Quick and Simple Way to Reduce Your Risk

We are all navigating uncharted waters where working from home and having remote connectivity to your business are becoming an unfortunate reality for us to face. As one of the essential industries in California, cannabis operators are at the forefront of transforming their businesses with touchless technology, remote terminals, and integrated production management solutions to protect their employees. These capabilities can help you reduce costs while at the same time help you to continue to make a top notch product that is essential to the health and sanity of many during these difficult times of shelter in place orders and self-isolation.

As with any crisis, there are also many opportunities to rethink your business and take it to the next level. The question is, what are the best options for your business today?

Touchless Technology

Cortex has always had the features described below with an emphasis in improving operational efficiency. In the current age of social distancing, these features can also help you protect the health of your team.

The COVID-19 virus thrives on any contaminated surface for hours or days without disinfectant. One of the best ways to protect your staff is to limit the number of devices and common surfaces that they have to touch to complete their jobs. In this regard, Cortex offers you many ways to improve the production of your team and limit what they touch at the same time. Here are a few examples.

The most common shared resource is the scale to weigh either plants or packaged goods. The Cortex scale gateway allows your existing scales to be wirelessly connected to the Cortex app on your employees own phones. This means that from their own personal device, a team member can weigh product without having to touch any button on the scale and run the risk of cross contamination from the scale surface. Also, since the Cortex app works on both iOS and Android devices, you don’t have to go out and buy tablets for your team. Another benefit is that the scales can be shared by multiple employees at the same time, and just by clicking a button on your mobile phone you can retrieve the weights from the scale, with no direct contact with the scale.

Turn every personal phone in your facility into remote terminals for your team members to receive their tasks, track their work, and track the flow of goods through your facility. Each device with the Cortex app only has access to the data you allow in an encrypted manner and can be fully disabled when a team member moves on. Use your team’s phones to improve your efficiency, knowing that your data is always secure in the cloud and not on your employee’s phones. No more sharing of laptops or desktops for data entry.

Limiting Direct Contact Between Team Members

Along with taking care of what we touch, another way to avoid this virus is to follow social distancing guidelines. This means that in person staff meetings are becoming a thing of the past and you need new ways to communicate with your team no matter where they are. Since everyone has a phone, one quick solution could be to use texts and group messages. While texting is already a part of a majority of cell phone contracts, are you willing to run the risk of putting important information about your business on a text anyone can see?

The Cortex app provides a better solution, secure encrypted communications between you and your team members. Send messages to specific individuals or groups, receive delivery notifications and know when your message has been read. It also allows your team members to communicate with each other, keeping business conversations separate from their personal conversations.

Using business related messages contained within Cortex also has the advantage that they don’t get mixed up with your personal messages, and are easy to find when needed.

Integrated Production Metrics

Today’s environment makes it essential for a Cannabis operator to have a clear and precise picture of what is going on at their facility. Be it for regulatory compliance, changing health guidelines or seeing where your money is going, recording and measuring everything that happens in your operation requires a team effort, but it doesn’t have to be a chore. The Cortex app already turns each of your team members into a data gatherer and compliance officer for your organization. Step by step instructions help all employees do things the way you want them done. Built-in intelligence into the app keeps track of all the minute details needed to figure out what is going on in your facility while keeping up with all regulatory needs. Within 3 clicks on the app, Cortex will know exactly what each employee is doing, what product they are touching and if their actions are correct. If everything is fine, you’ll be presented with a dashboard to analyze your operation at your leisure…..but if something looks off, Cortex will immediately let you know before a minor problem can become an emergency.

Cortex Watches Over your Business for you

Wouldn’t it be nice if you don’t have to worry about your METRC data is up to date, or if a pressing decision needs to be made? Cortex will notify you on your mobile device if there is a METRC package waiting for you to accept. If you forgot to change the status of your plants after an interval that Cortex learns from your past interactions, you will be reminded to check on it. It will remind you when harvesting dates are approaching, and can even monitor your watering and fertilizing intervals.

Help at your Finger Tips

With new faces entering your operation on a regular basis, onboarding new employees and making sure everything is done up to your standards is an ongoing challenge. Cortex helps you onboard and keep everyone on the same page with detailed instructions available at your employees fingertips. Cortex worklows, which give each employee a simple way to execute tasks in a repeatable manner, have detailed instructions available right in the app. Avoid confusion, misunderstanding and preventable errors by equipping your employees with the right tools and the instructions to work with your standards in mind.

Automatic METRC Synchronization

Gone are the days you have to update your data on METRC by logging in and entering the values one by one on an external website. As long as your data is in Cortex currently, it will all automatically be updated in METRC. Entering data into Cortex is far easier now with our built-in scanner, it is simply “click, scan and upload”.

There are far more features about Cortex that will help you save time and money in addition to maintaining regulatory compliance. In these changing times, Cortex provides you the tools to continue running your operation, keep your team safe and lowers your costs.