3. 2CRM/Unified Commerce Survey
Introduction
Customers have forced a fundamental reshaping
of retail, demanding a seamless convergence of
the in-store and digital experiences. Retailers can
no longer divide that experience among separate
channels; they must make it a holistic experience,
transcending channels to effectively relate to their
customers. From the customer’s point of view,
she doesn’t care what channel she is shopping
from – she simply wants to shop the retail brand.
In summary, this is Unified Commerce!
While delivering a seamless customer experience
is the driver, technology allows the customer to
tailor her own experience. Unified Commerce
leverages technology to provide the platform,
and real-time retail is the key to delivering the
experience. As retailers change the focus within
their organizations, the elimination of silos and
need for unification to support this initiative
becomes apparent.
• Where is your retail organization
on its journey to deliver a Unified
Commerce experience?
• Are you farther along the path than
your competitors?
• Has your organization “unified” enough
to offer your customers a seamless
shopping experience?
Read on to see how your organization stacks
up to other retailers …
4. 3CRM/Unified Commerce Survey
2014 CRM/Unified Commerce
Benchmark Survey
To deliver a seamless experience, retailers need
to gather, analyze and disseminate customer,
product, pricing and inventory data in real-time.
In the 2014 CRM/Unified Commerce Benchmark
Survey of top North American retailers, most
of the respondents said they already have
implemented customer databases to gather this
data, and nearly two-thirds of the retailers have
plans to implement real-time analytics within the
next two years. Retailers certainly seem to be
moving in the right direction.
However, achieving Unified Commerce can
be a monumental project requiring seamless
execution of the right strategy, technology and
business processes. Retailers that successfully
deliver Unified Commerce will understand
and adopt a “unified” approach for all
these components:
• Unified Strategic Customer Initiatives
• Unified Technology
• Unified Business Processes
• Unified Execution of Initiatives, Technology
and Processes
The objective of BRP’s 1st Annual CRM/Unified
Commerce Benchmark Survey was to identify
retailers’ current and planned customer
relationship management (CRM) and marketing
initiatives as the shift to Unified Commerce
occurs across the retail industry.
5. 4CRM/Unified Commerce Survey
Unified Strategic
Customer Initiatives
Overall, both the market and retailers are shifting
toward this new paradigm, offering customers a
seamless experience and the ability to easily shift
from one touchpoint to another. This trend is
clearly indicated by the top initiatives identified in
the CRM/Unified Commerce Survey (Exhibit 1):
• 3 percent have the ability to identify the
customer when she walks in the store, and
another 72 percent plan to implement this
within five years.
• 16 percent currently have real-time retail
from POS (which offers the “Amazon”
experience in the store), and another 63
percent plan to implement this within
five years.
• 28 percent currently use mobile marketing,
and another 62 percent plan to implement
it within five years (56 percent plan to
implement mobile marketing within
two years).
Today
Plan in 5 Yrs
Exhibit 1 — Overall Customer Experience Initiatives
Identify Customers Walking in Store
Have Real-time Retail from POS
Use Mobile Marketing
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
62%
63%
72%
28%
16%
3%
6. 5CRM/Unified Commerce Survey
The customer is the center of the universe.
Retailers need to ensure their customers are
able to get the shopping experience they want
and expect – wherever and whenever they want.
Offering that necessitates a Unified Commerce
approach, delivering a convergence of digital
and in-store shopping experiences in a
holistic manner.
Unified Commerce requires a common
commerce platform for customer engagement,
whether in the store, on a mobile device or
online. Combining traditional point of sale,
mobile, Web, clienteling, order management and
fulfillment into a consolidated, real-time platform
is the objective. Many retailers realize the
implications that come out of this convergence
of platforms when they add mobile to their
e-commerce experience, surfacing a number of
questions around pricing, promotions, delivery,
payment and a host of related issues.
In Boston Retail Partners’ 15th Annual POS/
Customer Engagement Benchmarking Survey,
published earlier this year, we identified that
customer experience is the driver. Customer-
facing technology allows the customer to tailor
her own experience, Unified Commerce offers the
means to meet customers’ needs, and real-time
retail is the key to making it all happen.
