Unlocking Growth: How Unified Commerce Transforms Enterprise B2B Success

Integrating online and offline channels into a unified commerce strategy is no longer just an option, it’s a necessity. As consumer expectations evolve, it’s increasingly clear that this approach significantly enhances customer experience, increases sales, and streamlines operations for enterprise B2B e-commerce companies.

Taking a step back: What exactly is unified commerce? We’ve all heard of it, but many don’t know what it really means and, more importantly, how to implement it. Unified commerce consolidates all retail channels and systems into a cohesive platform.

The Ultimate Showdown: Unified Commerce vs. Omnichannel Commerce

Both omnichannel commerce and unified commerce offer their own strengths. Omnichannel commerce excels at delivering personalized experiences across multiple channels, fostering customer loyalty and satisfaction. By contrast, unified commerce prioritizes centralized management and streamlined operations, enhancing efficiency and scalability.

 Let’s break down the nuances:

Omnichannel Commerce: Key Components

• Multiple Sales Channels: Omnichannel commerce uses diverse channels, such as physical stores, commerce websites, mobile apps, and social media platforms.
• Integrated Inventory Management: Centralized inventory management synchronizes stock levels across all channels, providing real-time visibility and ensuring accurate product availability.
• Unified Customer Data: Omnichannel strategy integrates customer data from various touchpoints, consolidating preferences, purchase history, and interactions for personalized marketing and cohesive customer experiences.
• Seamless Customer Journey: Customers can start their journey on one channel and continue on to another without disruption.
• Cross-Channel Consistency: Omnichannel commerce aims for consistent branding, pricing, promotions, product information, and customer service across all channels.

Unified Commerce: Key Components

• Centralized Data Management: Unified commerce relies on centralized systems to consolidate customer, product, inventory and transaction data, providing real-time visibility and ensuring consistency across all channels.
• Inventory Management: Streamlined inventory management offers real-time visibility across channels, optimizing stock levels and fulfillment processes.
• Unified Payment Solutions: A single payment platform supports various payment methods across all channels, simplifying transactions and enhancing security.

Why a Unified Commerce Strategy is the Right Choice

Unified commerce is a modern take on omnichannel that offers advantages around customer experience and operational efficiency. It provides a cohesive, customer-centric approach that drives higher conversion rates, increased sales, and greater customer loyalty.

Benefits include:

• Holistic Integration: Unified commerce consolidates all sales channels, processes and data into a single platform. Customers can seamlessly make purchases, track order history, and access support across all channels.
• Enhanced Customer Experience: Unified commerce offers consistent customer engagement throughout the buying journey. Customers can access their purchase history and support across online, in-store and mobile channels.
• Unified Data Management: Centralizing data from all touchpoints into a single database provides comprehensive insights into customer behavior, preferences, sales trends, and real-time inventory visibility across all channels.
• Operational Efficiency: Implementing unified commerce streamlines operations by eliminating redundancies and inefficiencies associated with managing multiple platforms and databases.
• Improved Business Insights: Real-time visibility into unified data empowers businesses to make swift, data-driven decisions. This includes optimizing inventory levels, refining marketing strategies, and enhancing sales performance through integrated analytics.
• Personalized Customer Interactions: Businesses leverage a unified view of customer data to deliver tailored promotions, product recommendations, and seamless transitions between online and offline interactions.

How to Implement a Unified Strategy

Implementing a unified commerce approach involves careful planning and coordination across all departments and systems within a business:

• Assess and Audit: Start by assessing current sales channels, systems and processes to pinpoint integration needs and areas for enhancement.
• Choose a Payments Approach: Select a strategy and infrastructure (e.g., Stripe or in-house solutions) that integrates all sales channels and data into a unified system.
• Integrate All Systems: Integrate existing point-of-sale, inventory management, and CRM systems with your chosen unified commerce platform.
• Implement Cross-Channel Capabilities: Develop capabilities that facilitate seamless transactions such as online purchases with in-store pickup or returns, necessitating updates to processes and staff training.
• Personalize the Shopping Experience: Utilize data analytics to track customer behavior across all channels, enabling targeted promotions, product recommendations, and personalized content.
• Monitor and Evolve: Continuously monitor system performance, gather customer feedback, and ensure regulatory compliance (e.g., GDPR), adjusting processes and technology as necessary.

Proof That Unified Commerce Works

Consider Adyen, a prominent global financial technology platform, as an example. Adyen wanted to enrich its commerce capabilities across various touchpoints worldwide. This strategy integrated Adyen’s advanced payment solutions into a commerce platform, empowering its retailer customers to streamline operations and enhance customer interactions across both online and offline channels. This collaboration enabled businesses to consolidate their sales channels and payment processes into a single, efficient ecosystem, reducing complexity and enhancing scalability. By the end of 2023, 66 percent of brands utilizing Adyen reported an increase in sales through multichannel transactions, 48 percent gained a better understanding of customer behavior for improved segmentation and marketing, and 56 percent saw a notable rise in customer loyalty.

Leveraging Adyen’s integrated financial technology within a unified commerce environment, merchants enjoyed enhanced security, reduced operational costs, increased in-store mobility, and streamlined data management capabilities.

Unified commerce is transforming the retail industry by breaking down channel silos, ensuring a consistent shopping experience across all touchpoints. Unified commerce enhances customer interactions across online, offline and mobile channels by integrating all sales channels and data into a single platform.

Embracing unified commerce isn’t just a strategic choice — it’s a pathway to sustainable growth and competitive advantage in the dynamic world of modern commerce.

Dani Jurado is executive vice president of North America at VTEX, the composable and complete commerce platform.