Finding the Balance In Efficiency with Cannabis and AI
The Role of AI in the Cannabis Industry
AI continues to make a profound impact on all industries, from personalized shopping experiences to self-driving cars. As the AI craze grows, some may say the lack of human engagement will be the ruin of a personal experience for the customer. Though AI has the capability to record personal preferences and create tailored experiences, the buying process is often a collaborative effort to find exactly what the customer is looking for, requiring the human understanding of needs and wants. Additionally, in an industry as new and ever-changing as the cannabis industry, sometimes even a highly-advanced algorithm doesn’t know more than a seasoned veteran in the cannabis industry.
There are, however, immense benefits to utilizing AI in your cannabis business including automating inventory to streamline processes and utilizing video analytics to predict busy and slow days and times. In an industry that thrives of efficiency and precision, AI can assist in creating compliant and organized processes to accommodate the numerous strict regulations. But how can a business utilize the good parts of AI while creating a personal experience for its cannabis customers and vendors?
Advantages of AI in Cannabis
Enhancing Security
AI in security systems are beginning to provide enhancements to security procedures with features including:
- Facial recognition when scanning ID’s
- Detecting suspicious behavior
- Automatically locking doors in the event of a burglary
- Regenerating passcodes for safes and storage systems
Improving Dispensary/Retail Customer Experience
While nothing can truly replace speaking with a budtender or retail technician about the selection of products within a dispensary, some new technology is being tested to provide customers with personalized shopping experiences that suggest cannabis products based on preferences entered by the customer and purchase history. It’s not a perfect system as it does not allow for an actual conversation and explaining what affects you are looking for out of a cannabis product is not always easy, but it does create a more efficient way of move through a line of dispensary customers.
Automating Business Logistics
One of the largest ways AI has been able to improve cannabis businesses is by automating logistics such as managing staff schedules, organizing distribution routes, ordering inventory, and much more. These uses not only make for efficient, compliant processes, but often require less employees, keeping costs low.
Challenges of AI in the Cannabis Industry
AI solutions, though appealing from the outside, tend to lose their luster the more you integrate them into your everyday systems. The lack of human error creates a seemingly perfect system with no room for mistakes. However, it often creates a rather robotic, rather ordinary experience for customers and vendors leaving few opportunities to personalize interactions. Additionally, though AI has many uses in security systems, the need for human analysis to fulfill security processes is paramount to providing a safe, secure environment for customers and employees.
Strategies for Cannabis Businesses to Strike the Right Balance
Start With The Right AI Tools
Picking the right tools to integrate in your cannabis business can be a grueling task, but choosing what’s right for your employees, customers, and vendors will require extensive research. Be sure to invest in companies that are leaders in the cannabis industry and create user-friendly tools that can be seamlessly integrated with your current processes. You want these tools to work with you and your business rather than creating completely new systems from scratch.
Train Employees to Collaborate With AI
Your AI tools are only as good as how you and your business employees use them. Therefore training is critical in ensuring you’re getting the most out of your AI tools. Conducting onboarding and even monthly training on how your cannabis businesses is utilizing AI tools will allow your employees to work with them in a collaborative way that strikes a balance between technology and human-based customer interaction.
Regularly Evaluate AI’s Impact
Similar to the vastly changing cannabis industry, the use of AI is constantly shifting and changing to meet the needs of the industries it’s impacting. The technology is evolving so quickly that by the time you’ve started using one AI software application, another, more advanced one is launched. It’s important to keep up with these changes and change your strategy based on new and developing technologies. Staying ahead of AI trends and how they’re affecting your state cannabis program and business will allow you to adjust your plan of action before you’re working with out of date technology.
Working with Cannabis Experts to Discover Your AI Solutions
It’s no secret that AI has the potential to advance the cannabis industry to new heights, but at what cost? It seems every day there’s a new ordering system that takes away the human experience of ordering cannabis at a counter from a budtender. But the cannabis industry was built on the need for plant medicine and, with that, human consultation on effects, dosage, and product types. It’s critical that as the industry evolves, business operators find that happy medium of a personalized customers experience and an automated, efficient facility.
Want to learn more about integrating AI into your cannabis business? Contact our cannabis experts today or book an hourly consultation to see how we can help strategize your cannabis.