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By Kyle Loucks
Adopting automation can be a boon to your business. But if rushed or implemented without intention, it can be its downfall.
To ensure it helps and doesn’t hurt, you must be strategic when identifying which parts of your business to automate, and you must be thoughtful when picking which tools or software you’ll use to automate those parts of your business.
There are a few factors to consider on each side. Let’s dive in.
Identify Where To Apply Automation in Your Business
To identify the best places to automate your business, look at where you could stand to cut expenses, hours, or both. A good way to identify these areas is to consider which parts of your SOPs are repetitive and time-consuming, as well as which parts are prone to error. When prioritizing which processes to automate first, ask yourself these questions:
- How many problems will automating this task potentially solve? How many, if any, could it potentially create?
- Will automating this task give my team back enough hours for them to effectively address other pressing tasks?
- Will automating this task save my business enough money to achieve other goals, like expanding into the other market segments we’ve been eyeing?
Shiny objects are all over this industry, and more enter the market every day. It’s important to be discerning, practical, and intentional when choosing what to automate. If you don’t need a brand new automated lighting system at the moment, don’t consider one, regardless of what the salesperson might suggest it could do for you. You need to look at the facts and numbers of your business and solve the pressing issues first.
You can always come back to those lesser issues that can be solved with automation once you’ve handled the big money/time sucks. Prioritization is key.
Choose Which Automation Technologies To Adopt
Now that you know what you want to automate, it’s time to decide how you’ll automate it. No matter which area of your business you choose to make more efficient, there’s likely going to be more than one tool or technology available to you. Again, you need to be thoughtful and discerning. Consider these questions:
- Can you customize the technology to your operation, or will you have to customize your operation to the technology?
- Can you incorporate the technology into your existing ERP? (if applicable)
- How long will implementation and training take?
- How much and what type of support does this tool or technology come with?
- Will this particular tool or technology negatively or positively impact consumers’ perception of my brand?
While looking into cannabis automation tools and technologies, be sure to also consider the future goals of your business. If you plan to expand into other states, make sure whatever automations you choose don’t hinder your expansion, go against that particular state’s regulations, or change the course of your business’s direction.
For example, Nevada has been considering requiring cannabis brands that treat their flower with ionizing radiation to label their products with the Radura symbol, the international symbol that designates a product as irradiated. If your brand image boasts clean practices, or your goal is to be certified organic once the feds allow it, it’s best you consider other remediation technologies that don’t involve ionizing radiation like the APEX 7 by Ziel.
Boost Your Bottom Line With Automation
Adopting the right automations into your cannabis business ultimately means one thing: boosting your bottom line. That doesn’t mean the automation has to directly feed into your revenue for it to be the right choice, though. It could take an indirect route to your bottom line by cutting labor costs, eliminating or reducing supply costs, increasing production, improving time efficiency, or providing any number of money-saving adjustments.
It could also be what allows you to expand your operation and increase your market share. Automated tasks are easy to replicate so you can apply your existing SOPs to a new location without having to rethink or recreate processes.
However you choose to incorporate automation into your business, just be sure you do. Automation is the way of the future, and in an increasingly competitive landscape that will only become more competitive once interstate commerce opens up, you don’t want to be left behind.
Start considering automation strategies now and, if necessary, seek funding for automation now. New automation tools and technologies enter the market every single day. Don’t end up two steps behind because your competitors started leveraging automation before you did.
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