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As recently as last summer, retail
technologists and consultant types
introduced the concept of “unified
commerce,” and it’s quickly become
the latest buzzword among retail CIO
types. According to Ken Morris, partner
and co-founder of consultants Boston
Retail Partners and an early advocate of
the strategy, unified commerce seeks to
break down the walls between internal
channel silos by leveraging a single, uni-
fied platform.
Of course, for most specialty retail-
ers, this is not a “right now” technol-
ogy transition. Currently, no single
technology vendor even offers a truly
comprehensive unified platform. But
unified commerce certainly is not on the
“bleeding edge” either. Indeed, the vast
majority of retailers envision a single,
unified commerce platform on the hori-
zon, and nearly three-quarters of retail
business and technology executives
surveyed for the National Retail
Federation are at least informally
planning this business and tech-
nical transformation.
For most retail IT departments,
however, the current reality is
somewhere in the middle. But
whether or not a clear roadmap to
unified commerce is in place, the
transition toward a unified sales
platform should be weighed and
considered into just about every
customer-facing technology pur-
chase decision moving forward.
The reasons are not hard to
understand. Few people in the re-
tail business, if anyone, still need
to be convinced that shoppers are
increasingly powerful and
in control. Customers can
quickly navigate multiple
touch points and sources of
information, compare and
contrast, and find precisely
what they want, often from
multiple sources. They have
come to expect concepts
such as ship-to-store,
endless aisles, real-time
inventory feedback and
customized pricing and
promotions simply because
they know it’s possible.
(Now Amazon even has
them thinking about drones
flying around, for goodness sake.) The
challenges retailers face behind the
scenes to deliver such capabilities, quite
simply, are immaterial to consumers. If
one retail brand doesn’t have precisely
what a shopper is looking for, it’s likely
they can find it somewhere else,
often in a matter of clicks and
sometimes for less money.
Meeting these omni-channel
consumer expectations will require
a transition from simply selling
available inventory to holistically
serving connected customers. It
means gathering, analyzing and
disseminating customer, product,
pricing and inventory data in
real-time. The problem is legacy
retail technology hasn’t been archi-
tected to handle these modern-day
requirements and the harmoniz-
ing of business processes across
all customer touch-points, says
Boston Retail Partners. Rather,
most retailers have deployed technology in
separate silos by channel, such as disparate
solutions for in-store POS versus e-com-
merce and, in many cases, mobile. In order
to deliver omni-channel-type experiences,
retailers have loosely coupled these legacy
Top IT Priorities for Retailers in 2015
Source: Boston Retail Partners
Regarding the rollout of EMV (chip and
PIN) capabilities, what are your plans
to meet the October 2015 mandat
for liability shift?
Source: Forrester Research
Retailers Top Chal enge 2015
Source: Boston Retail Partners
Source: Rocket Fuel
We’re already ready
We’ve started this project
and will be in pilot or partial
rollout by October 2015
We haven’t yet started thi
project but will be ready by
October 2015
We will deploy in our
next POS refresh cycle
Payment security
Improving customer service
Implementing single commerce solution
Empowering associates
Securing customer data
Enabling mobile solutions
2014
2015
Unified commerce platform
Real-time retail
Customer-facing
technology in the store
Mobile point of sale
3%
66%
20%
63%
44%
26%
44%
34%
24%
6%
Top IT Priorities for Retail rs in 2015
Source: Boston Retail Partners
Regarding the rollout of EMV (chip and
PIN) capabilities, what are your plans
to meet the October 2015 mandate
for liability shift?
Source: Forrester Research
Retailers Top Challenges for 2015
Source: Boston Retail Partners
Source: Rocket Fuel
-1%
-8%
-16%
-22%
-23%
We’re already ready
We’ve started this project
and will be in pilot or partial
rollout by October 2015
We haven’t yet started this
project but will be ready by
October 2015
We will deploy in our
next POS refresh cycle
Payment security
Improving customer service
Implementing single commerce solution
Empowering associates
Securing customer data
Enabling mobile solutions
2014
2015
Unified commerce platform
Real-time retail
Customer-facing
technology in the store
Mobile point of sale
3%
66%
20%
63%
44%
46%
55%
36%
38%
26%
38%
44%
33%
33%
30%
44%
34%
24%
6%
Key Ini
Source: Bost
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
% of respondents
Source: Boston Retail Partners
Inside
Outdoor
|
Spring
2015
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