Emcee Singapore: Charmaine hosted an Ayden podcast titled “Making Unified Commerce a reality”, together with experts from businesses in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region on how brands must go beyond omnichannel solutions to meet rising consumer demand.

In this episode, Charmaine kicked off the discussion on the concept of unified commerce – what it’s all about, the benefits to both businesses and consumers, and the challenges of implementing it effectively. 

Emcee Singapore Charmaine introduced Unified Commerce expert Jan-Pieter Lips, who kicked things off by explaining what sets unified commerce apart from the more commonly known omnichannel experience.

Jan-Pieter Lips said, “The key challenges for businesses really start with technology, because a lot of the issues of getting to unified commerce are systems that don’t talk to each other. And the reason for that is that they were created at different points in time. So often, we started with stores and then we had our ecommerce channels, so different technology, different teams, and siloed data. So connecting those systems is really important.”

He added, “Now, if you can’t completely replace, rip out all your systems, and replace them with a unified set of systems, then there’s different ways of going about that. One is to create middleware to connect to different systems and unify the data. That’s quite a practical approach. Some companies create middleware to connect their legacy systems and unify the data in that way.”

Lawrence Palletier, Sales and Marketing Director at hospitality IT platform, Redcat said, ”Understanding the workings of your internal processes and correctly identifying who your customers are also help.”

Dione Song, CEO of Love, Bonito, the Singapore-based fashion house, shared that her company’s decision to adopt unified commerce was to increase their understanding of the customer. That’s why they introduced a loyalty program to give incentive for customers to create an account at the point of sale in store or at point of sale. Dione added, “This allows us to increase a touchpoint : what we’re also seeing is that consumers who have tried us across multiple different channels online and offline are typically of higher value, because now they’re more immersed in the brand. They understand what we’re offering, there’s a lot more stickiness and loyalty to the brand.”

On cost of unified commerce, Josh Bell, Principal of Guzman y Gomez, a Mexican casual dining and fast food restaurant chain shared his view, “While embracing unified commerce can be an expensive proposition, it will pay for itself over the long term, by allowing businesses to do what they do best, which is offering a high quality product or service to their customers to keep them coming back.“

Charmaine concluded the podcast stating, “Demand seems to be the operative word here, as empowered consumers vote with their wallets. And businesses find themselves having to step up and offer the kinds of options, flexibility, and efficiency customers have now come to desire. Fortunately, we can always count on technology to come through.” 

Listen to the latest episode of our podcast, Behind the Figures, today: https://adyen.com/landing/online/apac/behind-the-figures-podcast-2023-01/Episode-6