What kinds of cannabis software solutions do businesses need for successful operations from seed to sale? In this article we explore the most important types of software that licensed cannabis businesses utilize for seed-to-sale success.
What Kind of Software Do Cannabis Businesses Need?
A common question in the legal cannabis industry is: What kinds of software do licensed cannabis operations need and rely on for consistent success?
The answer depends primarily on the type of licensed business involved, and where along the supply chain they fall.
Like most businesses, a few key areas that all licensed cannabis operations share include inventory management, sales, and regulatory compliance. However, because of the highly-regulated nature of the industry, businesses often need cannabis-specific tools to help them navigate the complex legal landscape based on their needs.
This is especially true because all legal cannabis must be tracked: from purchasing seeds and getting them into the soil, to managing cultivation and B2B orders, all the way through distribution and retail sales, up until it’s in the hands of the consumer. This is known as seed-to-sale traceability.
To do all of this with efficiency, cannabis businesses rely on a number of varied tools and software solutions, but with so many to choose from, picking which software solutions are right for your business can be tricky.
Here are some of the most common, and important, business tools that can offer incredible value to cannabis businesses, based on license types across the supply chain.
Cannabis Software For Cultivators & Producers
What kinds of software do cannabis Cultivators use?
For licensed cannabis growers and producers, also known as Cultivators, there are several key areas of technology that are the most beneficial:
Cultivation Software: Grow Modules & Plant Management
Cultivators need to be able to track, analyze, and optimize their Grow operations. Grow Management tools often offer seed-to-sale plant management with grow cycles, plant promotion, harvests, waste, and environmental factors like weather, feeding, and pesticide treatments.
Traceability: Simplified Compliance & Reporting
Traceability is the tracking of plants and product throughout the seed-to-sale cycle. Every licensed cannabis business must follow their local traceability regulations to maintain a legally compliant business and avoid fines or closure. How any business utilizes traceability software varies from state to state, depending on local legislation, so traceability software allows operators to stay on top of their compliance with automated workflows, as well as integrations with regulatory systems like Metrc, or Washington’s CCRS.
Business Intelligence: Predictive Analytics
Good business intelligence software allows operators to easily get a bird’s-eye-view of their business’s data, and stay on top of their patterns, sales, and trends. This can often include predictive analytic features that help businesses better prepare for the future.
Inventory: Product Management & Tracking
Once product has been grown, harvested, and cured, the new inventory needs to be managed, tested, and, of course, tracked! Inventory software allows Cultivators to track, adjust, and manage their plant products. Many operations find inventory management tools beneficial to stay on top of this critical phase of the cannabis supply chain.
Sales Operations: Customer & Sales Management
How do cannabis cultivators sell to processors and dispensaries? The options can be overwhelming, so it benefits operators to utilize software that offers sales management, with valuable customer histories, sales tracking, and some form of B2B web portal or online marketplace. These kinds of software tools help keep track of individual inventories, and connect licensed cannabis producers and processors with qualified buyers, to simplify the ordering process and effortlessly boost revenue.
Seed-to-Sale: All-in-One Operations Management
Because of how complex the regulatory landscape is for legal cannabis, it’s often critical to have some form of seed-to-sale software to manage and track operations all across the supply chain. Seed-to-sale software allows operators to manage and track plants and products from the beginning of this cycle through its end.
One of the many reasons licensed Cultivators across the country rely on Cultivera PRO for seamless seed-to-sale business management is that Cultivera offers workflows and automations for all of the above.
Cannabis Software For Processors & Manufacturers
What kinds of software do cannabis Processors use?
For licensed cannabis Processors, also known as Manufacturers, there are a few key tools that are the most beneficial:
Product Management: Intake, Inventory, & Production Runs
It can be difficult finding available compliant materials, managing product batches and inventory, maintaining traceability compliance, and generating manifests, since all have their own unique needs and workflows. Production software tools offer automated workflows that streamline these product operations.
Logistics: Delivery & Manifest Generation
When production is finished, getting inventory onto store shelves can be overwhelming. Logistics software can simplify this process with solutions that offer streamlined intake, receiving, purchase order management, invoice generation, and outbound manifests.
eCommerce: B2B Sales & Distribution
Wholesale ordering, B2B sales, and fulfillment in the cannabis industry all have their own requirements and regulations in every state. To help manage inventory, orders, and B2B sales, companies often need solutions that offer B2B web portals, menus, customer management, and online ordering systems.
