How cloud technologies enhance unified commerce and serve customers

As shopping behaviors evolve rapidly, brands must adapt to fragmented customer journeys. To address these changes, unified commerce has become an essential model for B2C. Cloud technologies play a pivotal role in this transformation by enabling personalized interactions and optimizing the entire value chain. This article explores the contributions, benefits, and challenges of cloud technologies in retail.

Benefits of cloud technologies for unified commerce

Enhancing operational agility

Cloud technologies provide a flexible and scalable IT infrastructure, enabling quick adaptation to activity peaks, testing new features, and deploying updates. 

This flexibility results in better interconnection between channels:

• real-time stock synchronization between warehouses and stores,
•  in-store management of e-commerce orders, 
• implementation of omnichannel services.

Improving sales channel integration

Cloud technologies enable seamless integration of sales channels. Brands can centralize B2C orders from e-commerce, mobile, marketplaces, and physical stores into a single platform. With 40% of shoppers now embracing hybrid buying journeys, maintaining continuity is crucial. Cloud technologies meet this need, empowering brands to offer hybrid B2C experiences like click and collect.

Optimizing customer data management

Cloud technologies aggregate previously dispersed information into a single platform, promoting a holistic view of business activities. Companies can then cross-reference online buyer preferences with e-commerce orders and available inventory to adjust product recommendations. Additionally, cloud plays a key role in data security management, offering:

•  secure access,
•  instant updates, 
• GDPR compliance.

Impact on customer experience

Personalizing the shopping journey

Personalization of the customer experience relies on real-time unified data analysis, made possible by cloud commerce. Brands have complete visibility into customer behavior, driving B2C marketing scenarios. 

Cloud allows for personalized content, promotions, and communication channels based on customer behavior. With advanced analysis and automation features, brands can deploy contextualized journeys. 

Openbravo Commerce Cloud offers a unified commerce environment that integrates all channels into a single framework. Discover the flexibility of our centralized solution!

Ensuring consistency between digital and physical channels

Unified commerce meets consumer expectations by offering a seamless experience both online and in-store. The centralized infrastructure allows for real-time sharing of product and customer data with teams (sales, marketing, logistics), preventing frustrations such as price inconsistencies across channels or the unavailability of items visible online. 

For customers, the experience is streamlined: 

• items added to an app’s cart can be found in-store, 
• digital loyalty cards work both online and in-store, 
• orders placed online can be returned in physical stores.

Reducing friction in the purchasing process

Cloud synchronizes key data in real-time, facilitating a smooth shopping journey. This continuity prevents errors and unnecessary delays, enabling customers easy access to services like in-store pickup. These functionalities are supported by shared cloud services.

Challenges of implementing cloud solutions

Managing sensitive data security

The transition to the cloud often raises concerns about data security. To address these, brands need a B2B cloud partner that offers solid guarantees tailored to retail. Orisha Commerce’s solutions are built with a secure architecture that includes data encryption and automated backups. Our infrastructures are certified, ensuring compliance with data protection standards. 

Adapting existing infrastructures

One major obstacle to cloud adoption is the complexity of existing systems. B2B cloud platforms address this challenge and integrate smoothly into heterogeneous environments. 

Orisha Commerce utilizes a modular architecture and open APIs, enabling gradual integration with existing tools. This approach aims to enhance existing infrastructures by adding interoperable cloud modules that quickly generate value.

Training teams in new technologies

Sales, marketing, and IT teams all need to adopt new cloud tools. Without proper support, even the most efficient solutions may remain underutilized. 

Orisha Commerce offers comprehensive support through targeted B2B training programs. Our services facilitate tool adoption, particularly through e-learning modules.

Future trends in unified commerce thanks to cloud

Advancing towards enhanced omnichannel

Cloud commerce paves the way for deeper omnichannel integration, where the boundaries between channels become invisible to the customer. Brands can offer ultra-flexible journeys where customers buy on social media, pick up in-store, exchange at another point of sale, and receive recommendations through the e-commerce site.

Utilizing artificial intelligence to anticipate customer needs

Cloud provides the perfect environment to harness the potential of artificial intelligence in retail. By centralizing information, companies analyze purchase behaviors and transaction histories in real-time to predict customer expectations. 

Tweakwise is an AI-powered optimization engine that automatically adjusts search results and recommendations based on profile, shopping context, and business objectives. To make AI actionable in daily operations, our teams continuously develop new use cases during hackathons dedicated to product innovation.

Developing innovative logistics solutions

Cloud platforms ensure flow optimization and offer more flexible logistics options for e-commerce, such as ship-from-store and click and collect.

 Orisha Commerce’s B2B solutions include unified customer and stock data management, allowing visualization of all availabilities on a single interface. This strategy enables brands to build hybrid models where each point of sale becomes a mini logistics hub.

Adopting cloud technologies in retail contributes to building truly unified commerce. Cloud commerce helps businesses offer a cohesive experience while increasing efficiency. However, this transformation involves overcoming concrete challenges that only solutions designed for retail can address reliably. Orisha Commerce has developed a robust and scalable platform designed to meet field demands and support innovation. Request a demo of our solution!