Dave Stritzinger, CEO Consensus offers cloud-based solutions that unify the complex and interdependent data streams between retailers, manufacturers, digital service providers, and network operators. They have created a concept called “multiplex retail” that allows retailers to combine products and services interchangeably in one basket.
Once retailers have their commodities flowing efficiently, the next step is to build services into their product flow. An omnichannel approach worked in the past, but this is simply widget optimization and cannot take retailers to the next level of service offerings. Dave Stritzinger, the CEO of Consensus explains, “We want to treat service products and physical products the same way, and we call that ‘multiplex’. Retailers get stuck when a service is added to the bundle because it doesn’t execute the same way and the economics is different.”
Consensus understands the complexity of offering services and products in the same basket and has worked from the ground up to design an omnichannel product and service bundler. Consensus’ Connected Commerce solves the unique challenges of retailing connected products. The sales require complex catalog mappings, extensive API integrations into service providers, serialized control of inventory, unique pricing and promotional capabilities, specialized fraud and credit controls, and backend financial receivables settlements that are not built into a mainstream retail point of sales or e-commerce platforms. The platform handles all this and is designed for fast and lightweight integrations with retailer legacy systems.
Built on a Software-as-a-Service platform, Connected Commerce eliminates the need for dedicating in-house resources to build and maintain custom point of sale and integrations with network operators and service providers of connected products.
We want to treat
service products and
physical products the
same way, and we call
that ‘multiplex’
Consensus offers a variety of solutions including in-store, web, social, and mobile. Across these deliverables, they create an experience journey that maps products and services combined with risk management. Using data and a machine learning process, they are able to identify favorable product and service combinations. Further analytics are used to provide insights that measure and improve revenue contribution, profitability, and cost across the entire retail landscape, from the executive level to regional and local store managers.
Many retail solutions are designed for general point-of-sale and e-commerce, which limits the efficiency and evolution of their platforms. Consensus is designed to unify the retail experience for connected products and services. The cloud platform enables retailers to choose what retail applications and services they need and easily plug the m into their existing systems without complex integration.
One example where Consensus was able to implement their concept of “multiplex retail” involved a large mass channel retailer that was operating their wireless business as a store within a store. To profitably execute the business, they needed connections to carriers and a provider that could manage receivables and commissions in a very granular, compliant and secure way. This required a multiplex set of capabilities. Stritzinger shares, “We were the solution they selected. As a result, they were able to bring in their own labor force to run the business themselves. They are now enjoying the economic benefits that otherwise would have been handed off to a partner.”
The team at Consensus is made up of experts with backgrounds in wireless retail, e-commerce, and high tech. They are practical visionaries that bring POS and e-commerce together to create innovative solutions that connect product commerce.
