Achieving Unified Commerce Exellence
Data and insights for exceeding expectations in specialty apparel, footwear, accessories and luxury retail in the US, Canada and the UK
Getting to truly Unified Commerce is not easy, especially for softlines retailers that have so many unique challenges to overcome. To help shed light on current trends, challenges and opportunities in the pursuit of Unified Commerce, Aptos recently commissioned a survey of softlines retail IT executives.
The findings revealed key insights we believe can help apparel, accessories, footwear and luxury retailers achieve their own unique Unified Commerce ambitions:
Study Firmographics
The survey, conducted in association with Bain, reached out to more than 120 specialty softlines retailers, gathering comprehensive, actionable insights into the Unified Commerce landscape.
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How they compare to peers in their categories
The challenges and struggles others are facing
How they are prioritizing their tech investments
Apparel
Luxury
Footwear
Accessories
57%
22%
14%
7%
Primary Vertical
$1-$10B
46%
Annual Revenue (USD)
$500- $999M
$250- $499M
$150- $249M
19%
13%
Corporate Headquarters
80%
6%
UK
Canada
US
Close
Which technologies their peers find most critical
Achieving Unified Commerce is hard. Learning from your peers can help.
Softlines retailers shed light on their path to
Softlines retailers shed light on achieving Unified Commerce excellence
HOME
The state of Softlines Retailers on their path to Unified Commerce
SECTION ONE
What's holding them back
SECTION TWO
Achieving Unified Commerce
SECTION THREE
Conclusion / How Aptos can help
SECTION FOUR
The vast majority of specialty softlines retailers identify Unified Commerce as a top priority.
95% of all softlines retailers surveyed identified Unified Commerce as important to extremely important.
Perhaps bullish expectations of Unified Commerce impacts on business performance help explain the consensus on Unified Commerce prioritization.
Retailers who believe Unified Commerce will have a large impact on key performance metrics
78%
68%
67%
Profitability
Sales Revenue
Inventory Management
Customer Experience
Customer Conversions
Apparel, accessories and luxury retailers, in particular, are convinced of the importance of Unified Commerce. Footwear? Perhaps surprisingly, not so much.
Percent of Retailers who consider Unified Commerce important – extemely important:
77%
88%
29%
25%
40%
56%
100%
71%
Tier 1
Tier 2
Tier 3
There is strong consensus around the building blocks to Unified Commerce success: Inventory, Ecommerce, OMS and POS are viewed as the four most important technologies.
88% Inventory Management Systems 84% Front End / Ecommerce Storefronts 80% Omnichannel Order Management Systems 73% Point-of-Sale Technology
Conversely (and perhaps ominously), store associate empowerment technologies are not considered important by most retailers we surveyed.
30% Accessories 23% Luxury 18% Apparel 15% Footwear
And Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality barely registered at all with the majority of respondents:
10%
9%
So, What's Holding Them Back?
Softlines retailers face significant, yet recognizable challenges as they pursue their Unified Commerce ambitions.
45%
70%
47%
38%
27%
30%
60%
35%
Budget Constraints
Lack of Expertise
Unclear UC Priorities
Resistance to Change
have Unified Commerce ambitions
There is also a clear disconnect between internal ambitions and strategies:
75%
51%
have a clear Unified Commerce strategy
but only
Most softlines retailers do not believe their technology solutions are adequate for Unified Commerce.
Only 8% stongly agree that their technologies are adequate for Unified Commerce. And, while 48% agree that their tech is in fact adequate, almost as many do not agree (44%).
Further complicating matters is store readiness to support Unified Commerce:
Overall, respondents report significant gaps in how well their stores are prepared to support Unified Commerce operations.
17%
Retailers who consider their stores very prepared for Unified Commerce
Tier 4
And inadequate store tools and technologies are clearly part of the reason for their lack of store readiness.
Only 41% believe they have the tools and resources they require to deliver Unified Commerce experiences in their stores. And almost half (44%) indicate that their store tech is not yet able to support their Unified Commerce ambitions.
Making things worse (for the customer, anyway), several key experiential technologies are simply MIA for many.
Even today, almost 25 years after the initial emergence of ecommerce, there continues to be a heavy focus on ecommerce technology (60% indicate ecommerce platforms are extremely important). While effective websites are of course essential, we can’t continue to ignore other supporting technology investments much longer:
42%
33%
Do not have a customer-facing endless aisle solution in place
Do not have any last-mile delivery solutions in place
Do not have any omnichannel personalization solutions in place
Do not have any associate-level CRM and inventory solutions in place
There is also a clear disconnect between internal ambitions and strategies
As a result, C-suite confidence is… lacking.