In this survey, we find the same driver, with 95
percent of the respondents indicating customer
experience/customer engagement is one of
their top three current initiatives (Exhibit 2 – see
Figure 1 in Appendix for full list of initiatives).
Some of the other top initiatives that indicate a
focus on customer experience and involve the
ability to personalize that experience include
guided selling/clienteling, social selling and
location-based mobile marketing.
Personalization is critical to the shopping
experience. With real-time retail, the possibilities
for personalization are nearly endless. At a recent
workshop moderated by Boston Retail Partners,
a group of more than 40 retail executives
discussed some of the potential ways to
understand who the customer is and how she
shops. Some of the possibilities identified by this
group included:
• Creating persona-based user interfaces to
provide associates and customers with the
right tools for their personal needs.
• Using a mobile phone’s MAC (media access
control) address to identify the customer
as she enters the store and track her
browsing patterns.
• Employing energy-efficient smart LED
lights that track customer traffic patterns
in the store via their smartphones and
offer timely, relevant promotions based
on the planogram.
• Offering digital interactive customer receipts
that provide links to how-to videos for
self-installed products, or affirm a fashion
purchase by associating the item with a
favorite celebrity.
Exhibit 2 — Top 3 Current Initiatives
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
Customer Experience /
Customer Engagement
Customer Analytics Customer Segmentation
95%
69%
63%
7. 6CRM/Unified Commerce Survey
• Offering guided selling enabled by real-
time retail to allow associates to tailor
each customer’s experience based on her
preferences, previous purchases and online
shopping habits.
• Employing social selling to understand the
customer’s preferences and desired level
of engagement.
From this discussion, we see that location-
based mobile marketing is gaining importance
as retailers look at ways to offer promotions
inside and outside the store. Offering a timely
promotion within the store when your customer
is nearby customizes her visit and offers a one-
on-one opportunity to influence a purchasing
decision before she reaches the checkout line.
As we look at the initiatives retailers plan to focus
on within the next two years, real-time analytics
bubbles to the top: 23 percent have implemented
it, and 61 percent plan to do so within two years.
This capability allows the retailer to perform
analysis on the customer, transaction and
inventory data as it streams in. (Exhibit 3 – see
Figure 2 in Appendix for full list of initiatives)
Analytics is a key enabler for retailers to
affect the customer experience in real-time.
Real-time analytics allows a retailer to
immediately update and analyze data held in a
customer database, offering the ability to support
guided selling, clienteling and the “Amazon-like”
ability to remember previous purchases and
support suggestive selling in the store.
Another interesting initiative is the ability to
identify customers when they walk in the
store via their smartphones. Only 3 percent
of respondents have this ability today, but 72
percent plan to implement it within five years.
This capability is a fundamental requirement
for location-based marketing and personalizing
the customer experience. This is an area that
has seen controversy as retailers move to adopt
technology that allows for tracking customer
in-store shopping behavior, just like online
shopping behavior is tracked. The technology is
evolving from Wi-Fi to Bluetooth-based solutions,
and even to some nontraditional solutions. In a
similar vein, state transportation authorities are
using related technologies to measure and report
traffic delays on public roadways. Automated
signs anonymously track Bluetooth-enabled
devices carried by motorists and their vehicles in
real-time to estimate how long it takes to travel
between two locations. This system complies with
new federal legislation that requires real-time
traffic information be provided to the public.
Exhibit 3 — Initiatives Planned for Next 2 Years
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
61%
41%
31%
Real-time Analytics Real-time Retail from POS
(Amazon Experience at
the Store)
Ability to Identify Customers
when they walk in the store via
their smartphones
8. 7CRM/Unified Commerce Survey
Apple’s Bluetooth-based iBeacon technology is
also being tested in different ways to personalize
the customer experience through upcoming
trials at companies like American Eagle, Alex
and Ani, and Virgin Atlantic. Regardless of the
technology, the goal is to engage the customer
in a more meaningful way. Once a customer
opts in or engages, real-time analytics can access
the knowledge of purchase history, online and
in-store browsing behavior and preferences
to potentially influence what ends up in her
shopping basket during this visit.
Retailers are developing budgets with increased
marketing dollars allocated to mobile marketing,
CRM analytics and customer experience/
customer engagement, all of which support
the initiatives indicated above (Exhibit 4 – See
Figure 3 in Appendix for full list of budget
items). This data validates that retailers realize
the importance of Unified Commerce and the
technology to support it.
