🧦 🧚🏻 🔳 Digitalization of drug turnover using the case of the Planet Health chain of pharmacies as an example 🤞🏽 🍜 ⏫

On April 3, 2020, the President of the Russian Federation signed a law allowing pharmacies to sell OTC drugs over the Internet. This law was submitted for consideration at the end of 2017. Since that time, pharmacies began to prepare for its adoption. Plan logistics, hire online marketers, develop online stores. To do everything in order to be fully armed at the time of signing the law.

A couple of years ago, the Planet Health chain of pharmacies well-known throughout the country began to prepare for the adoption of the law. Today, the company has more than 1,500 pharmacies in several cities and countries, thousands of product items and an online store that we developed for them.

At the time of the appeal, Planet Health had an internal system in which the entire assortment of goods was stored, information about their availability at each point, data on pharmacies, cards, transactions, discounts, users and orders. Designing the site initiated changes in the composition and data structure of the internal system, processing the catalog, creating new procedures and work algorithms.

During the cooperation with the Planet of Health, we thoroughly studied the problematic topics of the pharmacy business and can talk about the features of developing an online store for pharmacies, about ideas that are realized or are just going to be realized by large network players. About what will entail the signing of the law on the delivery of drugs and why in the near future you will still not be able to order the drug you need at home.

A lot of data

As in other industries, an online store for a pharmacy is a tool of a marketing strategy. The point of interaction with the client. In addition to being able to quickly adjust prices and aggressively promote exclusive products of its own production, the site provides an opportunity to collect a large amount of customer data. Analysis of customer behavior and the right conclusions contribute to customer retention and additional and repeat sales. We are all looking for where it is cheaper. If in one pharmacy the necessary medicine costs 100 rubles, in another - 80, and in the third - 60, then, of course, we will buy in the latter. However, a properly formed loyalty system will sell us the drug for 100 rubles. And we will be grateful to her for this. Because the system knows that with this drug we usually buy another one. One for which the system will offer a good discount.

Another example. If within several months you buy goods for a newborn, then most likely you can be congratulated on the birth of a child. With a high degree of probability, after a couple of years, after the age of the child, your consumer basket will also change. Pharmacies know this and begin to promptly offer you diapers for a couple of larger sizes.

The introduction of various tools based on BigData helps pharmacies build the right relationships with their customers, make personalized advertising and offer the goods that the customer really needs at the box office or online store.

Unfortunately, most pharmacies today do not have such detailed work in terms of forecasts, risks and model building.

Search

Medicines are a special item. On the site, he is rarely chosen according to characteristics. More often you have to look for a drug prescribed by a doctor or seen in an advertisement. Best of all, if the product can be searched by name, manufacturer or active substance. Tips and a smart search that understands that you are looking for “Paracetamol” and not “parotsitomall” entered in the search engine save the customer’s time and bring him closer to the purchase.

Even better is a symptom search. The user writes a runny nose and sees all the drugs that are suitable for its treatment. Probably at the beginning of the drop-down list you will see the most priority and marginal drugs for the company. This is how Internet marketing works.

Law and delivery

Trading in drugs over the Internet was carried out before the adoption of the law. True, it existed with certain restrictions: the purchased goods could be picked up only from the points of delivery. This imposed certain restrictions and requirements on sellers. They should have a pharmacy warehouse, points of sale and points of delivery. And the delivery of drugs to the buyer was not allowed at all.

Today, drug delivery is permitted. True, in accordance with the signed law, the rules for this delivery are established by the Government of the Russian Federation. But it has not yet approved any rules.

Well, in general, there is a chance that pharmacies will not be able to quickly arrange delivery. At the start, it will be possible to do this only to pharmacies that have one large automated warehouse, from where logistics normally occur throughout the network. It will be harder for pharmacies in which each point is essentially a warehouse. Pharmacies are not large appliance stores. Their products are often bought with a large list. If the necessary medicines are scattered in several pharmacies, then it is not profitable for each client to transfer from one pharmacy to another. This is additional logistics, which still needs to be worked out. To tell the client "we will bring your antipyretic the day after tomorrow" is also not an option. It’s better then not to do delivery at all.

No matter how pharmacies are preparing from 2017 to adopt the law on the delivery of drugs, most of them met him unprepared

The state is well aware that the business is not ready. Therefore, it supplemented the law with one more clause allowing the same Government to make decisions on the introduction of temporary rules for the delivery of drugs in case of a threat of the spread of dangerous diseases. In this case, delivery of even prescription drugs is allowed. When there is no threat, then remotely selling them will still be prohibited.

"Recipes"

Now at the state level the issue of the formation and introduction of electronic recipes is being considered. In accordance with it, an electronic prescription, signed like any other electronic document, will be prescribed by a doctor and fall into a single prescription database. The state will provide access to the database to several pharmacy chains. When ordering a prescription drug on the pharmacy website, the buyer will need to provide the electronic prescription number and certain identifying information. Perhaps authorization through ESIA will be added to the pharmacy website. After entering the electronic recipe number, the site turns to the database, compares the data received from the user with the data in the recipe. Does it all fit together? The user pays for the goods and is waiting for delivery. Everything sounds simple, but the scheme requires the development of a large system and large-scale informatization of medical institutions.

Soft

Not only the Government and pharmacies, but also companies that produce specialized pharmacy software should be ready for changes. Ready-made solutions of such companies cover many needs: electronic warehouses in the form of databases, order accounting systems, cash registers, real-time availability and balance control, modules for the work of marketers, prescription drug accounting systems, etc. By the way, it should be noted that all this should also be integrated not only offline, but also in the online store.

As a rule, there are few such companies. And most often these are monopolists who have captured several regions. Ready-made solutions are good. But you need to understand that large monopolists are often a difficult and slow development of new functionality. Pharmacies that use this kind of software will have to wait until the krupnyaki develop new modules that support the same delivery.

GIS engine

Large network pharmacies have recently been increasingly thinking about developing a GIS engine - a modeling system that analyzes certain parameters and reports at which point in the city it is economically more profitable to open a pharmacy. Conclusions are made on the basis of fairly understandable parameters: district, population, number of pharmacies nearby, what kind of people are wealthy and what is their average age. A GIS engine is a kind of model that is superimposed on a map and shows areas that are worth paying attention to.

Whether this need remains after the removal of quarantine in the country is debatable. Most likely, they will return to this question, but later.

Contract

The current situation in the world is an inhibitor for some processes and a catalyst for others. For healthcare and related business - rather, the second. The need for IT solutions in this area over the past few weeks has grown many times. The internal teams of pharmacies with such a volume of tasks will definitely not cope. Those who want and know how to work with contractors will win.

Large monopolists of pharmacy software will be able to redistribute their resources and allocate specialists to close new needs. But in this case, they will have to make up for the support and development of the current functionality. The situation is the same: those who want and know how to work with contractors will benefit.

Digitalization of drug turnover using the case of the Planet Health chain of pharmacies as an example