What does the move to unified commerce actually deliver?
In e-commerce and retail, organizations take the step from omnichannel tounified commerce. That simply means there's not only consistency on the customer side, but also on the system side. You replace a patchwork of systems with one central layer for data, payments, and inventory. Why is it a logical step? It leads to greater efficiency, better insight, and a stronger customer experience. Then 'what does that concretely yield?' is a logical follow-up question.
Unified commerce is often treated as a technical issue. How do you connect channels, platforms and transactions in one IT environment, so that you have a central data source from which different departments can steer? Important, certainly - but exactly the kind of question you can hand over to your IT department or IT partner with peace of mind. Much more interesting is to first look at the business side of unified commerce: what growth, what return and what customer value can you actually realize with it?
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Speeding up reconciliation processes
For finance, the biggest win is the stability and speed of the numbers. If revenue from all channels goes directly into the same general ledger, there is one financial truth. The month-end close shifts then from a multi-week reconciliation exercise to a process that can be completed in a few days. Moreover, the chance of errors is much smaller. A single system for orders, inventory, fulfilment and accountingprevents discrepancies between numbers from different sources.
In short: finance spends less time on data gathering and more time on analysis and scenarios.
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The business case for finance, operations and CEO
Unified commerce delivers demonstrable returns for multiple functions in the organization. There are strong opportunities for higher revenue, greater operational efficiency, time savings, and fewer errors. There is, however, a nuance to this. The 5 to 15 percent revenue growth McKinsey reports, for example, applies to the front-runners in the industry. The figures from the studies also depend on scale, complexity, and starting situation. Organizations with highly fragmented systems typically have more consolidation potential than companies with a relatively simple stack.
The trend, however, is clear: the more processes and systems come together in one architecture, the greater the gains in efficiency, manageability, and financial return. The aforementioned studies provide a solid starting point to underpin the internal business case for unified commerce for executives, operations, and finance.
Want to know how to build the business case for unified commerce within your organization ? One from our payment experts would be happy to brainstorm with you!
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