The cannabis market is extremely competitive and evolving rapidly forcing business owners to adjust operations, and update policies to comply with changing regulations. With the cannabis industry growing quickly cannabis technology solutions have become a driving force for industry owners. Rapid innovations with hardware, software, farming equipment, and more have allowed cannabis businesses to scale faster, produce higher quality products, and stay competitive, to keep their doors open. Harry Brelsford of The Cannatech Group sits down with Victor Wukovit CEO and Founder of Bayou Technologies, LLC to discuss the rapid technology changes in the industry.
Video Transcription
Harry Brelsford
A welcome back to the CannaTech Podcast. I’m with Victor Wukovits of it’s out of Louisiana Bayou Technologies. How you doing today?
Victor Wukovits
Doing great this morning. Thank you for having me on. It’s been a marvelous adventure thus far in the cannabis technology space for us in Louisiana. And it’s only looking to be more interesting in the months ahead. So we’re all excited here in Louisiana.
Harry Brelsford
Yeah,
Victor Wukovits
cannabis, and technology to help us be more efficient.
Harry Brelsford
So tell me, first of all, a little bit about your background. Are you a career, you know, MSP? You know, when do other verticals and all that?
Victor Wukovits
Yeah, we are in our market. We are very small. I’m in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and its population of about 100,000 120, including outlying areas, so very small pop. So there are other MSPs there. But we started the MSP model, probably about four to five years ago, out of brakefix. We are a little behind technology where we are in our pond. And so with that it’s both an advantage and a disadvantage in a lot of ways. But it’s an advantage for us from the technology space, because it gives us more time to adopt things that are coming full force in the larger markets. But it’s a disadvantage in that we have to convince people about these newfangled technologies well ahead of when they’re ready to take them on. So cybersecurity has been one of those things where Hey, guys, you know, we’ve been telling you to do this for about three years now. And now that your insurance companies are telling you, Hey, have you doing this? So we’re getting the callbacks now on these things we’ve been preaching for three to five years. So no, yes MSP for about three to four break fix before that. My actual experience in it comes geez, I had an apple two plus back in 81. So I’ve been hacking away on computers myself since then. And just mostly self taught, I did go to school for more organization communications with a minor computer science. And it just taught me how to effectively communicate and sell actually. So my role at the company we are small, we’re about on the IT side, we’re about five strong in house, I’ve got a couple helping remotely. And then but we have a marketing on so we do marketing for other companies, cannabis included. And so with that, we have about five people in house for that I sit on both sides of the fence because I do it all. In addition to it back in the day, my first real big boy job was graphics design, which quickly transitioned into courtroom litigation graphics, and then in do 3d animation, and then the document management and computer forensics. So I’ve gone all over the place in the search of a buck. And now here I am into 2022, we’ve got an MSP, we also got an ad agency, we’re doing both full speed, and cannabis is in both sectors of it. So it’s been very, very Yeah, because to have our foot in both doors.
Harry Brelsford
Well, two shout outs. One is our friends over at PAX8, I see your baseball cap. So quick shout out to friends back in Denver. And then the other is you’re in and I’m not trying to be braggadocious, although I’m in Texas, and that does go with the territory. But you remind me of me in this sense, I was told early on in my technology career that if I could be half business and half tech, technical, I do well, if I can bridge those two, and that’s what I’m hearing from you. And it’s been a good ride, you know, I’m not necessarily the best person with Azure, right, I can’t go as deep as a lot of my friends. On the other hand, I can have a business conversation, if that makes sense.
