Are You Ready for Unified Commerce?

It’s a tough environment for today’s retailers, but some are succeeding and increasing sales by investing in unified commerce solutions. IHL Group (IHL) has released a new "Unified Commerce Landscape Report,"which explores the key technologies enabling their growth.

The report presents the results of a recent unified commerce benchmarking survey in which over 90 retailers were interviewed across the UK and USA about their unified commerce technologies in terms of deployment or plans for deployment. IHL looked at 15 different strategies that retailers are pursuing for 2017, and the differences between winning retailers and laggards.

In addition to the study, retailers can get their unified commerce readiness score and customized report via a quick test through the "How Does Your Garden Grow? Benchmarking Tool." Based on IHL Group’s Unified Commerce Index, you will find out how you measure up against businesses already getting the most out of the eight technologies that are increasing sales.

IHL defines the five pillars of unified commerce as: store systems, merchandising/supply chain, BI/analytics, sales and marketing, and e-commerce systems. In an earlier survey from IHL they saw that 86% of the software spending in retailers is going to these five pillars.

The Unified Commerce Landscape Report uncovered three key strategic areas of high attention: seamless shopping experience, personalization and store transformation. It also found there are three core technologies which are the building blocks of unified commerce: Order management system (OMS), single core system of customer data, and an up-to-date POS system. The following ten statistics the study uncovered give a glimpse into the factors enabling unified commerce success:

10 Findings From the "Unified Commerce Landscape Report"

•         Retail winners across all segments have spent 69% more as a percentage of revenue on IT than laggards in the current year
•         Retailers offering WiFi to associates saw 663% higher sales increase versus those that don’t
•         Retailers providing mobile sales tools for sales associates saw 77% higher sales growth rates
•         Retailers who have mobile POS installed are seeing an average sales increase 92% higher than those who do not
•         106% higher sales increase for retailers investing in empowering associates with actionable analytics
•         110% higher sales increases for retailers that actively market their cross channel services than those who do not
•         84% higher sales growth rates for retailers who can use loyalty profiles in real-time
•         107% average sales increase for retailers using customer preferences across channels
•         102% average sales increase for retailers with cross-channel demand planning in place
•         Retailers who employ personalized digital content experience saw 69% higher sales increase than those who do not
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Click here for the full "Unified Commerce Landscape Report."