Seed-to-Sale: All-in-One Operations Management
Like Cultivators, it can be critical for cannabis processors and manufacturers to have some form of seed-to-sale software to manage and track operations all across the supply chain. Seed-to-sale software allows operators to manage and track products from the beginning of this cycle through its end.
Licensed cannabis Processors value Cultivera PRO because it offers streamlined solutions that address all of these needs and more, allowing operators to take control of their supply chain.
Cannabis Software For Retailers & Dispensaries
What kind of Dispensary software do retailers in the industry use?
For licensed Dispensaries and Retail stores, there are a few different kinds of software solutions that are most beneficial:
Dispensary Staff Management: Time Clocks & Budtender Reports
From building your team to getting their permissions and login information set up, one critical software tool involves human resources and team management. Dispensary staff management software offers time clocks, team notes, budtender reports, and more, to make day-to-day operations a snap.
B2C Marketing: Promotions & Discount Structures
One of the strongest tools in sales and marketing is offering customers promotional sales, loyalty rewards, and discounts. Marketing tools offers businesses access to loyalty point systems, menu integrations, and workflows to create, edit, and manage customer discounts and promotional sales.
Store Inventory: Product Management & Auditing
Beyond the average needs of retailers, Dispensary operators need inventory management that takes compliance and legal regulations into account. Good Dispensary inventory management software tools offer cannabis-specific vendor management, product intake, auditing, returns, and more, to maintain efficient daily operations.
Customer Management: Profiles & Patient Check-In
In many states, customers of licensed dispensaries need to have their license checked before entering the store, and often again before making a purchase. This daily routine is one of the most critical parts of Budtender activity, as a mistake in this area can cost a business it’s license. Because of this importance, it can be valuable to utilize a digital system that guides staff through this key process, while allowing operators to keep a database of existing dispensary customers.
Regulatory Compliance: Automated Traceability & Reporting
Traceability is the tracking of product all along the supply chain from seed to sale. For most of the cannabis industry, maintaining legal traceability compliance can genuinely make or break a business’s chance of success. Failure to stay compliant at any stage can result in fines, closure, or a revoked license, among other painful possibilities. This means reliable traceability software can be critical, particularly those with product and sales insights, business intelligence, regulatory integrations, and automated report generation.
Dispensary POS: Point-Of-Sale System
Point-of-Sale systems are one of the most critical tools for any retail business, offering streamlined workflows for selling product to customers and patients. Without a digital point-of-sale system, retailers have to manually write down and record all transactions and business events, the old-fashioned way.
For Dispensaries, it’s particularly valuable for a point-of-sale system to also keep tabs on all the other parts of legal cannabis operations we’ve mentioned above. This includes business and sales insights, Budtender histories, customer notes, traceability management, discounts and promotions, menu integrations, inventory audits, and cannabis-specific taxes. We’re proud of the Cultivera POS system because it takes on so many of these tasks with streamlined automations and vertical integration.
Cultivera's Seed-to-Sale Solutions
Here at Cultivera we power the legal cannabis industry with our proven and reliable business management platform for cultivators, manufacturers, distributors, and retailers.
The Cultivera Ecosystem includes three different systems that utilize many of the features and workflows listed above, in order to meet cannabis operations’ needs from seed to sale.
- With Cultivera PRO, Cultivators and Producers can stay on top of everything from the Grow to their Customers, Inventory to Sales, and beyond, all while staying legally compliant.
- The Cultivera Market allows licensed cannabis vendors to seamlessly connect with qualified buyers in their region, boosting sales relationships and orders with ease.
- For the final retail stages of the cannabis supply chain, Cultivera POS offers licensed Retailers and Dispensaries an all-in-one point-of-sale solution that takes on some of the most common pain points in retail. Cultivera’s easy-to-use Dispensary software offers seamless intake, returns, check-ins, and so much more.
You can see any of these solutions in action by booking a free demo! Click here to sign up for a live demonstration at your convenience.
What do you think? Did we miss your business’s favorite or most relied-upon software tool?
Let us know!
