Unified Commerce: a future-thinking addition to operating your ecommerce business

The sentence comes from bigcommerce.com describing Unified Commerce. We are happy to agree with the saying. Unified Commerce is just what it sounds like, a combiner, connecting all your backend systems with your front-facing channels through one central platform. When visiting an eCommerce where products and services work together seamlessly no matter what channel you visit through, a Unified Commerce is probably behind the setup, creating a smooth shopping experience.

What is Unified Commerce?

So, what’s the fuss about? Unified Commerce is in the most concrete description replacing all stand alone IT systems with one single platform, meaning that you’re basically combining e-commerce, CRM-systems, and order fulfillment among other technologies to handle from the same place. Doing this means that you can skip all other channels operating on their own. One could say that it makes it about a hundred times easier to run your business, and therefore it’s a very future-thinking addition to operating your eCommerce through.

A smooth way of running a business

Running your business through one combined system is playing on your side in so many ways. One advantage of Unified Commerce is that no matter what system your customer shops through, whether it is online or in an application, you’ll receive all customer data in the same place to help you understand their experiences and needs. It eliminates the need to handle each region on its own, you even process payments and refunds through the one same platform. The clarity and agility of Unified Commerce will help you improve your business and your platform and keep up with the changes in our behavioral patterns in the online world. 

The four components shaping Unified Commerce

Taking about Unified Commerce there are four key components working together that you’ll always stumble upon, making Unified Commerce what it is. These four are Systems, Channels, Products, and Interactions. We already mentioned some of this briefly above, but we’ll dig a little deeper into each one. 

• Systems. Integrating all of your different systems together in one platform, your resources and your time spent on managing will be way more efficient. Scaling your business, expanding to other markets and more channels will be way easier. 

• The channels showing your eCommerce should all provide your customers with the same smooth experience, no matter where they chose to visit your store. With Unified Commerce this is a can’t miss. It’s helpful in many ways, both for you measuring results - what does my online store do to the in-person store for example? But it’s also helpful for the customer getting the same experience regardless of where they choose to visit you. This could for example be the flexibility to return something in-store even if shopped online since all purchasing data will be connected. 

• Products. Everyone knows the annoyance when you see online that there are ten available products in-store, and then come there physically only to find that the product is completely sold out. Handling management with Unified Commerce you make sure all information everywhere is up to date. No matter if questions come to online staff or people in-store, they have the same information available, creating an easier work environment and happy customers. 

• Interactions. This is where customer behavior is caught up and where you are supposed to live up to their expectations by seeing your shoppers through multiple touchpoints. Giving a good shopping experience is about meeting and seeing your customer, wheater it’s online or personally in-store. With Unified Commerce you capture the integrations, understand the behavior and step up from them.

Writing about this, as usual with ecommerce articles, makes us wonder how people can bear to run a business without this. What are your thoughts on the concept? We’ll happily discuss it further with you.