sources, facilitating centralized monitoring of sales activity
Omnipublish by ARISTID enables unified commerce
The SAAS software suite developed by ARISTID for its retail customers plays a key role in the implementation of unified commerce. The data-centric vision of the OMNIPUBLISH by ARISTID tool enables the various retail teams – purchasing, marketing and IT – 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 for the needs of other departments and sales scenarios.
Retailers using automated performance solutions achieve revenue growth of 15% on average.
Francois Loviton, managing director retail Google France
• OMNIPUBLISH
The entire commercial offering of food retailers is available via API feeds that can be connected to the various user platforms. Media platforms such as Bonial, Armis, Mediapost, TheRamp, Alcméon and the media themselves, such as Google or Meta, can be connected to instant feeds of promotional offers, depending on the retailer’s wishes, and can drive the generation of graphic content adapted to their broadcast formats.
• Hub Digital
Promotional “impressions”, and therefore exposure opportunities for the retailer, are thus multiplied. In the context of the return of price wars in 2023, these traffic-generating tools enable widespread exposure at lower cost. These are real advantages for major retailers.
DISCOVER OUR DIGITAL HUB INTEGRATED WITH OMNIPUBLISH
Why must unified commerce be automated commerce?
Unifying the retailer’s response to a customer is only possible through the automation of data processing. There is no such thing as one customer profile being equal to another, and even “buying paths” are now totally individualized. Commerce has become protean, and in the face of this infinity of dialogues to be issued, personalization exists only through technology.
Brands must now be ready to get in touch with their targets at any time, even if this means deploying promotions and digital campaigns well in advance of traditional commercial chestnuts.
Francois Loviton, managing director retail, Google France.
In order to offer not just a sales action plan, but billions of CAPs tailored to the profiles/searches/matching needs of each retail customer, it is essential to take a technological approach to processes, to implement APIs, and to enlist the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning. In this way, each interaction can be used to refine the customer/retailer relationship.
The proliferation of APIs makes it possible to enrich consumer experiences, create links between all sources of product information, aggregate related social media content, enrich product data sheets… all this e-commerce know-how has become the new standard for all purchases, even the most everyday ones such as our food purchases.
As promotion is an extremely important driver, especially in these times of inflation, it was necessary to be able to link product knowledge to promotional formatting. This creates interest and consolidates the transaction, as consumers are offered a product that interests them, via the digital platforms they are used to visiting, with a relevant promotion and quality product information.
On average, only 17% of data is used by companies, and not always effectively.
While many companies still have a long way to go in this respect, in 2023 they will be in a permanent sprint to win the race. Internalization of knowledge, de-siloing of data and expertise… it’s all going to be a big upheaval!
Unified commerce: a strategic approach to 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 enables retailers to deliver a personalized, fluid 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, thereby reducing costs, improving productivity and facilitating informed business decisions.
Implementing a unified commerce strategy requires the centralized collection and management of customer data, involving the creation of a suitable 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, enables more relevant and effective customer experiences. This makes unified commerce an essential approach for retailers seeking to offer a personalized customer experience while maximizing their operational efficiency.