As any retailer knows, consumer preferences and expectations are constantly evolving. Customers want flexible, personalised experiences that allow to them to pick and choose between physical and digital channels, and they expect those experiences to be seamless.
‘Omnichannel’ has been the term most often used to describe the strategy retailers need to adopt to deliver on this customer demand, while ‘unified commerce’ has also reached buzzword status. Both are used to describe the delivery of seamless experiences across channels.
But while they’re used interchangeably, there’s a significant difference between them.
Unified commerce is the next-generation architecture that finally delivers on what omnichannel promised.
A unified commerce platform provides a central hub that breaks down the silos between channels to deliver truly seamless experiences, while also solving omnichannel’s biggest weakness – operational complexity.
Unified commerce is gaining traction, with one study showing that rolling out a unified commerce platform was a top priority for 30% of retailers, while a combined 71% were somewhere on the path to adopting a unified commerce strategy.
Still, barriers remain. A study by Adyen this year found that 28% of those businesses without a unified platform lacked data on customer behaviour across channels, and 30% lacked the technology infrastructure to offer truly personalised experiences.
As we discuss here, the challenges faced by retailers offering hybrid in-store and online shopping options without the benefit of an integrated platform can be significant, while those prepared to take the leap gain competitive advantage through a deeper understanding of their customers and their evolving wants and needs.
Omnichannel offers options but creates operational complexity
Omnichannel strategies talked about creating seamless and consistent customer experiences across all channels, but the execution has fallen short.
Why? Retailers have to quickly spin up new channels as consumers demand them. An omnichannel approach connects numerous channels but they operate in functional silos, meaning that customers can’t move between channels in one seamless interaction.
Omnichannel makes things much harder for retailers in five ways:
Integrating data silos: Often loosely connected with manual processes and custom integrations, omnichannel solutions are fragile, inefficient and costly to maintain. The silos generate a cascade of inconsistent, inaccurate data shared across the business, making it virtually impossible to deliver a seamless customer experience.
Inventory that isn’t real time: Many omnichannel systems only access rudimentary sales and inventory positions. This prevents retailers from offering the ‘buy anywhere, fulfil anywhere’ options that are best for customers and most profitable for them.
Adding modern technologies and capabilities: Connecting legacy systems with modern technologies requires custom integrations, making the creation of new brand experiences complex, expensive, time consuming and risky.
Obtaining a single view of the customer: Silos negatively impact customers because they have to deal with inconsistencies and gaps, such as partial sales histories, different answers to questions or having to start new conversations in each channel.
Loss of innovation: Day-to-day inefficiencies mean that internal teams are tied up in remediation and troubleshooting and have less time to spend on creating the innovative, personalised experiences customers desire.
Operational complexity in the real world:
A customer browsing your web store sees that a product is available and orders it online for in-store collection. But behind the scenes, you’re running the online store and in-store POS on different systems, meaning data isn’t integrated and is syncing at different rates. To the customer, it might look like everything is working in harmony, until they find out that the product they ordered isn’t available because the stock level data in the online store is out of date.
Unified commerce puts the customer experience first
Customers today expect to transact when, where and however they want. They don’t care how you achieve it and will reward you if you have it – or shop elsewhere if you don’t.
The only way to meet these demands for a truly unified experience is to move beyond omnichannel to unified commerce.
As Nick Gray, founder of retail consultancy I Got You, recently told Inside Retail, ‘Unified commerce is where you put the customer at the heart of every decision, so it’s a customer-centric retail strategy that seamlessly connects all sales channels.’
Unified commerce breaks down the walls between internal channel silos by using a centralised platform that combines point of sale, inventory, ordering and fulfilment, loyalty, pricing and business intelligence.
With a unified view of the customer, and all channels and engagement points connected in real-time, you can deliver a personalised and consistent customer experience by way of a single source of truth. No hitches, and no inconsistencies.
You can make purchasing online and in-stores more seamless and convenient through endless aisle, digital payments and ‘buy anywhere, fulfil anywhere’ services.
And you can quickly respond to changing customer expectations and new technologies by using microservices and APIs to expose data and connect third-party services.
This blog was originally published in October 2023 and updated July 2025.
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For insights into how a unified commerce approach gives you the flexibility and agility you need to keep in step with consumers’ changing needs, download our UC ebook:
