Quantum Leaf is a startup that had a vision of bringing more than just compliance tracking to its new Cannabis seed-to-sales app. They wanted to enable growers to know the cost per plant, the margin per strain, and which batch production methods were yielding the best results for each Cannabis strain. All of this data and tech needed to be accessible in an easy to use app that both management and workers could access everywhere.

To bring this vision to market, Quantum Leaf chose Intelifaz as it’s software development partner. The Intelifaz team was responsible for app development and was charged with designing an app UX / UI that would deliver an industry-leading digital experience. Intelifaz stood up a dedicated remote agile development team that became an integral part of Quantum Leaf’s internal team.

Managing the growth of living organisms, government compliance requirements, and tracking all the variables in growing conditions and determining what set of variables will yield the best result with each strain generates exponentially more data then a factory stamping out inanimate widgets.

Cannabis growers face challenges unique to the Cannabis industry in the USA. The differences between state and federal law and different regulatory requirements in each state have created challenges in everything from banking to interstate commerce unknown in other agricultural sectors.

These data volumes, business complexities, and rapidly changing patchwork regulatory environment make the Cannabis grower the perfect candidate for Industry 4.0 technology solutions. Other horticulture sectors are already using smart container farming systems using emerging technologies like sensors, IoT device control (including dosing, irrigation, lighting system, ventilation, spraying controls), remote management, data analytics, and machine learning.

These technology trends, unique data management, and regulatory requirements informed the Quantum Leaf solution’s development.

UX and UI

In the initial phase of the development process, Intelifaz and Quantum Leaf spent time in  Cannabis Growing facilities observing the entire clone and seed to harvest process. We met with workers and management to better understand their needs and pain points. We then completed several iterations of design reviews with growers to finalize the MVP feature set and UX/UI. In order to accelerate the initial design process, everything was done on-site at the growers. Design changes were made overnight and reviewed the following day with users.

The intuitive user experience provided by Intelifaz has been a critical factor in attracting and securing new customers. Based on the initial response and adoption, Quantum Leaf hopes to capture a significant portion of the medium to large cannabis growers. They also have been approached by industry-leading sensor and irrigation companies to integrate their products with the Quantum Leaf IoT capable platform.

Technology for Cannabis Seed-to-Sale Software

Intelifaz built out a scalable cloud and application technology platform for the Quantum Leaf app:

Technical architecture:

  • Angular 4
  • Mongo DB
  • Node JS - NGINX
  • Acumatica ERP integration
  • State Compliance Services integration

The app provides multiple levels of control, tracking, and visualization of all the activities and resources in the seed-to-sale process. The Acumatica cloud-based ERP integration adds accounting, inventory control, CRM, and manufacturing ERP.

Quantum Leaf is a future-proofed solution responsive to market needs: new features and functionality can be built in parallel. The system is integrated into the Nevada, California, and Washington state compliance systems and able to add more US states and countries as they legalize cannabis agriculture. Granular detail and ease of use with a low ramp-up time for new users

Quantum Leaf tracks actual cost per plant, material, labor, and overhead so growers know what true margins are per strain. The user can go into the strain detail screen and all the batches in the system per strain, the software will recognize the highest yielding batch and begin recommending the best practice for future batches. It will keep track of exactly what nutrients you used, what humidity, temperature, etc., per growing phase so that growers can replicate the highest yield batches. As technology advances and new nutrients and devices come online the grower can get accurate metrics on the effect of any changes on each strain.

Quantum Leaf is also a full-blown management system. The master grower can go into the system and create default grow operation plans. Depending on how granular they would like to get, they can create plans per strain or per type of strain. The grower can create a default plan from all the tasks he defines for a batch. When a new batch is created, the appropriate default plan is attached to that batch. The system will then auto-generate all the tasks for that batch.

In the calendar view, the master grower can track everything that is going on in his grow. The grower can assign workers to tasks, and move tasks around to accommodate an upcoming harvest to free up labor. Once a Lot has passed QA, Quantum Leaf will transfer the costed inventory lot to Acumatica. Salespeople on the road using the CRM option can see what is currently available in Inventory and what is estimated to be available in x amount of days based on what is in production using historical plant yield/grow cycle data.

With the design and development support of Intelifaz, Quantum Leaf went to market with a scalable Industry 4.0 agricultural app focused on Cannabis production that provides all the advantages of current and emerging industrial IoT and cloud technologies and is becoming an indispensable tool for Quantum Leaf’s growing client list.