How Change Tracking Plays a Pivotal Role in Cannabis Operations

Something seems off in the pricing for the vape cartridges you sell to one of your major retail customers. Or perhaps the terms for another customer that buys large quantities of edibles have been extended to 60 days, and you’re not sure why.

Both cases illustrate the need for cannabis growers and producers to closely track changes to their data. Inconsistent records and surprise SKU deviations can cause confusion and lead to delays in fulfillment processes. When data mysteriously changes, it can also lead to internal finger-pointing, and you may lose customers.

Telling the Story of Your Data

The key to taking on the challenges of changing data is to enable tracking within your ERP system. Tracking gives you the ability to tell the “story” of your data as to how and why it changes. You can analyze the history of when each record fluctuates, how much the value is altered, and who has changed the value each time.

For example, when someone adjusts the credit terms for a customer, you can see the date on which it was changed, the person making the change, and by how much the credit line increased or decreased. You can also see if the terms now give the customer more or less time to pay invoices.

Another benefit of change tracking emerges when customers request a price reduction. You can see their entire pricing history to know if they are entitled—or if they just received a price change last quarter. Other data changes you can track include projected delivery dates, purchase order items, and bill of materials components.

Controlling Permissions and Approvals

As part of the change tracking function, you can assign permissions as to who in your company is allowed to make each type of change. And if approvals are needed, you can automate workflows to notify approvers to review changes before they go into effect.

Change tracking is also handy for general data maintenance, which helps with external compliance processes. The function stores historical changes so you can look back at the history of records. You can also prove to auditors that you have a documented process for handling data along with checks and balances to ensure data is handled appropriately. You essentially have an auditable record of all data activities to make sure your internal team follows governance policies.

Another situation in which you will appreciate change tracking is when users inadvertently edit data. The system helps managers investigate why such errors occur and may identify when additional training for the staff is needed for data handling.

Making Log Data Easy to Interpret

To solve the data tracking challenge, many cannabis growers and producers have turned to SilverLeaf, a Velosio company. Change Tracking is included in SilverLeaf, which is built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. The function extracts and transforms information from the Business Central change log, which is difficult for most users to interpret.

With SilverLeaf Change Tracking, there’s a button on every data view screen you can click on to quickly interpret the log data:

• Record Details—drill into line items to ensure no pricing, delivery information, and client data changes go unnoticed.
• History Records—see all instances of a record that’s been changed or batched.
• Change Button Search—open a screen to search for changes in a record in the selected table based on the primary key.
• Batch Update Records—select and update specified active records or update all active records.
• Archive Changes – periodically purge changes which are no longer relevant.

With all this information, you can leverage organized and filterable details to quickly identify relevant changes, update records, and identify the person who made each change.

Eliminating Delays to Customer Fulfillment Processes

SilverLeaf Change Tracking makes your data more accessible with a thorough history of who has made every change to your Dynamics 365 Business Central records and how the data has changed. When changes occur, you get the context you need to answer any questions about the changes. More importantly, you can better ensure your data conforms to compliance regulations while eliminating inadvertent changes that delay your customer fulfillment processes.

To learn more about how SilverLeaf helps your cannabis company track data changes, contact us today.