BURLINGAME, Calif. – As part of the recent Conexxus Annual Strategy Conference, the group’s Technology Research Committee sponsored a day of presentations by Bay Area technology companies targeting the mobile commerce space. 

A key partner in this event was blue-chip venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers (investors in Google, Amazon, Intuit, AOL), who provided three portfolio companies to present to the group at their Menlo Park office. Gimbal — a company recently spun off from Qualcomm Communications to develop the proximity, geo-fencing and point of purchase consumer interest markets — provided attendees with an overview of beacon technology, a new consumer-facing technology that several Conexxus members are currently experimenting with. SkuRun also presented their beacon enablement strategy that offers a common API for retailers to build and leverage their own beacon networks.  (For more information on beacon technology, be sure to keep an eye out for “The Beacon Breakthrough” in the October issue of NACS Magazine, mailing soon!)

Also at the event, KPCB’s Rouz Jazayeri, partner and chief of staff to John Doerr, and liaison to KPCB’s digital and green-tech portfolios, led a discussion on three of KPCB’s most relevant companies: ChargePoint, the world’s largest Electric Vehicle (EV) charging network; Reputation.com, addressing the critical need for all companies — especially retailers — to monitor, measure and improve their reputation in today’s “crowd-sourced” online world of customer opinion; and Shopkick, which has developed into a leading consumer shopping platform relying exclusively on ultra-high frequency sound recognition in a consumer’s mobile device to monitor specific store traffic. 

Attendees also heard from Datalogix, which has successfully transitioned from a leading print marketing firm to include online and mobile consumer big data, with the approach of changing consumer “reach” to a “pay for play” model that allows retailers and CPG to see the direct results, in sales, of coordinated marketing programs.  According to Datalogix, retailers are sitting on extremely valuable data and they should market it, before someone else takes it.

Lastly, Marty Ramos, CTO of retail at Microsoft, presented a survey of retail IT trends that his group is seeing in the marketplace. From sub-$500, tablet-based point-of-sale platforms to Bluetooth connected store peripherals, Microsoft sees a greater adoption of consumer technology (and price scale) by retailers. Ramos also reviewed Microsoft’s retail experience center, which boasts a convenience store among its prototype exhibits.

“The attendees were effusive about the relevance and readiness of the innovators they saw at this event,” said Doug New, CIO of Tedeschi Food Shops and chair of the Conexxus Technology Research Committee (TRC).  “The value of customer data, augmented by the enabling technologies we saw today are going to change the way many of our member companies strategize in the near-term. This is what Conexxus’ TRC mission is about—innovation and transformation.”