Exhibit 4 — Budget Increase 2013 to 2014
63%
59%
56%
53%
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
Mobile Marketing CRM Analytics Customer Experience /
Customer Engagement
Loyalty Program and
Supporting Technology
9. 8CRM/Unified Commerce Survey
Unified Technology
Enabling the customer to have the shopping
experience she demands requires a strong
technology foundation. In order to connect
the various components and deliver a Unified
Commerce experience, a robust messaging layer
– or service-oriented architecture (SOA) layer – is
usually required. This middleware layer is what
allows retailers to enable real-time capabilities
and deliver personalized user interfaces
for both the associate and customer. These
interfaces blend traditional POS, Web and mobile
capabilities, ensuring customers have exceptional
service while retailers simplify support structures
and lower selling costs.
Most retailers surveyed – 81 percent – have
implemented some type of customer database,
typically as part of a CRM or loyalty platform.
As indicated by our 15th Annual POS/Customer
Engagement Benchmarking Survey, we’ve seen
a steady increase in customer identification and
capture at POS. Traditionally, this data has been
leveraged for back office direct marketing efforts
(mail or email). This data is how retailers know
what’s in the customer’s closet, where and how
she shops across the brand, and what defines
a meaningful recommendation or offer. With a
Unified Commerce approach, this knowledge
can be used to engage the customer in real-time
while she is shopping, or enable an associate
with guided selling or clienteling tools (Exhibit
5 – see Figure 4 in Appendix for full list of CRM
technologies).
As real-time engagement becomes more
important, it’s essential that retailers capture
customer data and preferences at every
touchpoint. Real-time analytics are a priority
for retailers, but they’re only as good as the
data available.
More than half of the retailers surveyed also
have plans to implement clienteling within
the next five years. Having customer data and
being able to offer it to the associate to build a
relationship with the customer allows the retailer
to increase sales and loyalty, as well as deliver
a more personalized buying experience. Most
of the clienteling implementations in use today
leverage technology that is not integrated to the
POS. By separating this data from POS and from
the selling process, associates are not able to
leverage it at the time buying decisions are being
made. As Unified Commerce solutions evolve, we
expect to see opportunities to deploy clienteling
or guided selling as part of the overall
commerce solution.
Exhibit 5 — CRM Technology Planned for Next 2 Years
50%
45%
41%
56%60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Mobile Marketing Customer-Facing
Technology
Analytics/Dashboards/
Business Intelligence
Campaign Management
10. 9CRM/Unified Commerce Survey
Mobile technology has completely transformed
retail. Customers now have information
available 24/7. They have become accustomed
to shopping online and they want to have that
same personalized digital experience in the store
and they often want to control that experience!
Savvy retailers realize that putting tools into
customers’ hands is critical. Offering customer-
facing technology and even allowing customers
to use their own tools to create shopping/wish
lists, look up inventory and shop from a digital
catalog all are important pieces of the customer
experience. One-quarter of the retailers surveyed
offer customer-facing technology, with another
50 percent planning to offer it within two years.
Of the retailers surveyed, 28 percent have
implemented mobile marketing, and another
56 percent plan to implement it within two
years. With mobile marketing and the ubiquitous
mobile phone, retailers can reach their customers
nearly anywhere. This creates opportunities to
fundamentally shift how retailers market to
their customers and allows for a more
personalized offering.
The overall focus in the next two years is about
taking the data that already is being gathered and
applying math and science to the data to improve
the customer relationship.
11. 10CRM/Unified Commerce Survey
As mentioned above, offering a Unified
Commerce experience requires a unified
approach within the organization. Unified
Commerce is one platform to eliminate the
different silos originally set up to address
the different channels that are available to
customers. This platform gathers point of sale,
mobile, Web, clienteling, order management and
fulfillment into one area to address the customer
across the entire transaction. Selecting and
implementing the right technology for Unified
Commerce requires a consistent and holistic
approach to ensure the components work
well together to deliver a seamless customer
experience. Too often, we see different areas
of the organization with different objectives
and different ways of choosing and
implementing technology.
