Gain Greater Insights and Improve Customer Satisfaction with Unified Commerce
Many retailers struggle to offer customers online purchasing options while managing their physical stores. This problem often stems from using various pieced-together software systems to perform the accounting, inventory, and payment functions necessary to conduct business and somehow tie them to an online retail provider. While these companies might succeed in giving their customers an eCommerce option, they often fall short of meeting customer expectations, leading to dissatisfied customers and lost repeat business. These companies would be wise to invest in a unified commerce solution.
The positive impact of unified commerce
A unified commerce solution consolidates all your backend systems, like financials, payment processing, CRM, and inventory management, across all your retail channels, whether physical stores or online stores, giving the customer a seamless buying experience. After all, customers don’t think in terms of discrete buying channels (online vs. in-store). Instead, they view all buying channels simply as extensions of your store.
Here are just some of the ways a unified commerce solution can significantly improve customer satisfaction and reduce operational costs:
- Operational efficiency – Unified commerce ensures all customer-facing components utilize the same backend systems, not individual software applications for each channel. This makes software administration and support more manageable and collects customer interactions across all channels.
- Analyze customer behavior – Link online and in-store interactions with each customer to gain insight into buying behavior and shopping preferences.
- Provide consistency throughout the buying process – Maintain a consistent, branded experience throughout the buying process from first interaction to service after the sale.
- Display accurate inventory availability – Show accurate inventory levels across all channels in real time. Customers should never be told an out-of-stock item is available. Unified commerce integrates inventory management with your retail channels to always display accurate inventory availability for your customers, whether online or in the store,
- Reflect real-time pricing and promotions – All your retail channels should show the same prices, discounts, and special promotions. A unified commerce solution will ensure all your retail channels are automatically updated in real time to show the current prices and any special discounts or product promotions the company is running.
- Improve productivity – Using disparate business systems often requires duplicating data from one system to another by hand, tasks that are time consuming and error-prone. Consolidating your backend processes reduces the dependence on these manual processes.
- Automate stock replenishment – Stock-outs of high-demand items can spell disaster for a retailer. A unified commerce solution can help you anticipate demand and issue replenishment orders automatically.
- Deliver personalized experiences – View customer buying behaviors on the individual or macro level to identify buying habits, trends, successful promotions, and more. Leverage this information to make each customer’s buying experience unique and special.
Transform your approach to omnichannel with ArcherPoint
ArcherPoint offers a comprehensive online retail solution and robust point-of-sale options built on a solid foundation of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and LS Retail for a flexible, scalable unified commerce solution for your business.
Learn how ArcherPoint can help you streamline your omnichannel storefronts, deliver more personalized retail experiences, gain greater insights into your customers, and introduce AI capabilities for better customer engagement.