In the US alone, cannabis sales are expected to surpass $35 billion this year, a 21% increase from 2021. Operational teams are bearing the brunt of growth with burnout, high turnover, and a lack of structure becoming all too normal in the industry.
For growth in the commercial cannabis growing industry to be sustainable in the long term, we need solutions that will contribute to safe and inclusive work cultures. Leveraging the existing sense of community in the industry is going to help business owners meet sky rocketing demand, and for team members to feel supported and empowered.
This mission is what drove us to take a human centred approach to designing the BlakthumbOS. We work closely with industry partners in cannabis and food production every day, so we can put our producers and their teams at the center of our design. When we sought out to define the ‘jobs to be done’ we uncovered the following insights, which have become the bedrock of our product design:
- Production leads are doing a lot of work and have a huge responsibility.
- Teams are doing the math, and there is a lot of it!
- There is a lack of clarity and transparency and if it isn’t dealt with early the impact is much worse at scale.
- Long on-boarding processes for software means producers aren’t seeing the product’s value for months.
- The industry has seen a lot of bad software.
Teams tell us they need a scalable and flexible solution for improving operations and team culture.
So we designed a platform that provides the structure for anyone to manage operational processes, capture data inputs from multiple sources, and to provide the information and insights teams need to see to make informed decisions on production, resourcing and management. Teams also get value in a matter of days without any additional training.
Along the way the biggest lesson we’ve learnt is that not all cool solutions make it to the end product. We work with a “No Test — No Development” approach and have a continuous testing process that enables us to gain feedback at every step of development. Having the ability to say no to the development of a feature based on testing and industry feedback is really powerful. Following this mantra means we never stray too far from the problem and we’re providing more focussed solutions based on our deepening collaboration with the sector.
Human centred approaches might feel like more work in the development phases but it’s worth it to make a product that genuinely makes teams lives easier. Working this way helps us collaboratively shift towards growing an industry that puts the team first, is profitable, and is great to work in.