Because marketing and CRM technologies play
a critical role in Unified Commerce, we asked
retailers about their current processes for
developing a marketing technology strategy,
evaluating and selecting solutions, and
implementing that technology. We wanted to
understand the current cohesiveness between
marketing and IT because these are such
critical areas within the development of Unified
Commerce: IT owns the Unified Commerce
platform, while marketing generally “owns” the
data that is gathered and analyzed, which are key
to the customer experience.
Slightly more than half the retailers surveyed
currently utilize a combined in-house process
between IT and marketing to develop a
marketing technology strategy (Exhibit 6 – see
Figure 5 in Appendix for full list of processes).
Unfortunately, this indicates 44 percent of the
retailers surveyed currently are not involving IT in
strategy development, which offers opportunities
for some organizations to bridge this current gap
between marketing and IT.
Unified Processes
Exhibit 6 — Current Unified Process Status
Technology evaluation
and selection
Marketing technology
strategy development
In-House - Marketing & IT
56%
56%
20% 40% 60% 80% 100%0%
12. 11CRM/Unified Commerce Survey
The selection of new technology also sees
56 percent of the retailers surveyed using a
combined approach, and 75 percent of them are
satisfied or extremely satisfied with their current
process. Of course, this also means 25 percent
of these retailers are dissatisfied with their
current process (Exhibit 7).
The current marketing software landscape
is quite crowded and confusing. There is a
wealth of marketing technology vendors in the
marketplace – the image in Exhibit 8 represents
nearly 1,000 companies that provide software
for marketers, organized into 43 categories
and six major classes. And this image is not
comprehensive! It represents only a sample of
the types of software available, and there are
many companies and additional categories
that are not shown. Although there are a
tremendous number of software options and
technical choices facing the marketing
department, 44 percent of the retailers surveyed
are not including IT in their software planning
and selection. For various reasons, marketing
often conducts its own projects to evaluate,
select and implement technology without the
guidance of the overall corporate IT strategy.
Further, marketing technology strategies
are also often separate – 44 percent have a
separate marketing technology strategy from
the corporate-level IT strategy. Again, this shows
separation between these departments when a
unified vision is critical.
Exhibit 7 — Satisfaction with Current Selection Process
Extremely Satisfied
Satisfied
Dissatisfied
Extremely Dissatisfied
72%
3%3%
22%
14. 13CRM/Unified Commerce Survey
Effectively delivering a seamless customer
experience requires collaboration and unified
execution among key stakeholders, departments
and systems. With any CRM initiative, marketing
and IT are the two key departments involved. As
we look at the challenges within marketing and
IT, we asked retailers about the organization in
place to support the processes needed. One of
the ways some larger retailers are improving
the unification of marketing and IT is by creating
a new role within the organization, sometimes
called a chief marketing technologist.
The chief marketing technologist is a senior-level
employee responsible for developing a marketing
technology strategy and evaluating and
implementing appropriate technology solutions.
This role often is filled with a dedicated IT person
residing within the marketing department. When
we asked respondents whether they currently
had this type of role within their organizations, 37
percent said they have created a similar role.
The top responsibility of this role is to align
marketing technology and business goals, with 70
percent of respondents indicating this is the most
important responsibility within the role. Having
this role develops better collaboration between
marketing and IT and aligns the organization to
deliver a seamless customer experience.
A majority of retailers (63 percent) either do
not have someone in this type of role, or they
manage the marketing technology landscape in
another, perhaps less-formal manner. Of this
group, 74 percent reported they do not plan to
implement such a position (Exhibit 9). With the
emphasis on technology within marketing and
the focus on delivering a seamless customer
experience, there needs to be a closer connection
between marketing and IT, and the marketing
department needs someone skilled at evaluating
and implementing the technology solutions
needed to offer customers their personalized
shopping experience.
Unified Execution
Exhibit 9 — Plans for Marketing Technologist Role
Yes - within 12 months
Yes - within 1-3 years
Yes - timeframe unclear
No plans at this time
11%
74%
5%
10%
15. 14CRM/Unified Commerce Survey
Conclusion
Unified Commerce is becoming the mantra of
the retail industry. While it is not yet pervasive,
the key initiatives required to achieve Unified
Commerce consistently are the top priorities
for retailers, and the industry is slowly and
consistently working toward this goal, as
evidenced by the results from the CRM/Unified
Commerce Survey.
