Hurdles to Your Unified Commerce Strategy

When you ask retailers how important unified commerce is to them, 85 percent say that it is their top priority. When you ask them how they plan to implement a unified commerce strategy the hemming and hawing starts. Business leaders understand that moving from siloed applications and datasets towards a unified platform across all of their channels is important, but they are having trouble selecting the right solution to tackle this challenge because they run into some common hurdles. Yet as with any hurdle, if you take the right approach they won’t impede your progress towards the finish line.

Singular thinking

Many retailers started out in a single channel before branching out. While it used to be brick and mortar storefronts embracing ecommerce, we are starting to see businesses that built their name one the web now opening retail stores to complement their sales. However, it is all too often evident to the consumer just which channel is the bread and butter of an organization.

In addition to the customer having different experiences from one channel to another, there are often missteps when it comes to data and processes among the different units that causes even more problems for your unified strategy when you continue to treat each channel individually.

Isolating data

Traditionally, different departments use their own applications for their internal processes. With each differing software application comes a different data set. This presents two problems for a business moving towards unified commerce. First, the data is siloed off for each application. What marketing uses doesn’t talk to what fulfillment uses. Retail stores may not be in communication with ecommerce in regards to customers and stock. In some cases, even web stores are siloed off from mobile sales.

The second issue that data isolation causes is that it isn’t working with data from other siloes. When marketing collects one set of data that isn’t shared with support, there are missed opportunities on both sides. Most of the data collected by an organization can complement the information collected by another and they should be shared to maximize what you can do with it.

Poor processes

Introducing a product to market is no small feat, and often takes a coordinated effort by the company as a whole. From buyers to marketers, IT to warehousing and sales to customer service everyone is involved. When teams that are involved are working from poor processes, things tend to slow down; and that prevents other departments from getting their part of the work done.

For the most part, processes can be put into place that help with collaboration, automation and validation to help keep teams in stride with one another and take some of the tedious, error-prone tasks out of people’s hands.

One tool that can help your business as you approach these hurdles is your enterprise resource planning solution. Not only does it allow you to better manage your data, but it starts breaking down those silos so that information can be shared throughout the organization. Additionally, if used properly, your ERP software can help you better manage, and automate the processes that slow things down.

If you are looking for ways to implement unified commerce in your organization, turn to your ERP solutions team to see what they can do to get the ball rolling.