Cannabis Industry Data Challenges and Trends in 2023

Let’s start with a story to show how far the world has come in terms of accessing and using data, particularly for business decisions, over the past seven years.

About seven years ago, I was a member of the Industry Advisory Committee of a large university, and during a meeting to discuss future plans for majors and courses, the university representative asked the group of business advisors if we thought the school should offer a data analysis major in the future. I was very surprised at the time to find out that among my dozen or so fellow students at the meeting, I was the only one who made a strong commitment to this new major. Today it would be shocking if a university’s economics department didn’t offer a data analysis program.

Now think about how many companies involved in and with the cannabis industry do not effectively collect and analyze data on a daily basis to improve operations, marketing, sales, sales and every other aspect of their business. Is yours?

The point is, your business must prioritize data today in order to survive and thrive in the future. Don’t be the university that didn’t know what the future held.

However, for companies, data is about more than just using data. It’s about being a data-driven company – one that actually gains a competitive advantage and wins in your market in the future.

A data-driven company relies on data to inform the entire decision-making process. When you rely on data to make decisions, every decision is validated before you take action, and the likelihood of the results being positive is much higher.

Benefits of data-based decisions

Research shows that data-driven companies are 58% more likely to exceed their revenue goals than companies that don’t use data to make decisions. In fact, data-driven decision-making offers numerous benefits that positively impact every aspect of your business—from operations to sales.

Key benefits you’ll quickly see when you adopt a data-driven approach to decision making include:

• Proactively seize opportunities and thwart threats
• Achieve measurable cost savings
• Improve customer retention and reduce churn
• Improve operational processes
• Identify the business needs
• solve problems
• reduce risk
• Serve your customers better
• Gain market share
• Respond faster to market changes
• Predict future trends

Bringing these benefits to the real world, Chris Moyer, Chief Technology Officer at Cannabiz Media, explains, “At Cannabiz Media, we use a combination of real-time data to alert when anomalies occur, as well as a long-term look-back data period to determine if a feature or idea worked. Put simply, we use data to prove or disprove what we think is good and what customers actually need or want.”

For Cannabiz Media, data drives decisions. “For example,” says Chris, “when we introduced the direct email feature to the Cannabiz media license database, we had no idea if subscribers would use it, or if the feature would complement or better the existing email campaign solution After a few months, we could see from the data that not only are customers using it, but customers using direct email are also getting almost 80% opens on average, compared to 60% Campaign openings. We had a theory, we tested it and the data helped us prove it.”

In other words, the data showed Cannabiz Media that the new feature offers additional use case capabilities for face-to-face outreach and customers are now able to improve their results by using the right tools for each communication.

When you add all of these benefits together, making decisions based on data can give your business a competitive edge and even create a first-mover advantage that the competition will find difficult to duplicate or surpass.

Cannabis industry data challenges

So far, the cannabis industry has been focused on rapid growth, but we’ve come to a point where companies need to make a decision. Will they invest in the tools, people, and data they need to grow and scale effectively and profitably in the future, or will they miss the opportunities that data and technology offer to beat the competition?

This is a question that every company’s executives must answer. To do this, it is important to understand not only the benefits of data for the cannabis industry, but also the challenges.

Access

If your business can’t access the data it needs to make decisions, your business will likely fall behind the competition quickly. Therefore, you need to invest in the right solutions to collect data and make it usable. These solutions can be on-premises or off-premises, giving you access to a wide range of first- to third-person data.

For example, you can use the Cannabiz Media License Database to access a wealth of information about cannabis and hemp licensees, businesses, and contacts in the United States, Canada, and international markets. If you need data on mergers and acquisitions, finance, point-of-sale software, sales, products, wholesale prices, patient data and more business intelligence data, you can get it with a Cannabiz Intelligence™ subscription.

Reliability and timeliness

The data you use to make your decisions must be accurate and up to date, otherwise your decisions could be incorrect. In other words, you need high-quality data. This means your business needs to leverage the right technology and work with the right data and software partners to keep all data continuously updated.

integration

In the cannabis industry, much of the technology used by companies is fragmented with disparate data stored in siled systems. To become a truly data-driven company and reap the benefits that come with it, all of your data and technology must be integrated.

Adjustment

Today, companies are still trying to transfer technology from other industries to the cannabis industry with varying degrees of success. Certainly, many industry-specific software platforms and technologies have been introduced in recent years, but more solutions are needed that can be fully customized to the way the cannabis industry needs to function across the supply chain.

Costs

In an industry where many companies struggle to generate enough revenue to be profitable, it’s difficult to justify investments in technology and data solutions. However, to achieve market advantages that position your company for long-term success, spending on data-related technology should be viewed as a cost of doing business and not an optional investment.

Data trends and opportunities for cannabis and cannabis-related companies

Data collection and analysis today is often inefficient and disjointed. You can expect to see this shift in the coming years as data and technology companies pay more attention to developing solutions that integrate and provide a complete picture of all the data for a cannabis company and cannabis market in a single place.

Trends show that the continued use of automation, artificial intelligence, predictive modeling, and machine learning will increase efficiencies and ultimately reduce costs for organizations that embrace data and technology. Additionally, the ability to control the entire customer relationship and lifecycle and reduce customer dissatisfaction improves retention and loyalty. Data will also help companies identify new revenue and growth opportunities.

For example, subscribers to the Cannabiz Media License Database can identify target customers and market opportunities down to the city level and track them throughout the purchase cycle using built-in email marketing and sales tools. The growing importance of data in the cannabis industry is one of the main reasons Cannabiz Media launched its Email Success Academy, specifically the Email Marketing Data and Lead Scoring Specialist certification course.

Data will also improve operational inefficiencies, optimize supply chains, discover new product opportunities, protect businesses from data loss and cyber threats, and improve compliance. The list of opportunities goes on and the growing trend that shows how important data is to all businesses is not about to reverse.

Of course, balancing the need for high-quality data and complying with privacy regulations will remain a top priority, but there are solutions to privacy-related challenges today and in the future.

Chris Moyer shares, “Collecting data is the most important aspect of our business at Cannabiz Media. We needed to make sure we were collecting enough data to answer the questions about our business. It’s a fine line to make sure we collect enough data to be useful internally, but not so much that we invade users’ privacy. Luckily, concepts like anonymizing user data and collecting metadata help.”

The bottom line is that data is critical to businesses today and in the future. While challenges exist—and new challenges will inevitably arise—your organization can overcome obstacles to becoming data-driven.

Key takeaways on the cannabis industry’s data challenges and trends in 2023

Data-driven companies are more agile and can quickly adapt as the cannabis industry evolves. In addition, they can identify opportunities and gain significant competitive advantages that will help them succeed in the future. Now is the time to prioritize data-driven decision-making for any cannabis and cannabis-related business.

If your business sells to cannabis and hemp license holders and you want to use data to gain a competitive advantage, schedule a demo to see how the Cannabiz Media License Database and Cannabiz Intelligence can help.