Modern eCommerce solutions can be valuable tools for businesses looking to get ahead of the competition, but they can also be highly complex, expensive, and hard to manage without advanced technical expertise.
To avoid biting off more than your team can chew, we’re breaking down the latest solution retailers are switching to: unified commerce.
What is Unified Commerce?
Unified commerce combines back-end systems with front-end operations to join retail, fulfillment, and eCommerce together all on a single platform. It’s a different approach from fully headless or composable commerce systems, which retailers often turn to when they’re tired of the complexity that comes with managing too many moving pieces that don’t communicate well with one another. While this is what retailers may be most familiar with when they hear the phrase, Virid’s Unified Commerce Solution takes it a step further, combining our enterprise platform, marketAgility, with deep integration expertise and dedicated partnership to support eCommerce growth at every step.
This technology approach goes a step beyond omnichannel commerce, which combines eCommerce with in-person shopping to allow customers to browse across multiple channels. With a truly unified approach, retailers can manage brick-and-mortar operations, online stores, warehouses, and every other channel simultaneously and in real time.
The Benefits of Unified Commerce
Reduce Manual Processes
Unified commerce can reduce IT overhead and limit the demand for complex integrations, as the approach inherently requires all systems to communicate and work together from the start. This means teams spend less time reconciling data manually, and many other eCommerce tasks can be easily automated. This approach can also result in fewer site crashes and more efficient resolutions when issues come up.
Improve Customer Experience and Personalization
The unified commerce approach can also improve the customer experience by providing consistent branding and personalization. When all systems are fully integrated, you can provide a consistent shopping experience across all channels. A single view of customer data also means you can tailor the customer experience to more precise segments. Finally, you can provide customer service teams with a more complete understanding of your customers and their preferences to enable an improved customer support experience as well.
Centralize Your Data
Unified commerce platforms like marketAgility are built on powerful APIs, allowing you to connect new tools to your existing tech stack. That single source of truth makes it much easier to see what’s actually happening across your business. And, the added flexibility that comes with an API-first commerce system can help small teams stay on top of modern technology advancements and compete with larger and more established retailers.
Strengthen Data Accuracy and Business Insights
A connected commerce system provides more accurate and complete insights in one place. A unified view of your data can allow for more efficient analysis of what’s really happening, which is crucial for businesses looking to optimize operations and grow. This also helps small teams take advantage of customer information as well as sales, inventory, orders, and other historical data to build more effective marketing campaigns, enhance personalization, and improve the customer experience. With Virid’s Unified Commerce Solution, our team of experts can help provide an even deeper view of key business insights through strategic support and hands-on partnership.
Increase Operational Efficiency
Growing your eCommerce business while managing disjointed systems means you’re leaving money on the table. Unified commerce centralizes eCommerce operations and helps teams work more efficiently. By automating manual processes, you can cut training time, reduce human error, and free your team from repetitive tasks.
How to Get Started with Unified Commerce
If you’re convinced that unified commerce is the right choice for your business, there are a few things to consider before you make the switch.
Choose the Right Partner
The most important element of your eCommerce store is the partner you choose to help you reach your goals. This is why our approach is perfect for growing retailers looking to get ahead. Virid’s Unified Commerce Solution creates a one-stop shop to manage your platform, address your technical needs, and develops the strategy to help your business grow. You’ll work with a dedicated client manager and a team of developers to optimize your eCommerce site based on your unique needs, which is ideal for small teams looking to grow without hiring additional staff.
Allocate Resources and Cost
Switching platforms is a big move, which means that you will have to plan carefully. Ensure that your team is aligned on your new strategy and create a detailed budget that accounts for unexpected costs, as implementing new technology always requires significant upfront investment. There will be a learning curve, so it’s worth considering an eCommerce platform partner that is experienced and offers hands-on training through implementation and beyond. Choosing a partner with a platform that has key omnichannel functionality built in can help you launch faster.
Train Your Team
A unified commerce strategy usually involve some shifts in roles and responsibilities, as more efficient technology will free up your team to work on higher-value tasks. Though this is a positive outcome for retailers, it can be challenging to navigate the transition smoothly. If your team is resistant to change, adoption will slow and your unified commerce strategy may be less effective. Plan ahead to understand how teams will be impacted and make sure that your staff is properly trained to prepare for what’s to come.
Prepare for Technology Integration
The most important consideration before you implement a new eCommerce platform approach is how your current tech stack will integrate with new tools. Your back-end systems may need to be restructured, which can require custom integrations that not all teams are experienced with. This is another reason why it can benefit small teams to work with a commerce partner that’s already prepared for the complexity of a unified commerce implementation.
Final Thoughts
Regardless of where you are in your commerce journey, you’ll need to evolve with the industry to be successful. Even as retailers feel the pain of the clunky, monolithic platforms of the past, it can be difficult and time-consuming to make the switch to a new solution.
At Virid, we help guide mid-market retailers through each stage of their growth journey. We’ve seen and solved the industry’s most complex challenges for more than 25 years, and we can do the same for your retail business.
If you’re ready to accelerate eCommerce growth, the experts at Virid can help you reach your goals.
Virid’s Unified Commerce Solution reduces complexity and eliminates reliance on third-party tools to offer a seamless, integrated commerce experience. Our solution combines a cutting-edge eCommerce platform, marketAgility, with deep integration expertise and dedicated client support to help you enhance customer satisfaction, streamline operations, and drive sustained growth. Schedule a demo with our team to discover if unified commerce is right for your business.
