re customers buy online and pick up in-store – different channels often have their own systems and databases. Integrating all these channels can be complex, requiring great resources. Instead, the holy grail solution is unified commerce. This is a comprehensive approach that extends beyond online sales to encompass various critical aspects of retail operations, with inventory management and pricing at its core.  Inventory management: Unified commerce ensures a holistic view of inventory across all sales channels, from physical stores and e-commerce websites to mobile apps. This real-time visibility allows businesses to optimise stock levels, prevent stockouts and fulfil orders efficiently. Customers can access products from any channel, enjoying a seamless shopping experience. Inventory pricing: With unified commerce, retailers can adjust prices based on factors such as demand, competition and inventory levels, ensuring that products are priced competitively in real time. This pricing agility maximises revenue and can be personalised for customer segments. How unified commerce drives profits By integrating inventory management and pricing strategies into a unified system, businesses can achieve improved efficiency and use data-driven insights to enhance customer experience and gain a competitive advantage – not to mention improving the bottom line. Some real-life success stories include: Breaking down silos Unifying commerce involves breaking down the silos where valuable data is often inaccessible. French retailer Carrefour had ambitions to grow its e-commerce sales amid digital-native grocers but was struggling with digital assets that were managed separately, which impeded making changes at scale.  By building a new e-commerce platform that bridged organisational silos, Carrefour has given itself the processes and tools to enhance customer experience on a daily basis by leveraging feedback and behaviour. Gaining visibility Another example of the benefits seen with a unified commerce platform is fashion retailer Eileen Fisher. It wanted to create synergy between its bricks-and-mortar locations and digital storefront. But the two channels had separate inventory tracking systems, leading to lost sales when stores couldn’t check what stock was where.  By consolidating the systems into a central order management hub, Eileen Fisher empowered sales associates to locate any item in a specific size or colour and arrange for shipping from the nearest store or warehouse to a customer’s home. This consolidated inventory system has reduced returns and helped increase e-commerce sales by double digits, as well as helping store managers improve capacity management. A better supply chain In a third case, a global jewellery brand was having problems with its order management system (OMS) in the Apac region. The company wanted to ensure a consistently great shopping experience anywhere in the world, whether retail or digital.  By migrating to a cloud-based OMS, it was able to replace outdated manual processes, inventory reconciliation and customer service tools with a single, powerful solution. The new platform has enabled enhanced supply-chain visibility across channels and stronger relationships with shipping partners, as well as new e-commerce services such as click-and-collect store fulfilment.  Future-proofing retail Along with enhancing current operations, unified commerce also enables retailers to stay ahead of the curve. Having an integrated, data-driven foundation makes it much easier to incorporate innovative solutions using machine learning, generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) and the IoT (internet of things). While we’re still in the early days of GenAI, we’re already starting to see companies experiment with sandboxes to better understand its potential and limitations. In retail, some of the promising applications include demand planning and forecasting, as well as store layout optimisation, all of which drive growth.  In one experiment, Publicis Sapient worked with a large specialty retailer to improve product descriptions by using GenAI to learn from customer reviews what customers felt was unique and differentiated about the product. The retailer’s conversion improved by 2 per cent due to better product descriptions created by GenAI. The journey to unified commerce Unified commerce involves not just investment in technology and infrastructure but a holistic rethink about a retailer’s entire operations. This means organisational change, and there may be resistance from stakeholders accustomed to legacy systems.  It also means change outside the organisation, for partners such as manufacturers, third-party logistics suppliers, e-commerce marketplaces, marketing agencies, utilities providers and fulfilment centres – all of whom will need to embrace new ways of working and integrating.  But the benefits of unified commerce are clear. Digital commerce is radically different than it was yesterday – ‘business as usual’ means falling behind. Whether operating bricks-and-mortar a digital storefront or on a third-party e-commerce platform, a unified commerce strategy will unlock value and deliver a competitive edge.