Victor Wukovits
And that’s kind of what happens is, I mean, you start off with your hands dirty, you’re doing it all you’re you’re you’re in the machine working every part of it. And as you mature, both as a person and a business person, you understand that those are just all roles that have to be filled by other people, you can’t do it all, you’re finite. And so you have to find good pieces to add to your machine to keep it running at the level you’re accustomed to. Because, hey, it takes a village to make things work, you know, so add, that’s what I’m constantly refining. Now, instead of working on, hey, I need to learn the new technology for as your Active Directory. I know there’s a new technology that is going to improve things this way. I don’t need to get my hands dirty. I just need to know there’s this new tool that I can use in my tool bag to help address all of our customers and their needs. So that’s kind of where you have to pivot your thinking instead of hey, I need to learn this, how to do this, Hey, I’m aware of this and I know that I need to task somebody or subcontract that skill to that team that is the best at that. And that’s kind of how businesses pivoted like website hosting. It used to be in the 90s Hey, I’ve got a server in my closet and yeah, it’s got a battery backups to now. Oh, I post servers with them. Because they’ve got a team of people that do nothing but keep the server’s going. And I can restaurant knowing I’m paying and I’m still making margin but Making margin on other people’s labor. So yeah, that’s been the kind of shift in mentality from break fix to MSP. And that whole model of thinking, for me. All right, well,
Harry Brelsford
hey, let’s close on. Give me a use case. What are what are your challenges in the cannabis industry? And in Louisiana right now, you said you do a little research?
Victor Wukovits
Yes. Right now we are looking for a new point of sale system, basically, for the entire state. When the state’s program started about two, two and a half years ago, the state required that mean, you had to be a pharmacist, a licensed pharmacist, registered with this entity for the application process. So all of these people came from the pharmacy pharmacy sector. Oh, no kidding. Interesting. Yes. And so they have they were accustomed to other platforms that didn’t necessarily fit the cannabis model at that time. Like, say, for example, leaf logics, I’m aware of them, because two and a half years ago, we looked at them. And one of the things it just didn’t fit, because it was like flowers or scales, you could integrate and stuff and like, we don’t even have flower. Well, fast forward to January 1, guess what’s now available in the state flower, and guess what’s a huge bottleneck and getting the flower actually out the door, the process because their system isn’t ready for flowers. So if I can find the system, that will be the point of sale to replace what they’re using. Now, that will also then integrate with the online cart that all of them have adopted, which is iHeart Jane, and there’s a middleware, Alpine IQ, we’re also looking at ramping up for the marketing arm. And we just need to make a process for the pharmacy, a pharmacy that will be much more streamlined than what they’re doing now, because it is so inefficient. And they all know it too. Once we’ve solved that problem, we basically reprint times nine, and we’ve got the state of Louisiana all on the same more efficient process for getting these recommendations fulfilled. And so right now their current process is say, they have the system and this system is tied into the pharmacy, the state pharmacy system to check you know, the patients and all that. So that is a custom integration. They’re using metric I believe, for a lot of it. But there’s still that verification thing, the computer RX not to throw anybody under the bus. But that is the vendor that they’re currently using for this prescription software has been slow moving, if not at all on developing the custom API to allow iHeart Jane to communicate with it. Because right now, if the border comes in from my heart, Jane, there’s no way to reference the system to check if there have patient because you have to be a patient in the program in order to order now. So what they’re doing is letting anybody order you know, Tei, or you promise your patient, once that order comes in, they then have to manually a verify that that’s a patient in the program, then B enter that order into the prescription program. It’s a nightmare. So that’s my challenge right now is to find a POS vendor that is going to a integrate and they’re all happy to try to integrate as much as possible. But the other challenge is to get the contact for the State program. Because I guarantee that’s nothing that’s got a just an easy API for us and start working with them on integration with whatever vendor it’s going to be. But we’ve got to make sure that’s the check that’s happening automatically because that is laborious as hell, right? Yep.
Harry Brelsford
All right. Hey, we’re looking forward to seeing you at the Canada Tech Expo third week of June in Fort Lauderdale. It’s gonna be lively. Hopefully you’ll leave richer and more knowledgeable than your Rob. That’s the goal.
Victor Wukovits
I hope so too. I’m looking forward to it. Fort Lauderdale. I’ve never been so I’m excited and took a look at the surrounding areas. And so I’m looking very much though to this conference because it’ll be my first exposure to cannabis technology was such a focus.
Harry Brelsford
All right, Victor. Happy Trails.
Victor Wukovits
Alright, have a great one. Enjoy your day. Take care. Bye bye.
