Online merchants are refocusing on growing their business by replacing costly and cumbersome collections of point solutions with unified commerce platforms.

Ask a fast-growing merchant why they started their business, and they might say, “I’m a serial entrepreneur.” “I love fashion” (or another product or service). Or maybe “to make a lot of money.”

But no one has ever said “to manage software.”

Point solutions—software or apps designed to address a single business challenge but not related issues—attach to retail tech stacks like barnacles on ships. They appear gradually, but soon, they cause drag, making it harder and more expensive to forge full steam ahead.

It wasn’t always this way—and it doesn’t have to be. Unified commerce platforms are here, and they’ll get merchants back to retailing again.

Three problems with point solutions

If point solutions are such a problem, how’d we end up with so many? They seemed to make sense before they multiplied: cheap, easy to deploy, highly specialized.

But after retailers began mixing and matching different tools for payment processing, inventory management, and sales reporting, things started getting complicated and costly.

Think about your smartphone. How many apps are on it? Most people have dozens but only use about ten each day. Now, how many of those apps require a subscription? Maybe a dollar here, five bucks there? Whether you realize it or not, costs add up fast.

With point solutions, it’s worse. “Made sense at the time” decisions have caused digital merchants to rack up thousands of dollars in technical debt on 10, 15, or 20 or more tools that don’t integrate, have costs they can’t control, and create customer experiences that aren’t connected.

1.    Creeping costs

With point solutions, your total cost of ownership (TCO) is much higher than you think. Most merchants use 15-20% of the functionality of their standalone software. But they’re still paying for the other 80-85% of features they don’t use—easy-to-miss costs that creep up and—across all their disparate tools — can slowly drain resources. There’s also all the time teams waste learning multiple tools, swivel-chairing between them, piecing together information, and sorting out inconsistencies.

2.    Missed opportunities

When your data’s siloed across a dozen different platforms, it’s difficult (if not impossible) with limited time and human resources to gain a unified view of your business and your customers—what they’re buying and when, plus every touchpoint they have with your brand before and after purchase.

Without accurate, real-time insights drawn from unified data sources, retailers struggle to understand their customers and make informed merchandising and marketing decisions. This lack of comprehensive customer understanding impedes their ability to drive repeat purchases, which are crucial for profitability.

Siloed data in point solutions not only obstructs this vital customer insight but also erodes merchant margins through unnecessary fees. By integrating data and gaining a holistic view of customer behavior, retailers can more effectively target their second-purchase strategies, foster customer loyalty, and ultimately increase their bottom line.

3.    Dissatisfied customers

25% of customers stop spending with businesses because of bad experiences. Point solutions make connecting touchpoints across marketing and commerce channels challenging (if not impossible), frustrating customers, damaging experiences, and risking loyalty.

For example, a customer receives a flash sale email that features a jacket they’ve been eyeing. When they click the link, they can’t find the offer and start searching for it on your competitors’ sites. Or maybe another customer racked up loyalty points for in-store purchases only to find they can’t be used online.

Imagine collapsing even a few of these different tools into one. You’d save money, bridge gaps between sales, service and marketing, and free up time and resources to focus on growing your business.

That’s the power of a unified commerce platform.

Why fast-growing merchants should switch to unified platforms

Unified commerce platforms bring ecommerce, point-of-sale (POS), merchandising, service, and marketing tools under one roof. You get 80-90% of the features that actually drive revenue—a nice tradeoff for losing some specialized features you probably weren’t using anyway.

For retailers, unified commerce platforms are like going back to the future: you get to focus on the business, not constantly updating your tech stack.

Integrated commerce systems streamline all business operations, combining online storefronts, marketing, customer communication, and back-office tasks into a single platform. They can manage multiple stores, currencies, and languages, while connecting marketing, sales, and service processes. The results? Better customer experiences that inspire repeat purchases.

What does this look like?

You’ll gain complete visibility into customer journeys, from interactions with your marketing efforts (ads, emails, social media posts, or website) to communications (email or SMS), product searches, purchases, and post-sales support.

With real-time inventory data, your marketing team will avoid out-of-stock items. Your service reps have instant access to order history and preferences. And your ecommerce platform talks directly to your POS system to enable real omnichannel retail experiences.

Equally important, your revenue can grow from $1 to $100 million without upgrading platforms.

The time for unified commerce is now

Change is hard. Sticking with what you know is tempting. But the retail landscape is evolving. Customer expectations are changing. And even if your Jenga tower tech stack isn’t about to topple over, it’s probably holding you back.

Ask yourself these questions:

• How much are you really spending on all your point solutions (TCO)?
• How much time is your team wasting by managing them (Operational Inefficiency)?
• What opportunities are you missing because they can’t communicate (Lost Revenue)?

The future of retail software is unified, efficient, and scalable. One partner. One invoice. One relationship. It’s about streamlining tools, complexity, and costs so you can focus on delighting customers and growing your business.

Merchants who take the leap first will have a huge competitive advantage. Are you ready?

Ross Andrew Paquette

Chairman and CEO of Maropost

Ross Andrew Paquette is founder and CEO of Maropost, the commerce software suite built for fast-growing merchants. Paquette is passionate about using technology to improve customer engagement and experiences. He also founded Maropost CARES in 2017, which is focused on global environmental issues.