Decoding the chaos in compliance labeling

Why are labels a mess in the Cannabis industry?

In the rapidly growing US cannabis industry, a significant problem often flies under the radar — the chaotic process of compliance labeling. This blog post aims to unpack the complex reasons behind the mess in the compliance cannabis labels process, highlighting the operational headaches they cause for operators. The lack of a unified approach to compliance integration forces businesses into repetitive reporting of compliance tasks. Managing labels is time-consuming, requiring manual updates across multiple platforms and software tools, leading to inefficiencies. We seek to address these issues, promoting clearer comprehension among consumers and industry professionals and advocating for simpler processes to ease these challenges.

In theory, creating and printing compliance labels should be straightforward. Typically, cannabis operators rely on three essential tools:

1. Label Creation Software: This tool is used for designing the label template and creating the actual label.
2. Compliance Software (Biotrack, Metrc, etc.): This provides necessary information for the label, such as Lot ID, Product Name, and other regulatory details.
3. Label Printer: The device used to print the compliance labels.

Despite these tools, the process has become unexpectedly complicated.

Let’s explore why…

Timing within your production

Timing is crucial when it comes to compliance labels in your daily operations. Each compliance label requires specific product and batch information, which must be entered into your compliance software (such as Biotrack) before the labels can be created.

As your production teams complete their tasks throughout the day, the timing of these updates in your compliance software becomes vital. The efficiency of your operation can hinge on this timing, potentially making or breaking your workflow for the day or even the week, especially if this responsibility falls on a single employee. Beyond ensuring the timing of your compliance data is updated, you also need to account for the time it takes to create and print your labels.

Understanding the timing of this process within your operations involves considering a few key aspects:

1. Weekly Production Output Volume: The size of your weekly production directly impacts the time required for daily compliance tasks. Higher production volumes demand more time and likely more staffing resources to ensure compliance admin tasks are updated and label creation remains efficient.
2. Daily Time Spent on Compliance and Label Creation: Analyzing how long it takes for your compliance data to be uploaded and how long it takes on average to create your compliance labels can highlight potential bottlenecks. You may find that the compliance data admin phase is completed quickly but label creation is causing delays, especially during the packaging phase.
3. Management Structure and Resources: Efficient management of this process is crucial for both operational efficiency and maintaining compliance. Relying on a single team member for an entire task can be risky. Ensuring that multiple team members are trained on these tasks will be invaluable, especially if extra hands are needed or if someone is absent. Any standstill in this process can significantly impact operations, as delays in compliance data or label creation can halt production and distribution.

Evaluating these aspects within your operation doesn’t take long but running scenarios of potential breakdowns against your current setup can highlight areas needing improvement. Strengthening parts of your team through training or reallocating resources can alleviate workloads and ensure smooth, efficient operations.

Locating data

As we continue to meet and work with new operators every week, we frequently encounter the same issue of locating and collecting specific compliance data when creating compliance labels. Although each state has different requirements of what must be displayed on their compliance labels, the common compliance data points you’ll see are:

• Product Identity: Includes the product name and net weight.
• Manufacturer Name and DBA: Specifies who manufactured it and their DBA license number.
• Harvest / Packaged Date: Indicates the date the product was manufactured and the expiration date.
• Batch ID # & Barcode: The lot ID and its assigned barcode, generated by the compliance system during label creation.
• COA & QR Code: Displays the cannabinoid potency (THC %) and details of the testing lab, usually shown on a QR code that holds more information about the product’s lifecycle and tracking.

Each of these data points covers different aspects of the manufacturing process, and securing them isn’t always straightforward. The complexity varies based on the organizational levels of your compliance account, the set-up of your label creation software, and your team’s familiarity with navigating these systems.

However, the real operational strain arises from the need for double reporting due to the lack of data communication across all of these tools and platforms. This redundancy means the time spent updating your compliance software is doubled as you repeat the task for label creation. Without integrated or unified platforms that can manage this process, maintaining operational efficiency becomes a challenge. The focus shifts mostly to managing multiple platforms rather than ensuring streamlining your operations.

What does an Ideal solution look like?

Imagine if instead of juggling multiple tools and software, you had everything you need in one streamlined solution.

When you use separate tools for different aspects of your operations, they may work well individually. However, this often leaves you manually and repetitively collecting, uploading, and processing data across various platforms daily.

Fortunately, Blakthumb integrates all the essential tools you need into one cohesive platform. From creating the datasets you rely on to generating compliance labels, Blakthumb covers it all.

Here’s how it works:

1. Automated Data Syncing: As your team uploads their completed production data into Blakthumb, the platform captures and prepares it for syncing to your compliance account. This automation reduces the time spent on data entry to a simple review and sync process.
2. Effortless Compliance Label Creation: When it’s time to create compliance labels, Blakthumb has you covered. The platform uses the data uploaded by your team to generate compliance labels. You can customize the data and image fields to fit your operational needs, and then print the labels directly from your Blakthumb account.

By integrating and automating these processes into 2 simple steps, Blakthumb not only enhances operational efficiency but also significantly reduces the management load and pressure that is constantly attached to this role. With Blakthumb, you can focus more on your business and less on the hassle of data management.

Interested in learning more? 👉🏾 Schedule a 30-minute chat with a member of the Blakthumb team here.

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