Month: October 2020

Taming the Data Monster

by Sharon Hanger, 10/28/20

It starts out as a trickle…information that you need to collect about your clients, constituents, applicants, or others. It may be for regulatory purposes, for reporting purposes, for review and approval purposes. It starts to grow as there are more and more sources…as policies change, as markets expand, as new information is required to keep up. The trickle is now a deluge. It has become a DATA MONSTER! How do you make sense of it? How do you know what is important and what is just noise? NCS Analytics... Read More >

The Burden of Data

by Mark Nassi, 10/21/20

Every day, new data is coming in from MRBs. Nearly every day, we get a question or complaint about the data being requested. The complaints range from “this is too much of a burden” to “this is proprietary data we don’t want to share.” We at NCS have done our best to collect the smallest amount of data to meet your objectives. At the end of the day, our job is to validate the activities of your licensees. We think of this as legitimizing a high-risk industry by weeding (no pun intended) out the nefarious players. We... Read More >

Analytics Spotlight: Package Quantity

by Paige Reimers, 10/14/20

Package Quantity alerts occur and display in the NCS Platform when, according to the data source, an inventory package has a negative remaining quantity. For example, a package of gummy bears initially started with 100, has been sold from, and now reportedly has -10 left (meaning 110 total were sold). How is that possible, you ask? Good question. There are some potentially reasonable explanations for this flag to appear. If retail locations have multiple packages of the same exact product, they may not notice they are using an incorrect label to... Read More >

Environmental Impact on Outdoor Grow Operations

by Dani Berger, 10/7/20

Skys throughout the West Coast have been filled with smoke the past several weeks and months. At the height of the smoke, the sun was nearly completely blocked out in parts of the country. For cannabis cultivators with outdoor grow operations, this could mean significant changes in their product and process for their current and upcoming harvests. Sunlight is a critical factor in outdoor cultivation. Significant time without adequate light could result in plants not fully developing, as well as decreased yields. Poor air quality may also... Read More >