Unified commerce has emerged as this year’s buzzword. In reality, the term has been around for a long time. The thing is, there is still a bit of confusion as to exactly what unified commerce is. Some vendors present it as a product, pitching themselves as offering a “unified commerce platform,” while others describe it as a marketing strategy. Michael Scholz, Vice President of Product and Customer Marketing at commercetools, calls it a concept, repeatedly using the word, “harmony” to describe it, further explaining, “You’re harmonizing the customer experience across different channels powered by composable.”
There’s no question that unified commerce is an important term for 2024, so we decided to dive a little deeper into understanding what it is and why it matters.
One year ago, this writer interviewed Michael Scholz, Vice President of Product and Customer Marketing, asking him to provide his perspective on the multitude of digital commerce strategies business leaders are being told they need to implement to drive results today and in the future. At the time, unified commerce was not quite the buzzworthy term it is today. He called it “the next level of commerce evolution” and a “more accepted vision of what commerce should look like today.”
Since then, the momentum for unified commerce has grown. In an NRF 2024 recap panel hosted by commercetools, Heather Hershey, Research Director, Digital Commerce at IDC, told interviewer, Dan Berthiaume, Senior Technology Editor at Chain Store Age, that unified was the big buzzword at the show but expressed concern that it might just a part of a "buzzword bingo." However, Jen Jones, Chief Marketing Officer of commercetools, who was also on the panel, dismissed that notion. She shares Michael’s opinion that it is the direction commerce needs to head.
All consumers learned how to be great online shoppers during the pandemic. Now that people want to be in stores again they have that high expectation that was set when they were online shoppers and they’re carrying it over into the physical experience. They’re looking for a very similar, seamless customer experience — they don’t want to feel that separation anymore. We’ve talked about omnichannel for decades, but we’re only at the very beginning of unified, and it feels a little different this time.
Chief Marketing Officer, commercetools
commercetools doesn’t believe that unified commerce can be viewed as a single product or strategy. We see it as the concept behind creating one interconnected system of record by centralizing all the data you collect across all your brands, websites, stores, marketing channels, etc., onto a single backend. With this “golden record,” you gain a unified view of the customer journey, from browsing to purchasing, across all touchpoints, enabling you to provide more seamless and more personalized shopping experiences.
Michael explained that unified commerce is similar, yet different from multichannel and omnichannel in that it encompasses both digital and physical experiences and acknowledges that customers don’t necessarily want the same experience on every channel or touchpoint. He pointed out that the term multichannel emerged when mobile commerce was born — the thought was that brands should just bolt on additional channels to their commerce experience as needed. Then, when social media and connected cars became commerce opportunities, everyone began talking about the importance of delivering the same messaging and customer experience through every single touchpoint. This led to the omnichannel becoming the ideal.
Now, with the pandemic behind us and brands infusing their brick-and-mortar locations with exceptional experiences, customers are embracing physical stores again. According to Michael, this is why unified commerce is becoming the holy grail. It is what businesses are striving to achieve. However, it is not a product. Unifying everything — inventory, customer data, payments, social media, etc. that you use to deliver commerce across all all touchpoints 5— requires multiple products. This, he said, is where composable commerce fits into the equation.
Unified is the ‘what.’ Composable commerce is the ‘how.’ At the end of the day, composable commerce enables you to deliver unified commerce because no matter how many different frontends you have, you can connect them all on a single backend.
VICE PRESIDENT OF PRODUCT AND CUSTOMER MARKETING, commercetools
Unlike monolithic systems which require you to have separate backends for every frontend, composable commerce has the flexibility to allow you to operate multiple brands, sites, channels, etc., to deliver unique experiences on each one and connect them all to a single backend. And, you can add new frontends, change features and make updates without risk of disrupting ongoing commerce operations and without impacting performance.
With all your disparate tools and systems connected, you gain true control over your data. This means you always know where your customer is in real-time and can deliver to them the best experience possible. It also means that when you make a change on the backend, you can choose to implement it however you like — on one frontend, all of them or just on specific ones.
With the commercetools Platform, you can also do things like “product tailor,” enhancing your customer experience even more. This feature allows you to define custom names, descriptions and SEO-related content per region, country, brand, line of business and more.
Business leaders need to think about business outcomes — and that’s what we solve for. Composability is what gives you the technical capability to be more successful and get you there better and faster.
VICE PRESIDENT OF PRODUCT AND CUSTOMER MARKETING, commercetools
It’s important to remember that to achieve unified commerce, you have to be running on a truly composable system such as commercetools. This is because you need to be able to integrate your in-store POS and other in-store systems with your digital commerce backend — and only a cloud-native, component-based, tech-agnostic platform can accomplish that.
Unified commerce is exactly what PetSmart is striving for, according to Greg Fancher, CTO of the company. Partnering with commercetools is part of the initiative that is helping the company connect its physical and digital experiences along with its products, services and loyalty program. Here, Greg explains what everyone is hoping to achieve and why.
The customer is at the core of unified commerce. With all channels connected and information shared, they can easily switch between online and physical stores without any disruption in their shopping experience. They can feel confident that regardless of whether they’re shopping at your physical store or on your website, they’ll pay the same prices and receive the same loyalty points. They can trust the employees they talk to in-person and chat with online have access to the same information about the purchases they’ve made with you and the promotions they’re eligible for.
At the same time, it gives you a holistic view of all the data you have about your customers, enabling you to better understand their preferences and behaviors. More importantly, the single golden record that unified commerce delivers provides a better foundation for generative AI tools to tap into. So, ultimately, your customers get more personalized product recommendations, promotions and marketing messages.
Gartner predicted that by 2023, unified commerce strategies would become the foundation of competitive advantage in modern retail. Six months into 2024, we would venture to say, they were right.
The way to achieve a unified holistic view of your backend to deliver these unified customer experiences is through composability. Your commerce engine orchestrates everything — harmonizing your data to give you full control over the experiences you want to deliver.
VICE PRESIDENT OF PRODUCT AND CUSTOMER MARKETING, commercetools
To learn more about how commercetools can help you unify your commerce, request a call from one of our composable commerce experts.
Anita J. Temple is the Corporate Journalist at commercetools. She was a fashion editor at Women’s Wear Daily (WWD) and W Magazine before launching a career as a freelance writer and creative producer. She has written content and worked on a wide range of marketing projects for companies including Dreamworks, Walmart, Coca-Cola, Verizon, and Adidas.