Power BI for Cannabis Operators: Maximize ROI with Customized Data

Do you ever feel like you’re slowly disappearing under a mountain of spreadsheets? Perhaps not literally, since you’re probably already using cloud-based applications to build your spreadsheets, but perhaps metaphorically you feel like you’ll never get out from under that enormous pile of virtual data?

Data: Collecting, Organizing, Formatting, Analyzing

Collecting information is one thing, organizing it into a useful format is another. Analyzing the data is a separate activity altogether. In the cannabis industry, there’s a lot of data to collect, organize, manipulate, and analyze, and each step requires time and effort that you could likely be spending elsewhere in your business.

However, you need to know when unscheduled orders are placed so that you can consolidate shipments and save money. You also need to understand where there are snags in your production processes so they can be smoothed out and efficiency improved. You need to understand your harvest cycle, the amount of waste you’re generating, how much inventory you have, how many labor hours were required for any given activity last year compared to this year, and the list could go on and on.

You already know all this, though. You battle through those spreadsheets everyday.

There’s a Better Way

Power BI (business intelligence) is a cloud-based platform that allows you to customize your data and reports in order to maximize your return on investment (ROI). Do you need to track specific KPIs? Power BI can help. Do you need to see specific information from across your company in one report? Power BI can do that—in real time, which means you’re looking at up-to-date information.

A simple example would be needing to be able to compare the watering and harvesting schedules of two separate greenhouses. You could look at four different spreadsheets and try to compare, or you could create a graph with all of the information represented and color-coded so that you can compare easily and at a glance.

Power BI can do that with any of the data you collect: expenses, vendors, sales, deliveries, biomass output, plant mortality rate, and on and on. Perhaps one of the best aspects of the platform is that you connect the data sources, whether it’s a piece of software or a spreadsheet, or a service, and Power BI pulls from it. You don’t need to spend time inputting all of the information.

Customization is Key

Power BI can be used the way that you need to use it, not the way that someone in a distant office thought you probably would need to use it. It’s fully customizable, so that it does what you need it to.

If you run a small operation and you have plans to grow in the next year, you need a different set of reports than if you’re operating in multiple states. Power BI provides the reports you need so that you’re not sifting through a set of standard reports that don’t apply to you.

Build the dashboards that are useful for you, and run the reports that make sense for your operation. When it comes to seeing the return on your investment in business intelligence, that’s the ultimate goal: being able to see, clearly, how your business is running and how that relates to expenses and profits.