Unified Commerce Body of Knowledge¶

Alkemy Retail Tech — Unit reference standard for Consumer Retail & Food Service

UC-BoK is an open, vendor-neutral framework for Unified Commerce — the operating model in which customer identity, inventory, orders, and fulfilment work consistently across every retail channel.

It is not a software product. It is not a vendor deck. It is a canonical knowledge model and shared language — the reference every Alkemy engagement should be anchored to, whether the conversation is about architecture, capability gaps, vendor selection, or operational transformation.

When the unit talks about retail systems, this is the baseline.

"Define once. Reference everywhere. No vendor spin."

Version: v1.1.1-alpha · ADRs: 17 · Reference Architectures: 3
Graph: 819 nodes · 3 764 relationships · Pages: 169

Authored and maintained within Alkemy Retail Tech
Open · Vendor-neutral · Evidence-based

Who Is This For?¶

Business Leaders & Consultants

Use UC-BoK to assess your retail organisation's maturity, identify capability gaps, and build an investment roadmap — without being tied to any vendor's framing.

Start here: Capability Model → Assessment Engine
Solution Architects

Use UC-BoK as the neutral baseline for architecture design: select the vertical Reference Architecture, map capabilities to applications, and validate against canonical patterns.

Start here: Reference Architectures → Patterns
Developers & System Integrators

Use UC-BoK to navigate the Knowledge Graph, query cross-capability impact, and understand canonical events and business objects before writing integration code.

Start here: Knowledge Graph → API Catalog
Operations & Retail Teams

Use the Operational Experience Layer to understand how your processes actually work: which tasks, interactions, and touchpoints are involved in every canonical retail scenario.

Start here: Operational Experience → Process Catalog

How Alkemy Uses UC-BoK¶

UC-BoK is the unit's internal reference standard. Here is how it maps to day-to-day delivery work:

Situation	What UC-BoK provides	Where to go
Client discovery	Neutral capability vocabulary — not tied to any vendor's taxonomy	Capability Model
Architecture review	Vertical reference architecture with capability-to-application mapping	Reference Architectures
RFP / vendor evaluation	Vendor Assessment Protocol with evidence criteria	Vendor Protocol
Maturity assessment	UCMI scoring engine — gap analysis against RA baseline	Assessment Engine
Process modelling	15 canonical retail processes with task and interaction decomposition	Process Catalog
Integration design	Knowledge Graph — cross-capability event and API traceability	Knowledge Graph
Onboarding new team members	One structured document covering the full retail technology landscape	Start from Foundation
Client proposal or SOW	ADRs as design decision rationale; patterns as architecture templates	ADRs · Patterns

For Alkemy team members

When starting a new retail engagement, run the UCMI assessment against the client's profile and select the closest Reference Architecture. That gives you the capability gap map and the architectural baseline in one step — before any vendor conversation begins.

How to Read UC-BoK¶

UC-BoK is structured in layers — you don't need to read it all. Start at the layer relevant to your question:

#	Layer	Question it answers
1	Foundation	What is Unified Commerce?
2	Capability Model	What must a retailer be able to do?
3	Processes	How are capabilities executed end-to-end?
4	Operational Experience	Who does what, step by step?
5	Reference Architecture	What is the right stack for my vertical?
6	Assessment (UCMI)	Where am I and where are my gaps?
7	Architecture Decisions	Why was this decision made?

What's Inside¶

25 Capabilities

Vendor-neutral abilities from customer-identity to subscription-management — each with domain, classification, and maturity descriptors.
15 Processes

End-to-end canonical retail scenarios: Checkout · BOPIS · Ship-from-Store · Clienteling · BORIS · and 10 more.
26 Journeys · 102 Tasks · 207 Interactions

The Operational Experience Layer: every process decomposed to actor-level tasks and touchpoint interactions.
26 Business Objects

Core retail entities — Order, Customer, Reservation, Basket — with lifecycle states and relationships.
107 Business Events

Canonical past-tense events: OrderConfirmed · InventoryReserved · PaymentCaptured — with producers and consumers.
24 APIs

Machine-readable REST endpoints linked to business objects and events.
3 Reference Architectures

RA-001 Fashion · RA-002 Grocery · RA-003 Specialty — with capability maps, process priorities, and operational experience views.
UCMI Assessment Engine

Score your organisation against a Reference Architecture baseline. Get critical gaps, important gaps, and a UCMI score (0–4).
Knowledge Graph

819 nodes · 3 764 relationships — queryable with python3 queries/query_engine.py.
17 Architecture Decision Records

Every significant design decision documented with context, rationale, and consequences.

Repository Structure¶

Directory	Role
`catalogs/`	YAML source of truth for all modelled content
`specifications/`	Normative ontology and architecture specs — 17 specs
`adr/`	Architecture Decision Records — ADR-001 to ADR-017
`docs/`	Human-readable publication layer
`docs/generated/`	Pages generated from catalogs — do not edit directly
`scripts/`	Generators, validators, assessment engine
`schemas/`	JSON Schema validation — 15 schemas
`graph/`	Knowledge Graph builder
`queries/`	Query engine CLI
`tests/`	Validation and integration test scenarios

About the Author¶

UC-BoK is authored by Daniele Favara — Head of Technology at Alkemy Retail Tech, where he leads technology strategy and architecture delivery across complex Unified Commerce programmes.

Operating at the intersection of enterprise architecture, platform engineering, and commercial strategy, his work spans the full spectrum of retail transformation: capability modelling, vendor evaluation, reference architecture design, and the organisational alignment needed to make it real.

UC-BoK is the formalisation of that work — a rigorous, open, vendor-neutral body of knowledge designed to become the standard reference for every retail technology engagement in the unit. Built the way enterprise architecture deserves to be built.

Alkemy Retail Tech
Head of Technology

github.com/nomed
linkedin.com/in/danielefavara

Contributions, corrections, and workshop participation welcome.
Open an issue or reach out directly.

UC-BoK documents concepts, not products. Vendor-neutral by design.