An often overlooked but critical area in any business is the effective application of technology. Its positive impact requires a deliberate strategy and execution, but let’s talk about the areas of your business which will benefit from the proper use of technology.
Operational Impact and Productivity
Devoting effort to standard and formal processes within an organization arguably provides more reliable and predictable outcomes and increases employee productivity by accelerating tasks. Although spreadsheets have merit for startups and modeling procedures, structured applications enforce data governance, rules, workflow and compliance.
Robert Bacchi
Cultivation software will not only track the data input but also analyze it to optimize growing conditions as well as water and nutrient cycles by strain. A data driven process will reduce costs and produce higher yields. In a highly regulated industry, standard and formal processes are imperative. Application software aids in cultivation, drying, bucking, batching, tagging and plant destruction procedures reducing the likelihood of non compliance fines. Technology can also help to organize and schedule tasks your employees need to complete. It will minimize taking unnecessary steps or getting overwhelmed with the work they have to complete.
Software also formalizes the chain of custody process as plants and products move within your facility and to your customers. For fully-integrated businesses this benefit has a more positive and profound impact. And let’s not forget employee onboarding. Training new employees is accelerated on feature rich applications with defined procedures. Taking these and other factors into consideration enables businesses to scale predictably without investing a proportional labor component thereby increasing margins.
A Better Customer Experience
Businesses benefit when they improve communication with their customers, it creates a stronger brand image. Operations dependent on one-time product sales will become obsolete as business value moves from products to the experiences they enable. Reflect on your last ecommerce purchase on Amazon or a great customer service experience.
As consumers, we demand immediate results, visibility into our transactions and options or flexibility with the services we consume. This is no different in the B2B space and how growers should interact with their clients. Reliable and timely information is key, distributing it in an easy to access platform. The larger the audience, the greater your reach and likelihood revenue will increase. B2B marketplace platforms are available and provide your customers with product attributes, inventory levels, delivery or pickup schedules and pricing. These self service applications will augment your sales reps efforts and increase buyer generated orders converting your sales team from order takers to revenue generators. Companies may also receive consumer feedback through this mechanism, a vehicle to improve your brand.
Analytics and Reporting
It’s difficult to dispute the benefits of a well developed dashboard. Their visualization provides data points and trends in an aggregated and easy to understand format. Managing a modern business requires data driven facts, not anecdotal evidence and growing cannabis is no exception. Analytics facilitates quicker and well informed business decisions.
Reporting eliminates the burden of manually compiling and aggregating statistics and measurements. It becomes a byproduct of everyone’s day to day tasks and provides visibility into your active & closed inventory, sales and Cost of Goods sold. Wet, dry and trim yields by strain and date with precise moisture, yield loss and potency are important for measuring the success of your harvest. Reviewing these metrics provide you with an opportunity to adjust and optimize grow conditions.
Reporting can also be used to track and analyze product ancestry and aid in recalls for all harvests and packages. Change control and auditing, the who, when and what action was taken, can be instrumental when remediating issues.
Communication
A well-coordinated and efficient team requires efficient and real-time communication between co-workers and departments within an organization. Everyone should know where to find the information they’re looking for and review the most up to date version of that information.
A well-architected communication strategy should consider several channels. Email for general internal and external correspondence and chat for internal, real-time communications. Intranet technology provides employees with a centralized portal to access and update internal documents such as contracts, operating procedures or financials and the ability to relay relevant data to other departments instantly. Internet phone and meeting services which enable business users to collaborate from anywhere in the world are essential, especially in today’s pandemic environment.
Striking the Right Balance
There are many more examples of how businesses benefit from technology. Whatever techniques, products, skills or methods used, your strategy should consider the right balance of people and technology. Certain business functions are better served by human labor or intelligence, including analyzing and assessing commercial conditions, business development or customer service. Your clients might find your company too impersonal when extensive amounts of technology are implemented into a business’ operations. However, given this consideration, I know from experience that the proper application of technology in modern businesses accelerates growth, enables informed business decisions, improves operational efficiency, provides a better customer experience and will strengthen your brand.
For more information:
G'Stato
+1 (917) 301 7074
robert@gstato.com
gstato.com