Shopping online for cannabis is one of the greatest joys of legalizing it. For many cannabis veterans who remember buying shady dime bags in dimly lit parking lots or backyards, buying pristine cannabis online brings a sense of wonderment, if not outright astonishment. As you scroll through the dispensary or delivery menu, hundreds of products seem to be at your fingertips. But how many times have you selected an item that is supposedly in stock, only to learn that it isn’t available? The elation you experienced a few short moments ago quickly turns to frustration. When menu data is out of sync with actual inventory, it affects patients’ and consumers’ relationships with their dispensaries and the brands they offer. It’s disappointing customer service, especially when we’re all accustomed to modern e-commerce efficiency. From a sales and marketing perspective, you can’t establish brand loyalty, let alone create customer Long Term Value if you can’t purchase the product you wanted to buy. Thankfully, real change is here!
Weedmaps and BLAZE are joining forces to change the online buying experience for hundreds of cannabis operators and millions of patients and consumers across the U.S. and Canada. It’s a match made in heaven!
Weedmaps + BLAZE ⎼ What You See is What You Get
Weedmaps is the largest technology company in the regulated cannabis marketplace for connecting consumers to retailers. BLAZE is the leading enterprise resource planning and point of sale (POS) platform in the industry. By combining their respective tech prowess, Weedmaps and BLAZE surpass real-time menu syncing, deepening their relationship by directly integrating Weedmaps Orders with a dispensary’s POS system. It’s perfect because the BLAZE POS platform now offers cannabis retailers a single, seamless sign-on to update Weedmaps menus and receive customer orders. For patients and consumers, what you see is what you get.
Chris Violas, BLAZE CEO, described the unique partnership by saying, “We’re excited to launch this key integration for our shared customers. Weedmaps is the leading source of foot traffic for our retailers and an innovative partner to BLAZE. This is a first in the cannabis industry, and ultimately both companies want to deliver intuitive technology that drives automation to simplify and streamline the cannabis ordering experience for both consumers and retailers,” Chris explained.
Integration, Simplified
With this unique partnership, cannabis retailers can increase operational efficiency and order accuracy while improving patient and consumer experiences. With the integrated Weedmaps demand channel connected in BLAZE, retail staff will no longer waste time recreating the order in the POS platform. In a highly regulated industry, manual entry creates potential inventory and compliance errors that can impact the customer if a mistake is made. Retailers can also reduce the risk of possible revenue loss and focus on delivering excellent customer experiences.
“To move the cannabis industry forward, we need to continue to provide technology evolves with ever-changing regulation, legislation, and rapidly increasing consumer demand,” said Justin Dean, Chief Technology Officer at Weedmaps. “At Weedmaps, we seek to be the growth engine for the entire industry by building the platform that underpins it. We are excited to partner with BLAZE to offer this integration that will further enable businesses and consumers to operate in compliance with regulatory requirements seamlessly.”
Real-Time Results
Almost immediately, cannabis operators will benefit from the new integration. Weden, a longtime retail customer of both BLAZE and Weedmaps, knows this firsthand. Currently operating in Oakland, San Diego, Santa Ana, and Yolo County, California, they were eager to implement the new system in their stores and delivery services. Weden’s goals are simple; improve operations and the overall consumer experience. Ben Ramsey, Weden Team Lead, explained, “Everything we do here at Weden is customer-centric, and ‘speed to lead’ is a top priority, especially with deliveries, so this integration was a no-brainer for us to try out. We saw results almost immediately. Integrating our two main platforms has drastically improved our agents’ response times and allowed us to engage customers more. Seconds count in our industry, so being able to seamlessly view all critical information from the Weedmaps dashboard via BLAZE was a breath of fresh air! This integration has proven to be a real game-changer for us and has allowed us to better serve our customers,” Ben said.
Join our Webinar
Everyone at BLAZE is excited about our partnership with Weedmaps, and we can’t wait to share the news. We are hosting a BLAZE Connect webinar on the value of the orders platform and the future of retail cannabis in California with Team Lead at Weden, Ben Ramsey and Weedmaps’ Product Manager, Patrick McCleary, on March 31st 2021, at 11 AM PST.
Find Your Way at Weedmaps
It is an honor for us to partner with Weedmaps because they are the leading technology and software infrastructure provider for the cannabis marketplace. The company holds a strong belief in the power of cannabis and the importance of enabling safe, legal access to it for consumers worldwide. Weedmaps has worked tirelessly, not only to be the most comprehensive platform for consumers but also to build software solutions that empower compliant cannabis businesses.
Since its founding in 2008, Weedmaps continually advocates for legalization, social equity, and licensing opportunities in many jurisdictions around the world. Weedmaps also facilitates cannabis community education by partnering with dozens of experts who provide diverse, detailed, and accurate information about the plant. Now in its second decade, Weedmaps is a driving force behind much of the legislative change we’ve seen in the past 10 years. Headquartered in Irvine, California, Weedmaps employs more than 400 professionals worldwide, including Denver, CO, Tucson, AZ, New York, NY, Barcelona, Spain, and Toronto, Canada. Visit them at weedmaps.com and place an order for your favorite kind of cannabis!
