158 www. t e c h n o l o g y r e c o r d . c om I NT E R V I EW Retail has undergone decades of transformation in just a couple of years, accelerating long-term trends and simultaneously creating unprecedented disruption. However, according to Jan-Pieter Lips, head of Unified Commerce at Adyen, the disruption has shown many retailers the importance of investing in flexibility: “Because they don’t know what’s around the corner.” While most retailers previously only invested in their in-store presence and e-commerce sites, consumers now expect them to offer mobile channels, kiosks, and self-service options. “These long-term but quickly evolving trends are caused by technology driving convenience and providing consumers with more ways to buy,” explains Lips. “You can buy online and pick up in a store. You’ve got new channels like chat and video. Technology is giving consumers a lot more access to retail.” Also entering the common consciousness are a number of new ways to pay, including digital wallets; buy now, pay later; and models where customers automatically pay a monthly subscription fee. “When I talk to retailers, they tell me that part of their customer base that had never shopped online before the pandemic, have now done so for the first time,” says Lips. “That’s an important change because those people will probably not go back to their old behaviour.” It is this move to omnichannel services that is changing the face of retail, according to Lips. “As humans, we get quite used to friction in our lives, but the moment someone solves this, we become very unwilling to deal with anything less. These new omnichannel experiences have definitely raised customers’ expectations. “Life is becoming easier for shoppers and retailers are expected to adjust accordingly. That’s the interesting challenge that we are helping our retailers overcome. And Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a key part of this endeavour.” Unified commerce is the next evolution for omnichannel retail. Where omnichannel offers customers a choice of how to interact with a retailer, unified commerce provides a range of back-end processes that connect every potential interaction channel. “Behind the scenes, those different channels generally operate in silos,” says Lips. “There is a disconnect, and that’s what unified commerce is changing.” To truly achieve unified commerce, Lips believes retailers need three things: a central view of stock, a connected financial system, and an understanding of what customers are doing. “A lot of retailers don’t have a full overview of their inventory that includes both e-commerce and store stock levels,” says Lips. “If a retailer wants to be able to direct customers to where they can purchase items, they need one place that holds all this information. As customers come to expect more from the places they shop, Jan-Pieter Lips shares how Adyen’s close partnership with Microsoft is changing how retailers do business A unified approach to retail BY E L LY YAT E S - ROB E R T S “ Life is becoming easier for shoppers and retailers are expected to adjust accordingly”
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