Buying in a store, purchasing online, click and collect – for today’s customer it all feels as logical as it does natural. Omnichannel no longer counts as a differentiator but as a basic requirement. What’s more, the customer expects all channels to work together seamlessly and that a company immediately responds to their needs. The companies that meet these high expectations create a significant competitive advantage.
The customer is in the driver’s seat when it comes to choosing your product or service or going elsewhere. They not only want a quality product and excellent service but also speed and a personalized experience. How can you best respond to this need? By always putting the customer first and by integrating your online and offline channels and touchpoints. That’s the starting point for Unified Commerce.
Unified Commerce connects your company’s various business functions through a single common platform, creating the ultimate consistent customer experience, from e-commerce to point of sale (POS) to click and collect and everything in between. Unified Commerce goes much further than setting up and bringing together various sales channels, it also includes personalized, relevant but consistent communication and marketing and a supply chain that makes it possible to provide optimized customer support across all channels.
BearingPoint defines Unified Commerce as a consistent experience across multiple channels and touchpoints, leveraging harmonious integration of retail processes and systems to interact with customers throughout their journey. This approach constitutes a true revolution for retailers.
In other words, Unified Commerce is the practice of connecting your backend systems with your customer-facing channels via a single platform. To set up Unified Commerce optimally all business departments and all business processes must be involved. A big challenge? Sure, but one that will benefit both you and your customers today and long into the future.
In this white paper, with the help of my fellow experts from BearingPoint, I’ll explain how you can optimally integrate Unified Commerce into your organization using four success factors:
- Integrated Business Processes
- Channel-agnostic Supply Chain
- Product Experience Management
- Omnichannel Service Design
You’ll also discover how BearingPoint’s Fast Forward methodology can help you to set up a successful transformation journey. I hope you’ll feel inspired to make the move to Unified Commerce!
