Before cannabis legalization was a hot trend, the legal cannabis industry was plagued with low demand, few suppliers, and even fewer licensed producers.

But times have changed. More and more people want to get high or take advantage of marijuana’s medicinal effect.

One state after the other, legal cannabis cultivation, production, and manufacturing licensing is on the rise. A booming market thriving with new opportunities for licensed cannabis companies has led to increased cannabis product variety and is expected to grow the cannabis market to $40 billion by 2025.

But the cannabis supply chain is currently in crisis. The demand for cannabis is alive and well, but the supply chain faces bottlenecks resulting in missed order fulfillment and delivery delays.

As a cannabis company, what can you do to navigate this supply chain crisis?

First, Understand Your Primary Supply Challenges

Unique Supply Delays

Consider that your specific disruptions could be unique to our industry. Unlike other consumer products, federal law restricts the movement of some cannabis products across state lines.

The supply chain crisis in your state might be different from that of a neighboring state. If current suppliers are out of stock or lack inventory to meet your demand, you’ll need alternative sources.

Cannabis companies can diversify their supply lines by getting support from local, regional and international suppliers for some materials or products, like grow technology and lighting needed to cultivate cannabis.

Learn more: What about inflation? And does it affect marijuana businesses?

Of course, the global supply chain is struggling too. Changing trade routes and labor shortages continue to create delays in product delivery.

Your goal is to identify what suppliers can meet your growing demand with several backups in place.

Talent Shortage

Following the great resignation, talent is scarce. You’ll need people in your organization who understand your region’s compliance requirements. There’s a lot of technology that can give you ongoing insight into current trends and regulatory requirements at the industry, state, and federal levels. But understanding how to transform that insight into actionable processes for the best results requires more.

With the ongoing labor shortage, you could be struggling to find the talent you need to operate your cannabis company successfully. Finding agile people with the right knowledge about cannabis laws and processes can make or break a business. These staff will help you establish complicated supply networks, onboard new employees and scale production to meet your current demand.

Skilled cannabis supply chain practitioners can help create strategies for reducing risk, maintaining cannabis compliance, and improving efficiency. The people behind product creation, maintenance, and delivery are just as crucial for successful supply chain operations.

Your negotiators, the people in charge of ensuring you pay fair prices for your raw materials and sell at reasonable margins, are also crucial to ensure your business stays afloat with a healthy cash flow.

Then, Find A Solution

What if a cannabis Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution could help you mitigate these supply chain challenges? Here’s some good news then– one of the primary functions of an ERP system is to streamline your cannabis supply chain and its management.

Streamlining Cannabis Supply

You get a system that continuously tracks your entire supply chain from production to delivery. As a result, you have up-to-date access to inventory data, allowing you to make forecasts about your supply availability and customer demand.

This information can help your management team properly plan and reorder materials, as well as identify your product shelf life and production timelines and vendor lead times.

In turn, you can avoid the lag time in your production often caused by inventory shortages. A cannabis ERP solution automatically includes your testing protocols and quality processes within your workflow structure and approval processes as part of your inventory control. You maintain compliance by always ensuring every item in your supply chain meets the required quality standard.

A modern cannabis ERP solution also provides a supplier management feature to help you keep records of your suppliers and the items they have in stock. If you experience increased supplier risk, the ERP can offer alternatives from the relationships you have built and data collected in your database.

Identifying the best supplier alternative becomes a seamless process because your cannabis ERP ranks your suppliers based on your preferences, such as physical distance, quality standards, product prices and fluctuations, and security measures offered.

Cannabis staffing

What about sourcing and retaining the right talent? An ERP solution integrates perfectly with your Human Resource Management (HRM) system to make your HRM processes more effective, efficient, and feasible.

Your ERP system specifies the skills you need for every job position in your cannabis company. The ERP system will also monitor your onboarding, training, development, and performance processes.

The automation capabilities of the ERP solution also improve the working conditions for your employees by reducing redundancy and mundane tasks, allowing them to work creatively and effectively.

Improved efficiency can even create space for better compensation programs for your teams for work well done or production value addition. This is an excellent retention strategy for your employees.

Cannabis ERP: The Supply Chain Navigator

The key to unlocking your supply chain is what a cannabis ERP solution promises. By managing production data, inventory levels, and sales information, cannabis ERP systems can help operators maximize their yields and avoid costly mistakes.

By automating the process from seed to sale, these ERP systems enhance safety and security while reducing costs associated with manual labor.

Start by choosing the right ERP solution: not every vendor in the market will attend to the unique needs of your cannabis company.

Learn how CannaSuite is the right cannabis ERP to help you reduce production and inventory lags, expand supplier relationships, and meet customer demand.

FAQs

What is the current supply chain crisis in the cannabis industry?

The two primary challenges cannabis companies face in their supply chain are the shortage of labor, which, in turn, affects access to the right talent, and the delays or bottlenecks in the supply of raw materials, products, or technology.

What are the benefits cannabis ERP brings?

Improved inventory control ensures customer demand is met by providing the right stock at the right time. Better data gathering, storage, and management enhance business growth and sustainability decision-making. Cost savings through automation of processes.

How does ERP support HRM?

An ERP system improves the efficiency of the HRM system by streamlining the human resource processes. For instance, the ERP identifies the needed skills for your cannabis company which helps the HR create the proper job description to find the right candidate.