Every commerce leader knows disconnected data is a problem, but few can put a number on it. To truly understand the toll of disconnected data — and the benefits when it’s unified — we surveyed 3,450 commerce professionals across 20 countries and 13 industries. We wanted to know the extent of fragmented data, what that fragmentation actually looks like when it comes to retention, conversion, and operational efficiency, and what changes once teams finally unify it. Here’s what we found.
The problem is bigger than most admit
Commerce tech stacks keep growing. In fact, nearly 4 in 5 commerce leaders say their vendor count has grown over the past two years. Organizations now run an average of 11+ applications to power their digital commerce experience. However, more tools don’t necessarily mean more capabilities. Instead, growing tech stacks and app sprawl lead to more bottlenecks and more surfaces for things to break down.
Only 27% of organizations say their customer data is fully unified across sales, service, marketing, and commerce teams. And among organizations selling across multiple channels, 98% report significant omnichannel breakdowns: inconsistent pricing and promotions (37%), inventory that isn’t synchronized in real time (37%), and ordering and fulfillment managed in separate systems (31%).
The good news? These numbers double as a map. If inconsistent pricing, unsynced inventory, and disconnected fulfillment are the most common breakdowns, they’re also the clearest starting points. These are the places where fixing underlying data issues will have the most immediate, visible impact on the customer experience. Commerce teams don’t need to solve unification everywhere at once; they only need to know where the cracks are showing up most prominently, and start there.
What disconnection actually costs
For B2C organizations, fragmentation shows up most visibly in the customer record itself: 46% report duplicate or conflicting customer data, and 45% cite the high cost of simply maintaining disconnected systems. For B2B organizations, the damage runs deeper into operations: 37% say disconnected data slows or undermines their response to customer issues, and another 37% say it makes it difficult to measure the impact of their own commerce investments.
Disconnected data creates more than just friction; it actively undermines the ability to serve customers well and prove that commerce investments are working. If disconnection is costing commerce teams this much in duplicate records, slower response times, and unmeasurable ROI, the opposite is also true. Unifying data pays off in ways that are just as meaningful to your bottom line and your customer experience.
The flip side: What unification buys you
Organizations that have moved toward unification report measurably better outcomes: 40% improved customer retention, 40% better AI and automation outcomes, and 37% higher conversion rates. For B2B organizations specifically, unification pays off in ways that matter operationally. 36% report better alignment between sales, marketing, and commerce teams, and 27% report more consistent pricing and contract application across channels.
The pattern holds across nearly every metric that matters: retention, conversion, efficiency, and AI performance all move in the same direction once data stops living in silos. Unification isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the single clearest lever most organizations have available to improve performance across the board.
Why connected data matters more now than ever
AI is raising the bar for what’s possible in ecommerce and for what customers expect. Shoppers now measure every interaction against the best AI-powered experience they’ve had anywhere, not just against your competitors. Commerce leaders feel the pressure: 61% say meeting expectations is harder than ever, all while 68% report their teams are being asked to do more with less.
Clean, connected data is the basis for the success of every AI implementation. Every AI investment an organization makes in order to improve the customer experience and increase revenue (personalization engines, service agents, demand forecasting) is only as good as the data feeding it. Fragmented, inconsistent data doesn’t just create day-to-day operational drag; it caps how much value an organization can ever get out of the AI it’s already invested in.
The businesses pulling ahead aren’t the ones racing to deploy the most AI tools. The most successful organizations are the ones taking a strategic, measured approach to new AI initiatives, and that means tackling data issues first.
The challenge is that most platforms force a choice: invest in connecting your data, or invest in AI tools — rarely both at once, and rarely from the same vendor. Agentforce Commerce offers a way out of that tradeoff, giving commerce teams both a foundation that connects data across the rest of the business and out-of-the-box AI tools built to put that unified data to work immediately.
Read the full State of Commerce Report to explore more data >>
