Data is the fastest growing sector of the cannabis industry, and there are dozens of cannabis software packages generating millions of records a day. Everyone agrees your data is incredibly valuable to your business and your team, if you have the tools to put your data to work for you!

Focus on your 5 core data sources

To unlock the power of your data, the first step for any team is to clarify, in plain English, what you’re trying to accomplish. These can be goals, objectives, budgets, or any other perspective on where you are today and where you’d like to be tomorrow (or in a week, quarter, or year). Once the team agrees on what everyone is reaching for together, the next step is understanding what data (and what data sources) can support your goal and enable your team.

Over 90% of all business questions can be answered with data from one of the following 5 sources:

1. Seed to sale software
2. Accounting software
3. Point of sale (POS) software
4. Internal spreadsheets
5. External industry reports / services

Seed to sale software is often mandated by your state or federal government, so that is usually a good place to start. Then, every business has revenue and costs that they need to intimately understand, so that is another core data source that impacts everything in the business. Driving revenue is sales, so mastering the metrics behind your wholesale purchase orders and/or your retail store orders is very important. Between your seed-to-sale, accounting, and POS software, you will also be able to understand inventory as well as forecast future supply and demand.

Oftentimes businesses will augment their software solutions with internal spreadsheets or models, and these files are usually very important for operations, budgeting and planning. It can be hard, but very necessary, to collate the information in your software systems with your internal spreadsheets. Automated workflows or Excel-embedded reports can save hours of time, energy, and frustration doing manual data entry.

Finally, where internal data doesn’t suffice for your business needs, you may look to other businesses that sell reports, benchmarks, or other industry aggregated metrics. These are particularly important in investments, expansions, mergers, & acquisitions.

Do you feel like you’ve mastered each of the top 5 cannabis data sources within your business? Where would you like to deepen your awareness or improve your insights? We always love to hear from you on our contact page or by scheduling a free data consultation.