While VP/SVPs and Directors are mostly confident in their Unified Commerce goals, tools and tech, C-level executives are far less confident in their ability to achieve those goals:
59%
41%
Business Leaders
Store Operations
Marketing
Board of Directors
Retailers who report very similar Unified Commerce priorities across their organization
Strategic alignment could also be holding us back
The retailers we surveyed revealed potentially problematic levels of alignment on Unified Commerce strategies and the associated IT priorities. Of particular concern: just 41% reported alignment with the Board of Directors, especially when 76% reported their Boards have significant influence on Unified Commerce strategy.
33% Believe they have a clear strategy 26% Believe they have the right tools/resources
Unified Commerce success factors
73%
69%
The state of softlines retailers on their path to Unified Commerce
Our survey respondents made it clear that the challenges to achieving Unified Commerce are plentiful. The key question, of course, is did the survey reveal a roadmap to overcoming those challenges? After careful analysis, we identified strong consensus around several critical building blocks to Unified Commerce success.
Organizational alignment on strategy, technology and capital.
Time and time again, our survey revealed the importance of organizational alignment. Our real-world experience is entirely consistent with these findings. Too often, we see retail organizations that lack alignment on key strategic issues like strategy, technology and capital struggle to develop consensus around their strategic decisions. That lack of consensus almost always directly leads to delays, distractions and dysfunction throughout the program. We recommend investing heavily in building consensus upfront, long before you invest in Unified Commerce technology.
We realize as a store technology solution provider, we may be perceived as not entirely unbiased, but the data from the survey absolutely confirms our long experience helping the store: technology is critical to ensuring the store not only supports, but enhances, your Unified Commerce programs. We believe the key to success lies in identifying the right technologies required by your unique customer base. Our survey definitely uncovered strong consensus that POS, OMS and Inventory Management technologies are important to all verticals. However, there was far less consensus in the research around other store-enabling technologies like AR/VR, in-aisle associate selling tools, in-store customer marketing tools and yes, even store mobility. We believe the key is to invest in store technologies that help you further your Unified Commerce objectives and that also best meet the expectations of your specific customers. No two retailers’ customers look exactly alike, and neither should their store technology stacks.
The right technology stack is essential to unifying the in-store experience.
Business & IT Alignment
Financial Capital
Cross-org Collaboration
Change Management
Integration of New/Old Tech
Program Management
Large impacts to Unified Commerce success
When we compared the survey findings to our own experiences with hundreds of Unified Commerce implementations, three findings really stood out to us as keys to Unified Commerce success:
Leveraging our experience: Three success factors that stood out to us
1
3
There was one important success factor where our experience differs significantly from the research. Only 45% of our study respondents identified the VP of Store Operations as having a major influence on Unified Commerce strategy. With ~85% of revenues coming from the stores, it seems impossible to find Unified Commerce success without heavy influence and collaboration from store operations leadership. Our experience confirms that assumption: when we work with engaged and influential store operations leaders they have a direct – and significant — impact on the success of every Unified Commerce project. And the converse is also true: projects where the store operations leaders are less involved are often among our most challenging. Assumptions are often wrong, store buy-in is difficult to achieve, and results are difficult to evaluate. We believe store operations leadership should have a major influence on any Unified Commerce project, and we recommend that they have “a seat at the table” alongside marketing, ecommerce and customer experience executives.
Don’t underestimate the importance of store leadership in strategic decisions.
2
Conclusion
The data indicates that the path to Unified Commerce is clear.
While most softlines retailers have ambitious Unified Commerce goals, they describe significant challenges they have yet to overcome. Budget constraints, lack of organizational alignment and expertise, unclear priorities and strategies, as well as resistance to change, are preventing many from achieving their Unified Commerce goals. However, by building better alignment and collaboration, investing in key technology solutions such as inventory management systems, ecommerce platforms and POS technology, and securing the necessary capital, softlines retailers tell us they believe they can enhance their operations and provide seamless customer experiences in every channel and touch point.
Aptos’ deep softlines retail experience helps us understand exactly how to orchestrate every aspect of your enterprise for optimal Unified Commerce experiences. Enhance your retail technology stack with solutions crafted for change and guided by expertise. Our collective experience and leading-edge solutions can help you keep pace with evolving demands, simplify your operations and become more agile, resilient, adaptive and profitable. Our unrivaled understanding of how retail actually works — from the store, to the associate, to the enterprise at scale —helps hundreds of retail brands around the world with the most complete, intuitive and unified solutions in the omnichannel retail market. Aptos ONE, a Unified Commerce platform developed on advanced modern technologies is designed to help softlines retailers keep pace with consumers who increasingly look to technology to demand more flexibility, information and speed from the softlines brands they shop. Our experience with hundreds of softlines retailers is reflected in our software, our processes and our people, all of which are uniquely capable of helping you achieve your Unified Commerce objectives. Learn more at aptos.com
How Aptos can help
