The Legal Cannabis Industry is Breaking New Ground with its Use of Online Business Applications
Denver, Colorado (PRWEB) August 17, 2015 -- In its scramble to meet expanding consumer demand while complying with local government regulations and expectations, America’s legal marijuana companies are using existing business software in novel ways, that have successfully helped their bottom lines.
And one Denver-based cannabis company is breaking new ground with its use of a just-in-time inventory management system; that allows wholesalers to have inventory immediately available to meet consumer demand.
Soon after Colorado and Washington state legalized the sale of recreational cannabis to adults, the U.S. Justice Department announced it expected those states to “establish strict regulatory schemes” when it came to monitoring the production and sale of legal cannabis.
Colorado responded by having its state Marijuana Enforcement Division deploy the Metrc online regulatory system, which now has over 11,000 registered users and has tracked millions of cannabis plants and products.
At the same time some of Colorado’s leading marijuana growers and retailers took the initiative by incorporating into their businesses state-of-the-art software that not only uploads their data directly into Metrc, but also allows them to streamline operations across all aspects of their businesses, from seed to sale and beyond.
For Ryan Fox, CEO and founder of Denver-based Kindman cannabis, his adoption of the Adilas software six years ago was originally a leap of faith into a new technology. Adilas was first developed in 2001 as a real-time POS, accounting and inventory tracking system for traditional businesses. But it quickly became apparent to Fox and other cannabis business owners that Adilas was a great fit for their line of work.
“Adilas is an acronym for ‘all data is live and searchable,’” he says, “and it’s lived up to its name.”
The system gives Fox full control of his business from anywhere, with time-stamped accountability and inventory tracking. “If I can get Internet service, I can get real-time information on my company,” he says.
“It’s also developed in a way that, every time we have to report to Metrc, our Adilas system generates the CDS (data) file that needs to be uploaded to Metric,” he says. “So it just takes seconds or minutes, compared to hours with other systems.”
That nearly instantaneous data transfer helps Fox quickly transition between operations and accounting information in real time. “It helped us achieve maximum effectiveness,” he adds, “while being as transparent as possible.”
With the consent of his customers, Fox also accesses their inventories through Adilas, to implement his innovative just-in-time inventory management. By monitoring those retailers’ inventory, Fox can create a “par value” for each of the Kindman cannabis strains on sale.
And once one of those products falls “below par” at a store, meaning supplies of that strain are running low at that location, Fox can build an order and automatically deliver new product to the customer.
“This is an industry where cash-management is number one,” he notes. “We’re the first company in the legal cannabis industry to apply just-in-time inventory in ways that are usually seen at big-box retailers or national grocery chains.”
National data, meanwhile, shows the legal cannabis industry’s early adoption of these online applications has it positioned well-ahead of many other traditional businesses.
A 2013 survey by the National Small Business Association found that, while a growing number of companies are going online to purchase supplies, pay bills and manage their accounts, less than half were using those technologies for other important business transactions such as payroll management.
And according Wasp Barcode Technology’s 2015 State of Small Business Report, 46 percent of small and medium-sized companies (defined as having less than 500 employees) do not currently track their inventory, or still use a manual tracking process.
“By necessity, the legal marijuana industry has been able to show the rest of the business sector how to keep costs down and how to respond rapidly to any changes in our customers’ demands,” says Fox. “Instead of waiting for company department heads to hold a staff meeting and report back to me, Adilas gives me a news feed of data, that lets me know instantly what’s going on within my company.”
ABOUT KINDMAN
Established in 2009, Kindman provides customers with an unmatched cannabis product – grown in Colorado state-regulated facilities at indoor locations, using a customized process that combines food-grade nutrients and a unique soil mix that brings out the plant's best features. Close attention is paid to product cleanliness, quality, curing and processing.
Since the January 1, 2014 start of legalized sales of recreational cannabis to adults in Colorado, Kindman has provided high-quality marijuana flowers to tens of thousands of customers from over 100 countries.
For more information, visit: http://www.mykindman.com/
Tags: Marijuana, cannabis, dispensary, cannabis business, Colorado, online technology, logistics, business applications, cannabis industry standards, supply chain, production efficiency, Ryan Fox, Kindman, Adilas
Bruce Kennedy, Life Marketing, +1 404-259-1231, [email protected]
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