Good morning, @memberdirectory! We are honored to have another brilliant mind hosting our AMA: our friend, @henry from Cannabis Big Data.
It’s a great time to be in cannabis: innovation has driven our industry forward and data driven growing is at the forefront of cutting-edge grow operations. Cannabis Big Data is leading the way into the future and Growers Network members have a special opportunity to be a part of it. @henry will help shine some light on that today.
It’s awesome that we have @henry joining us today. Today’s AMA may be the first in GN history: we have invited one of our founding members to host our AMA…but this is not @henry’s first AMA with GN. Can you tell us a little about your (our) first time?
Our first AMA (the first AMA at GN!) was focused a lot on what types of data we look at and how to turn that data into dollars. I’m very curious to see how the market, and the questions, have matured in the last couple of years.
We started out focused on cultivators, and have designed some really great tools for cultivation yields and lab test results. In addition, we build a “Grow Profit Planner” that is a predictive model incorporating your historical metrics to help forecast profitability on your next grow cycle.
In addition, we’re working on a sustainability benchmarking tool for cannabis cultivators to baseline the environment impact of your grow sites. Should be launching in the next few months and it’s pretty cool work!
Beyond cultivators, we have also been doing A LOT of work around inventory management for retail (med and rec) locations. That’s definitely a big frontier of using data to maximize profits.
That’s awesome! How does this tool work? How can growers get involved with Cannabis Big Data? Do you have canopy size requirements to attain these assessments?
We plug in to their METRC account and download all the historical cultivation and sales data (usually in conjunction with our Cultivation Yield module). Then, growers enter (or we analyze from accounting records) the cost per grow day of cultivation.
From there, we set up a workbook where they enter what strains they are growing, how much they are diverting to manufacturing, and what products they are manufacturing.
Based on the strains grown, we know how much will be yielded. Then we also know the revenue and cost structures for flower and manufactured products sold, so we can model out the full end-to-end profitability of a full grow → manufacture → sell cycle. The model automatically adjusts and changes the numbers if you change the strain, number of plants, or products you’re making, so you can instantly see how adjusting anything in the plan impacts the bottom line.
Pretty cool tool and we’ve gotten some great feedback from growers!
Can you elaborate on this element to the extent that you’re able to please? I find this super interesting, and my father is involved in sustainable architecture so I always perk up a bit when I hear “sustainability”. Thanks for your time today.
I worked with e-commerce, management consulting, healthcare, and government contractors before starting Cannabis Big Data. I did roles as diverse as marketing, UI/UX, workflow automation, patient portals and full enterprise business intelligence. No matter what department or team I worked with, I’ve always been the ‘data guy’ because I have a strange obsession with understanding how the numbers impact operational business decisions.
Naturally, I saw a great fit to apply that skill set in the cannabis industry.
We have a simple data ingestion tool that pulls in information from production, energy, water, and waste as well as some basic information about the grow.
From there, we organize and aggregate that data then push it to a data visualization tool so you can see your own metrics, and then how they stack up to comparable grows in your region / category.
We are working through alpha users now, so if you have a licensed cultivation we’d love to do some usability testing with your team!
In a former life I was in CPG and I used Tableau to create dashboards based off of syndicated data and reports provided.
Does your product update automatically at a set time frame and email reports to the correct user? Or do you have to go in an manually update and send reports?
I’m a data guy, so I saw a big opportunity to apply my (and my co-founder’s) skills in this industry.
But before starting this company, I did a 3 month talking tour asking cannabis businesses about their data needs and challenges. The idea originated as “Cannabis Manager Dashboards” but I quickly learned that this was not a compelling framing or tool for where the industry was at then (and even is today). So we quickly morphed into Cannabis Big Data and focused on providing modules instead of fully integrated suites of enterprise reporting.
Oh, and we were bitten by a data spider, so with great power came great responsibility … How’s that for an origin story?!