The top initiatives identified by the retailers
surveyed revolve around customer engagement
and the customer experience. The results
also show most retailers are collecting quality
customer data and plan to implement real-time
analytics in the next two years. The looming
challenge is that while marketing has become the
center of the Unified Commerce organization, it
is often still on its own in regard to developing
marketing technology strategies and evaluating
and selecting technology. With the importance
of multiple key marketing initiatives to achieve
a seamless shopping experience, retailers need
to examine ways to improve the unification of
marketing and IT to successfully implement
these projects. And in many larger retailers, that
improvement comes through the development
of a role in the organization that helps bridge
that gap. This senior-level role is responsible
for working with IT to develop a marketing
technology strategy and evaluate and implement
the technology.
It is impressive how many retailers are focused on
implementing CRM and marketing technologies
and capabilities to enable Unified Commerce,
but there is a lot of work to be done to deliver on
this promise. Achieving Unified Commerce is a
monumental project that requires the seamless
execution of the right strategy, technology and
processes. Retailers that successfully deliver
Unified Commerce will have done so by adopting
a unified approach: unified initiatives, processes,
technology and execution.
16. 15CRM/Unified Commerce Survey
Future Possibilities
As retailers work toward unifying the organization
to fulfill the Unified Commerce promise, the
next phase of enhancing and personalizing the
customer experience already is approaching. This
next phase will shift the focus from customer
identification to retailers having new insights into
not only the customer’s shopping behavior, but
also her behavior at home or work.
The “Internet of Things” (IoT) describes an
environment where the Internet is connected to
physical objects embedded with sensors that can
then communicate data. The IoT is not just about
gathering data, but also about the analysis and
usage of that data. It has the potential to change
the way the customer shops and will, in turn,
change the way retailers market.
IoT will further enhance the personalized
customer experience, as marketers have further
opportunities to interact with the customer after
the purchase. Instead of an item being purchased
and taken home, never to be seen again, there
can be ongoing communication with the item
to understand and even enhance its usage for
the customer. This helps extend the customer
experience beyond the purchase.
The IoT also will change the checkout experience
and transform the point of sale. With sensors
embedded in merchandise and mounted within
the store, customers have further control over
their shopping experience. They can choose the
items they want to purchase and the purchase
will automatically be charged to their credit card
on file as they leave the store.
The challenge for retailers will be continuing
to understand how to encourage and entice
customers to opt-in and provide personal
information. Retailers that focus on utilizing
customer data to enhance the customer
experience will be more successful than those
retailers who demand customer data without
positively enhancing customers’
shopping experience.
The opportunities are endless, and retailers who
continue to look for additional opportunities to
enhance the customer experience will be
most successful.
17. 16CRM/Unified Commerce Survey
Boston Retail Partners conducted the 2014 CRM/
Unified Commerce Benchmark Survey in March
and April of 2014 by contacting more than 500
top North American retailers. Through an online
survey system, we gained insight into retailers’
planned initiatives, priorities and future trends.
This paper summarizes the survey’s results and
key findings, offers insight based on BRP’s client
engagement and retail experience, and identifies
current and future trends in the industry to offer
retailers opportunities to continue to evolve
and prosper.
Specialty retail represented the largest segment
of survey responses with 31 percent falling into
the specialty soft goods category and 31 percent
in the specialty hard goods category (Exhibit 10).
The remainder fell into various other categories,
such as grocery, food and beverage, and
general merchandise.
Of the retailers surveyed, the breakdown in
size based on gross annual revenue included
a broad selection of Tier 1, 2 and 3 retailers.
Three-quarters of the retailers surveyed had
gross annual revenue of $100 million to $5
billion (Exhibit 11).
The respondents were primarily vice presidents
and directors of CRM or C-level executives.
Survey Methodology
Exhibit 10 — Company Category
Exhibit 11 — Gross Annual Revenue
31%
31%
19%
7%
6%
3%
3%
Specialty - Soft Goods (Accessories, Apparel, etc.) — 31%
Specialty - Hard Goods — 31%
(Books, Electronics, Furniture, Home & Garden, Sporting Goods, etc.)
