Eighty-five percent of respondents to Boston Retail Partners 2016 POS/Customer Engagement Survey indicated that unified commerce is their top priority of 2016.
Most attempts to create a holistic customer experience, one that transcends channels, fall short however.
Sixty of retailers, for example, indicated they have implemented "inventory visibility across channels," according to the study but 80 percent of those retailers indicate that the system "needs improvement".
"Many retailers are realizing that the future of POS is part of a unified commerce platform that hosts a single shared cart across all channels and is integrated with order management," said Brian Brunk, principal, Boston Retail Partners. "This is the game changer as it is fundamentally changing how retailers think about POS and driving much of the activity we are seeing in the solution marketplace."