The sale of cannabis has seen a boost through its legalization for medical purposes. For most growers, it’s meant a change in how they work from seed to sale. Now there are compliance and quality control regulations that businesses in the cannabis industry must follow.
Finding the best way to manage your cannabis business is essential. Thankfully, there are software systems that can help you set up automation for some of the work. If you’re thinking of selecting QMS or seed-to-sale, here’s where you can find the guide.
What Is Seed-to-Sale?
Tracking every specific cannabis plant through its commercial lifecycle at every stage is vital. Experts say seed-to-sale tracking is critical. There are many pathways a cannabis plant can take in its journey.
This makes it essential to develop a system that follows strict guidelines and standards. The right software helps your business maintain this complicated process.
Ensuring that cannabis going to legal markets is safe and is high in quality is essential. It’s also imperative that regulatory requirements are being followed.
Which Systems Are Required?
New sellers should know that most cannabis-regulated states have requirements for growers. What’s more, growers must use a system to keep track of all the details. For example, they must keep track of cultivation and cannabis production.
An excellent system will include packaging and transport, inventory management, waste disposal, testing, and retail sales.
Software systems for cannabis operations fall under a few categories. Some are Quality Management Systems (QMS) and Seed-To-Sale (S2S). Each has specific roles, and they can also work together.
What Is QMS?
The specific system known as QMS, documents and monitors procedures, responsibilities, and processes in a business. These are critical things that cannabis businesses need to maintain using a quality management system or QMS.
What’s more, these systems keep companies in compliance and keep you up to date with regulatory statutes. There are many ways that QMS can help your business. Beyond regulations and standards, there are other benefits to using these systems.
They include:
- Improved consistency
- Less rejected batches and non-conformities
- An uptick in customer satisfaction
- Better efficiency in operations
Implementing QMS with an integrated communications system lets you streamline the flow of data. It helps customer service, sales, manufacturing, and the executive suite sees the data they need in real-time. Also, businesses can produce reports for data-driven quality assurance.
These reports are essential for creating marketing materials. These materials reflect how your company makes quality a priority.
What Is Cannabis Seed-to-Sale Software?
Among the software used by cannabis industry businesses, seed-to-sale is the most popular. Still, they do have limitations that your business should determine before selecting one.
Some features that are critical include:
- Financial management
- Growing and crop management
- Sales and distribution
Many seed-to-sale software programs don’t have any of the features of a QMS system, and in Canada, this is essential. Hence, the necessity for both systems in optimizing documentation and reporting for requirements.
Financial Projection and Compliance Reporting
It doesn’t need to be a complicated task to report your business’s financial and production records to Health Canada. You just need to have the right system for tracking all your activities.
What’s more, a robust quality management workflow is imperative to a cannabis business’s success. It keeps firms in compliance with government regulations.
Isolocity offers quality management software to help a business stay in compliance with regulations no matter where you are located. It uses GMP / EU GMP in addition to other quality principles which enables companies to meet the global compliance standards anywhere businesses need them.
There are also specific features for the cannabis industry that your business will need. For example, the product inspection module uses FDA 21 CFR Part 11 signature protocol to ensure e-signatures are requested as changes are made to inspections. The module will employ proper change control procedure for each action. The inspection report will also include batch records and bills of materials all in one.
Whether you need a seed-to-sale or QMS solution to boost your cannabis business, Isolocity can help. We have a network of technology and industry experts along with custom solutions that can help you succeed. If you have questions about compliance and software that can help, we are ready with the answers you need.
To get started and try a free demo, reach out to us today.