News Feature | February 16, 2015

Survey Shows Your Retail IT Clients Want To Unify POS, e-Commerce, Call Centers, Mobile

Christine Kern

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

Survey Shows Your Retail IT Clients Want To Unify POS, e-Commerce, Call Centers, Mobile

According to DemandWare, retailers want to band together to create a unified commerce platform that would consolidate point of sale, e-commerce, call center, and mobile touch points into one system.

A new survey, conducted by the National Retail Federation, Ecommerce Europe, and Ecommerce Foundation in partnership with Demandware, surveyed nearly 300 U.S., European and Australian retail business and technology executives, and found that 53 percent expect to implement a unified commerce platform in the next few years, up from approximately 50 percent from the year prior. Additionally, over the next 10 years, 86 percent of those surveyed plan to implement a unified commerce platform.

Retailers reported that implementing a unified solution could help boost sales, improve brand value and increase profit margins. The results also demonstrate that many retailers link unified solutions to increased IT productivity and efficiency. More than 70 percent of those surveyed have already made progress toward integrating these solutions.

“Many retailers are already in the throes of managing the critical changes necessary to keep up with existing retail infrastructure, architecture and applications, and today’s consumers will continue to shape how retail CIOs adjust their commerce and business platforms for years to come,” NRF VP of retail technologies Tom Litchford says in the press release. “Retail IT executives increasingly want a unified commerce platform to bridge the many digital and traditional touch points that customers access to better serve customers, streamline IT operations and improve the bottom line.”

Specifically, the survey found:

  • 52 percent anticipate substantial improvement to controllable items like inventory and returns that directly impact margin.
  • 46 percent expect to see increases in brand value.
  • 38 percent predict measureable increases in average order value, promotional redemption and conversion rates.

“We are focused on our customers’ brand experience. As revealed in this report, a unified commerce platform is the most logical approach to simplify our consumer-facing technologies and effectively serve our connected customers,” said Alex Golshan, VP of omni-channel and international ecommerce at BCBGMAXAZRIA Group.

Demandware will host a webinar on February 24 at 11 a.m. ET to dive further into the research and highlight key findings and examples from retailers regarding their unified platform strategies. For more information go to: http://response.demandware.com/NRFReport?Source=prus.