The Chaos Era.
Cannabis is legalized in 24 states for recreational use. California leads the 2025 sales projection (8.5 billion to 9 billion), followed by Michigan, which has had a boom in recreational sales since 2019. Although the numbers look good, there will never be a playbook across states so wholesalers can find a north to expand business and generate more sales. The state fragmentation keeps businesses away from sharing good practices, generates obstacles to sales, and has different regulatory measures.
As legalization was taking place, manufacturers had the product to be done, but the technology to support processes, sales, and other specifications for the Cannabis industry was not there yet. We often talk to businesses that use QuickBooks, Shopify, and Xero, for example. Although they are good to support multiple companies out there, they were not made for the Cannabis world, which has totally different news from regular business, such as a fashion retailer or a restaurant, but for many years, that´s all that the Cannabis business had to get the job done, and that was ok.
Different State requirements, plus other business vertical technologies and dispensaries trying to figure out how and what to sell, led to well-known problems such as recalls, batch mistakes, double-selling inventory, wrong order cancellations, and deliveries being delayed. We know you have been there because that is just how things used to work until recently.
What’s Changing in 2026?
Operators are beginning to rethink their stack and workflow, not just reacting to it, but anticipating and being able to adapt almost in real time to different policies, buyers' requests. This is what will make a vertically integrated Cannabis business go from another seller to a true business partner.
We are seeing further integrations happening nowadays, a good example is Dutchie which has over 100 tech partners to integrate analytics, accounting, ERP systems, and also integrates with Shopify so they can boost their online presence with store inventory. According to BDSA Analytics, dispensaries that utilize sophisticated forecasting tools experience a 25% reduction in stockouts, ensuring customers can consistently find their preferred products, and B2B cannabis businesses are already doing the same and bringing dispensary tactics to their day-to-day operations.
Moving away from spreadsheets, many operators are realizing that you can no longer use pre-internet technology to keep up with today’s technologies and demand, software that is inventory aware and can connect to accounting systems, sales CRMs are a must if you want your business to succeed in 2026.
Emphasis on SKU-level and batch-level traceability is a hot topic, as it should be. Many recalls are made yearly, and it is better to be prepared to act as you get warned, instead of lacking information and struggling to get operations running again. These issues cause millions of losses to businesses that could be prevented if you use and have access to more granular data and pull it off whenever you can.
Lastly, closing existing gaps. Our customers tell us how it is hard to build an overall operational mechanism that will set the tone for all the different departments.
Wouldn’t it be nice if sales knew exactly how much production is going to make available, while the warehouse teams know exactly what is being sold to whom, and have all invoices compiled into one system that accounting has access to? That is why automation is key to making everything run smoothly and democratizing data across the company.
Coordination Wins: What’s Actually Working?
✅ Real-Time Inventory Visibility
Why it works: Prevents double selling, improves compliance, and gives sales real data.
✅ Tight Integrations (POS ↔ Fulfillment ↔ Compliance)
Why it works: Less manual data entry, fewer errors.
✅ Standard Operating Procedures with Tech-Backed Enforcement
Why it works: SOPs aren’t helpful if they live in PDFs, auto-flag expired lots, FIFO batching are just a few examples.
✅ Dashboard-Based Accountability
Why it works: Teams can spot problems earlier, run cleaner ops.
What’s Next: The Path to Truly Coordinated Cannabis Ops
Overall operations are becoming a competitive advantage, not just a cost center. In Cannabis, everyone is worried about the product itself, and sometimes due to good sales and nice relationships with other stakeholders, it ends up compensating for the lack of a good process in place, but this is not sustainable, and any unforeseen event is enough to put you last or lose several positions in the revenue race.
Connecting different areas, getting things to work for themselves, and giving people the ability to level up their analysis and working efforts. There are multiple business out there that eliminated repeated taks and are avoiding silly mistakes that costs time might hurt business, helping employees to fell better on their routine and empowered with data to take calmer decisions and thoughtful decisions, instead of guessing, over 90% of workers say automation increases their productivity, and companies investing in automation see an average 22% reduction in operating costs according to Harvard Business Review.
Helping sales go beyond quota. You would not believe how many businesses suffer before and after a sale is done. Most businesses have a multi-person spreadsheet that is updated based on multiple sales done by dozens of reps and customers themselves. We are talking about 50 people trying to buy the products you are selling, and your source of truth is never accurate enough to avoid future mistakes. Most businesses sell knowing they will face issues due to a lack of data and proper integration between their systems; companies that get left behind in this will certainly have a big disadvantage in 2026.
Takeaways
The cannabis market has its challenges, as do other segments. It is normal, but if you can understand the weakness of your industry and turn it into actionable insights, we can all do better and keep crashing numbers.
New technologies appear to support entrepreneurs' strategic ideas, and COOs and sales leaders need to keep up with buyers' demands and work to maximize the existing relationships while trying to create new ones.
Trust your current partners, our cannabis ecommerce software only exists now because 365 Cannabis was trying to fix some of these issues for their clients. If you want to understand which problems these were, besides the ones mentioned in this article, let’s talk!
