Larry Kropf, Director of Marketing for ALink Computer Systems Inc., a subsidiary of A&L Labs, demonstrated the company’s ALCannTrace software program at the recent Grow Up Conference in Niagara Falls this September.
ALink has its roots in agricultural crops, where it first developed Ag Trace Manager data recording and analysis software to compensate for the shortcomings of off-the-shelf software programs.
“When A&L was approved by Health Canada to test cannabis, it wasn‘t long before licensed producers started asking about data analysis and cultivation software solutions,” Kropf explained. “The challenge was to provide solutions to growers, each of whom were growing the crop differently. How do you create a software solution that captures the minute but significant differences of each of the grower’s processes?”
On a macro scale, the variability of cannabis production was new to many software companies. “A&L cannabis customers wanted a detailed growth management program as well as activity planning and non-product inventory control planning,” Kropf said. To provide that, A&L adapted its Ag Trace program to cannabis. “That wasn’t a big stretch for us,” he added. “We already understood the unique needs of the cannabis industry.”
Rather than build one system for the industry and hope it works well enough, ALink creates a unique program for each individual grow operation, including document management, quality reporting and point of sale solutions.
According to Kropf, “We arrived at a modular system that allowed clients to pick and choose what they need for their operation, one that harmonized with the software systems they were already using.” All ALCannTrace software is written with open source text to allow data sharing between existing programs. Existing hardware will be used whenever possible to minimize implementation costs to clients.
“We also have a vision for the future for areas like remote sensing and precision agriculture capabilities,” Kropf added. ALCannTrace can upload data directly from UV-screening drones and/or robots to identify differences in temperature within a grow room. “Our expertise is immense in the cannabis market and using that knowledge to create a predictive model for disease and yield would be extremely beneficial,” he noted. “We have already partnered with BrainGrid to do data analysis to account for the myriad of variables. From there we plan to create a predictive system where we can let our clients know that they may be a few days away from a disease infestation.”
ALCannTrace software is available as a subscription service.
For more information about how ALCannTrace could fit your production and data management needs, visit our website at www.ALCannTrace.com or contact Brian Coutts: bcoutts@alcanada.com