ProCanna: Answering Cannabis’s Compliance and SOP Tracking Needs

Dede Perkins became a regulated cannabis industry veteran without intending to. The co-founder and CEO of cannabis compliance and auditing software company ProCanna had a successful freelance writing practice when she was contacted by a Massachusetts group applying for one of the state’s medical cannabis licenses in 2013.

Intending to complete a one-off project, that initial contract became a months-long educational gauntlet for Perkins, who was tasked with writing the company’s application for a vertical license that met the state’s tight regulatory requirements (and character limits). When her work resulted in the license being awarded, “I was just in,” she tells Cannabis Business Executive. “I had learned so much about cannabis. The regulations fascinated me.”

Soon, contracts to write other applications, standard operating procedures (SOPs), employee manuals–virtually any document that was needed to operate a cannabis business–started to pile up. In 2015, she joined Tempe, Ariz.-based multi-state operator Harvest Health & Recreation as the company’s technical writing manager, doing much of the same work on the “front line” with a team of roughly 50 around her.

By the time she left five years later, “we had gone public,” she says, “we were operating in nine states. It [had] almost 900 employees. And I saw these incredible growing pains.” 

Those pains weren’t exclusive to Harvest: Perkins had continued her freelance writing work in the cannabis industry, helping companies that did not directly compete with her full-time employer. For example, one client had a fertigation mistake that caused a catastrophic crop failure and $30,000 in damages.

“There weren’t [any] bumpers, and I just kept imagining a hub,” she remembers. “[Compliance] doesn’t have to be this hard: let’s put all the searchable regs at the base, let’s put our SOPs, our training, quizzing to test knowledge, audits, [and] reporting in one user-friendly tool.”

Thus, the seed of ProCanna was planted and started growing in Perkins’ mind.

Not Boiling the Ocean

ProCanna soft-launched in January 2021, with a broader market rollout starting in July of that year. The company is not looking to be a one-stop compliance shop (at least for now). For example, the software does not currently integrate with government compliance tools like Metrc, nor does it track regulations at the county level.

Instead, the upstart company’s core function is to record and transmit operational brand standards through what Perkins calls the company’s “toolkit,” which is available in all cannabis markets. These tools include SOP cloud storage (including quizzing for team members), compliance reporting, and a remote auditing tool that allows compliance managers to remotely send report requests to any facility or location.

“One use case we had was there was a regional manager who had heard something was going on at a packaging line,” Perkins says. The manager was a few hours away from the potentially problematic location, but with ProCanna, he was able to send an audit report and request the employees at the facility “answer these questions, upload these documents, take these photos or videos.

“It’s all date and timestamped,” Perkins continues. “So if there was an issue, they can document that they identified it. If there wasn’t an issue, they can also document what was going on in the facility that day.” If a state compliance officer were to conduct a compliance check, the company would have documentation to support its conclusions.

Managers or compliance officials within a company can also develop and maintain SOP documents, and have them available to all locations instantly via a cloud server. Licensees can use pre-loaded or template SOPs, or develop their own from scratch and upload them to the cloud. Team members can then study and be quizzed on SOP and compliance knowledge using custom questionnaires designed by the licensee. This tool ensures all staff knows not only what their jobs are, but how to do them, Perkins explains.

While it does not (yet) offer local regulation tracking, ProCanna does have searchable regulations and guidance documents for 13 states. It also offers regulation breakdowns and templated content in 10 markets. For example, if regulations dictate specific security system requirements, ProCanna will have a summary report highlighting what is needed.

“Anything that the licensee is responsible for doing, we create,” Perkins says, adding that the system offers pre-loaded checklists based on state regulations.

Cost of Compliance

Perkins highlights the short- and long-term benefits that licensees stand to gain from digitizing their compliance knowledge and processes. Cloud-based storage allows easy access to SOPs and other training materials to any staff member with an internet-connected device, reducing the odds of mistakes and increasing accountability. 

Over the long term, improving the onboarding of new team members through effective training reduces operational downtime–an especially important factor to consider in a high-turnover industry.

ProCanna’s baseline pricing is $295/month. There also are additional content fees based on the number of license types the company operates under, and user fees that apply to larger teams. “The user fee definitely scales up or down,” Perkins explains.

ProCanna covers all license types in every state in which it operates, from cultivation to delivery. The only plant-touching cannabis business the software does not cover is testing labs. The company’s software also covers the application portion of the cannabis business licensing experience, meaning ProCanna will break down into SOPs what companies need to do to apply for a given cannabis license. 

The company also has a social equity program, helping prospective licensees enter and navigate the complex cannabis market. “If you’re a social equity operator and you’re applying with your attorney, your accountant, whatever, you’re on ProCanna at no cost,” Perkins says.

Continuing Growth

Perkins acknowledges that while her team is mighty, it remains small: the company currently has five full-time employees and a floating roster of four to 10 part-time employees. “Our model has a significantly larger staff,” Perkins shares. “Our goal is to always stay nimble and lean and mean, but we would like to be a little bit more robust as far as the team size, because we feel like we could move faster, honestly.”

To do so, ProCanna (which has so far been funded through its founders and company sales), is looking to raise funding through an equity round in 2023. In addition to growing its staff, the funding would also help the company build out state regulations in more markets, as well as expand partnerships with other types of providers.

“We’re talking to a number of different types of providers, whether it’s training, packaging and labeling, iso, GMP compliance,” Perkins says. “All of us are separate right now, but I don’t think we always will be. … Once [cannabis] becomes federally legal, we’re gonna have the federal regs on top of the state regs, but we’re [also going to] be able to export, and European standards are much higher than ours, so we’re gonna have to raise the bar.”

With plenty of market consolidation still on the horizon, Perkins says there are a lot of growth areas that the young company is exploring “There are a lot of possibilities at this stage. We’ve only been in the market for a little over a year, just trying to make smart decisions in a period where capital is tight.”

Any partnership deals will be the result of successful technology and team culture fits, she notes. “It’s a marriage at that point, right? … But first and foremost, the technology has to work together well.”