Convenience & Fuel — 3%
Grocery, Food & Beverage — 19%
General Merchandise — 7%
Other — 6%
QSR/Restaurant — 3%
(Mass Merchant/Department)
$10B or more — 9%
$5B to $10B — 6%
Less than $100M — 10%
$500M to $1B — 34%
$100M to $500M — 25%
$1B to $5B — 16%
34%
16% 25%
10%9%
6%
19. 18CRM/Unified Commerce Survey
Appendix - Graphs
Figure 1: Rank the following current initiatives in order of importance to your organization.
Exhibit 2 within the main document is an excerpt from this graph.
Figure 2: Indicate your organization’s plans for these potential initiatives. Exhibit 3 within
the main document is an excerpt from this graph.
Importance of Current Initiatives
Plans for Potential Initiatives
Customer Experience / Customer Engagement
Customer Analytics
(Lifetime Value, RFM, etc.)
Customer Segmentation
Guided Selling / Clienteling
Social Selling
Social Log-in or Sign-in
(Facebook Connect)
Mobile Apps
Location-based Mobile Marketing
Digital Signage
Ad retargeting - tracking cookies
on site visit for retargeting
Real-time analytics
Paid organic social amplification - paying
for ads on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn
Niche marketing or narrowcasting
Real-time retail from POS (Amazon experience
at the store)
Embedded digital marketing in print media
Virtual Closet across all channels
Gamification
Ability to identify customers when they
walk in the store via their smartphones
1
Implemented
2
Implement in <2 years
3
Implement in >2 years
6
4
No plans to implement
7
5
8
9
0%
0%
20%
20%
40%
40%
60%
60%
80%
80%
100%
100%
66%
16%
16%
13%
6%
22%
28%
28%
25% 13%
13% 3% 3%13%
13% 6%
6%
16% 13%
13% 13% 13%
3%
3%
3% 3%
3%
3%
6%
6% 9%
22% 31%
25%
28% 9%
6%
6%
6%
6% 6%9%
9%
9%
9% 9%
9% 9%34%
19%
19%
22% 16%
16% 16%
13% 13% 44%
13%
16%16%
9% 9% 19%
3%
31%
23%
22%
19%
16% 41% 22% 22%
16%
9%
6%
3%
19%
31%
23%
41%
52%
25%
19% 31% 41%
31% 6% 47%
28% 13% 41%
34% 16% 28%
61% 10% 6%
44% 13% 13%
20. 19CRM/Unified Commerce Survey
Figure 3: Indicate how your organization’s budget has changed from 2013 to 2014. Exhibit 4
within the main document is an excerpt from this graph.
Figure 4: Indicate the status of the following CRM technology implementations. Exhibit 5 within
the main document is an excerpt from this graph.
Budget Change from 2013 to 2014
CRM Technology Implementations
Increased Decreased No change
Mobile marketing
CRM analytics
Customer experience / Customer engagement
Loyalty program & supporting technology
Customer-facing technology
Social selling
CRM outsourcing
Customer Database
Digital Marketing
E-commerce
Loyalty
Anyalytics / Dashboards / Business Intelligence
Campaign Management
Mobile Marketing
Customer-Facing Technology
Clienteling
22% 6%
3% 55%
55%
42%
45%
53%
56%
59%
63%
47%
44%
38%
38%
3%
72%
Implemented
Implement in <2 years
Implement in >2 years
No plans to implement
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
81%
78%
69%
56%
42%
41%
28%
25%
17%
13%
9%
25%
34%
45%
41%
56%
50%
27%
6%
6%6%
6%
6%
6%
16%
9%
9%
27%
3%
6%
3%
6%
16%
30%
21. 20CRM/Unified Commerce Survey
Figure 5: Indicate your organization’s current process for the strategy, selection and
implementation of new technology within the marketing department. Exhibit 6 within the
main document is an excerpt from this graph.
Marketing Department’s Current Processes
Marketing technology
strategy development
Technology evaluation
and selection
Technology implementation
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
In-house -
marketing dept
In-house -
IT dept
In-house -
marketing & IT
Vendor partnership Utilize ad agency Unsure
13%
3%
0% 0% 0%0%
16%
31%
56% 56%
38%
13%
19%
28%
6% 6%
3%
13%
