If it’s time to make a unified commerce approach a top priority to connect, simplify and innovate, this adoption model can help you build an ecosystem of technologies, tools, processes and experts.
1
Get tight control of your inventory
2
Extend your brand experience across all channels
3
Create delightful, personalised shopping experiences
4
Innovate, innovate, innovate
Stage 1
Get tight control of your inventory
Ensure you can accurately manage your inventory levels across all your locations and customer touchpoints by centralising your inventory information in near real time. This step is as much about business process, training, discipline and compliance, as it is about the software you install.
With a unified inventory management system in place, you can guarantee you’ve got the right inventory available in each location, without carrying the cost of overstocking. You can also react to trends quickly, and forecast demand based on historical data, sales forecasts and seasonal variations.
See how Night ‘n Day started with inventory to create great customer experiences and increase net profit by around $12,000 a year for each store.
Stage 2
Extend your brand experience across all channels
Once you’ve got control over your inventory, you’re free to increase your purchasing channels with certainty.
Exposing, rather than replicating, inventory and customer data from your platform to each and every channel means everything stays in sync. Your staff and customers will have consistent product visibility and can expect fluid and accurate interactions, whether in-store, on mobile or online.
And with real-time data on stock levels, you’ll be able to see where inventory is located, find the lowest cost or fastest fulfilment route, and provide better promotions.
Here’s how Cue Clothing is using unified commerce to combine physical and digital channels into a ‘one-brand’ experience.
Stage 3
Create delightful, personalised shopping experiences
Now it’s time to build genuinely meaningful customer experiences. You need to mix emotional and rational factors to connect and build relationships.
Rational value is the starting point for a great customer experience. It meets each customer’s very logical need for price and product so that they feel they are ‘getting’ value. It’s also the functional experiences you offer, such as convenience, fulfilment, flexibility and speed.
To make customers ‘feel’ valued, you want to tap into aspirational motivations and fulfil their deep, often unspoken needs. Personalised communications, recommendations and offers, rewards for spend and tailored in-store experiences fall into this category and are a great way to surprise and delight – especially if the experience is unexpected.
Stage 4
Innovate, innovate, innovate
By using APIs to expose data and functions, and easily plug in and deploy new services, channels and devices, you’ll reduce integration and maintenance overheads, increase real-time accuracy and enjoy virtually limitless scalability and agility.
These improvements in IT efficiency and availability let you shift your team’s priorities to innovation. By using agile methodologies and creating a community of third-party apps and systems working together in an ecosystem, you can drive critical strategic initiatives and continually innovate.
The end result is the ability to create extraordinary customer experiences that help to capture market opportunities, generate additional revenue and build brand advocacy.
See how APIs can help you innovate at pace and build powerful ecosystems to give customers extraordinary experiences.
Contact us if you have questions or would like advice on any of these unified commerce stages. We can examine your pain points and make recommendations to help you solve problems and find new opportunities that deliver frictionless customer experiences and differentiate your brand.
For more on unified commerce and why it’s the future of retail, download our ebook.
