If you’re a commercial cannabis grower operating in a state that requires Metrc software for compliance reporting, you’ve probably realized that the system can be convoluted and clunky.
Metrc Software
Metrc is a regulatory compliance tracking system that serves as a reporting tool to track cannabis production from seed-to-sale in many states including California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, and Oregon. Though recording the data required for Metrc reporting can be a tremendous burden to growers, track-and-trace systems like Metrc have provided transparency to regulatory agencies that has fundamentally enabled the thriving legal markets in the U.S..
Seed to Sale Data and Where it Falls Short
It seems to me, if you have to track plants from seed to sale, you should be cashing in on this data. There’s a lot of potential to uncover valuable insights about your business. For instance, what were your most successful harvests and why? What environmental conditions do your favorite strains respond to best, or what will you yield next month, or three months from now?
Time vs. Benefit
Tracking plants from seed to sale is time consuming. Applying plant tags, recording waste, and entering harvest weights into Metrc can quickly go from a mild burden to a gigantic weight on your team. The complexity of state compliance programs, and reporting systems like Metrc, require growers to dedicate an immense amount of time to compliance. In fact, state compliance programs have created positions within some cultivation organizations that are entirely dedicated to compliance, such as Compliance Officer and VP of Compliance.
Labor accounts for 50% of cannabis production costs, and it’s clear that compliance isn’t helping to reduce that expense at all. Additionally, Metrc software is not built for ease of use, in fact it can be straight frustrating (And that’s coming from us, a team of developers). For growers that record compliance information manually it can be incredibly labor intensive (which means it costs you more $$). Additionally, recording this data provides no real value to their business’, other than maintaining state compliance.
Third Party Seed-to-Sale Software
There are software solutions that integrate with Metrc that aim to make the experience more manageable. Many of these companies present a simplified interface and they provide additional support to their customers. However some of these seed-to-sale systems just seem to be ‘prettier versions’ of Metrc. Which brings us back to our point: what is the value and benefit to the licensed cannabis business?
METRC Lacks Business Insights
Metrc, and many of the seed-to-sale software providers, are just data reporting tools. They require diligent plant tracking but provide no additional analytics or management tools. Data is power and a great way to stay on top in the increasingly competitive cannabis industry. If you’re already tracking data with a seed-to-sale system, why not also gain insight into how you can boost production, save labor hours, and dial in your workflows?
Trym tracks plant batches from planting through harvest with a complete break down of environmental conditions and all tasks that were scheduled and performed. This historical data is used to predict future harvest yields, something our customers love for forecasting and planning ahead. In addition to environmental monitoring and team management, Trym integrates with Metrc to allow for simplified reporting as well as removing the need for duplicative data entry.
Metrc Doesn’t Track All The Metrics
In Metrc, you’re recording the outcome of plant batches: the flower weights, trim weights, and waste weights. But you’re not recording the activities associated with each batch (feeding, watering, plant maintenance) OR what environmental factors contributed to those outcomes. So when you complete a batch of plants, you have the effect but no cause. What’s the point in tracking yield if you don’t know what caused it?
Enter Trym
Trym was built to help streamline daily operations and bring greater visibility and insight to cultivators. Trym tracks plants, tasks, and environmental data – all in one platform, allowing you to identify the optimal conditions and workflows for each strain that you grow. Tracking these variables is great, but linking them all together and having access to the data, 24/7, from anywhere, is powerful. We give business owners and managers the oversight they need to scale their operations and replicate their “special sauce” for greater consistency and a stronger operation.
