Transpharmation Magazine / Issue 1

Transpharmation Magazine / Issue 1

MARCH 2015

WELCOME TO OUR INAUGURAL FIRST EDITION Step up and play a bigger game in 2015!

IT’S NOT ABOUT THE ROBOT, IT’S ABOUT THE BUSINESS GROW YOUR DAA BUSINESS BY 300% IN ONLY 1 SQUARE METRE!

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transpharmationmagazine.com.au

TESTIMONIALS “Robert is highly professional and instinctively smart...

He gets to the point and finds a way to ensure his community gain valuable insights to act on.:

Adam Posner - Directivity

“Thank you for your endeavours in bringing Transpharmation to the Pharmacy Industry, I think it’s a wonderful innovation!”

Leon Thomas - Thomas & Chong Group “Rob is doing a great job in delivering a clear message to pharmacy owners that technology is not the enemy, and that the recipe for a succesful pharmacy business is having a clear vision, well trained staff and product knowledge”

George Alam - Chemist POS Direct “I think it (The Transpharmation Show) is a great forum to encourage pharmacy owners to reflect on what they’re currently doing and to consider taking their next step in developing their retail strategy”

“Ever wondered how new software or technology can be used to drive your pharmacy business?

Follow Robert Sztar’s Transpharmation Series and you will surely be enlightened!”

Ashley Falting - Health Enterprises

Andrew Hall - Minfos

“Transpharmation is a simple way for pharmacy owners to understand how technology can help their business.”

Craig Simmonds - iHealth

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CONTENTS

Tra n s p h a r m a t i o n Ma g a z i n e / Is s u e 1

ABOUT TRANSPHARMATION

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FROM THE EDITOR

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WHAT IS THE PHARMACY FREEDOM INDEX?

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HOW CAN I IMPROVE MY OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY?

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AUSTRALIA’S FIRST PHARMACY & TECHNOLOGY PUBLICATION www.transpharmationmagazine.com.au

My Money My Pharmacy

CONTACT

My Team

HOW CAN I CREATE A PATIENT CENTRIC BUSINESS MODEL?

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My Patients Innovation

Editor: Robert Sztar rsztar@pharmactive.com.au Advertising Enquiries: magazine@pharmactive.com.au The Transpharmation Magazine is published 4 times

My Partners

each year by Pharmactive Pty Ltd © 2015 Pharmactive Pty Ltd. All Transpharmation Magazine material is copyright. Reproduction in whole or in part is not per-

HOW CAN I LEVERAGE SMART TECHNOLOGY IN MY BUSINESS?

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mitted without the written permission of the publisher.

IT Systerms Mobility

Pharmactive Pty Ltd

Automation

Founder & Chief Transpharmation Officer: Robert Sztar

TRANSPHARMATION SHOW TRANSPHARMATION BOOK

43 44

23 Milton Parade, Malvern VIC 3144 1300 798 995 www.pharmactive.com.au ACN: 107 301 262

Transpharmation Magazine / Issue 1

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ABOUT TRANSPHARMATION What is ‘Transpharmation’?

It is a multimedia platform designed to provide pharmacy owners like you with easy to follow and accessible educational resources to help you understand the functions and applications of the latest technology. It is the only platform of its kind built by a pharmacist for pharmacists.

Transpharmation demystifies the evolving landscape of technology that will help you increase profits, design remarkable patient experiences, and scale your business to its infinite potential.

We help you discover and focus on your biggest opportunities in 9 critical areas that are pivotal to a sustainable and thriving 21st century pharmacy: Your Money, Your Pharmacy Operations, Your Team, Your Patients, Your Partners, Innovation, IT Systems, Mobility, and Automation.

We constantly review and optimise our best practices to ensure that you feel confident that you have the tools to help you re-connect with your passion for primary healthcare and design your lifestyle both in and out of the pharmacy.

WHAT TO EXPECT ON YOUR JOURNEY OF TRANSPHARMATION Simply click on the image to watch instantly

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FROM THE EDITOR “

I AM THRILLED TO SHARE THIS WITH EVERYONE INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE PHARMACY INDUSTRY

I am passionate about helping pharmacy owners transform their business through streamlined operations that combine today’s technology with traditional expertise and great customer service.

My company, Pharmactive, has invested

for success in the pharmacy industry

response to my first-hand experience

time and money into researching,

today:

after 16 years in the pharmacy industry –

customising, and implementing

• Successful operational efficiency

a necessary step to ensure all pharmacy

• Patient-centric focus

businesses can survive and thrive in

the business growth of community

• Smart use of technology

these tough times of falling revenues and

pharmacies.

When you implement these into your

It is delivered via a unique 4-step

business, you will benefit from reduced

I am thrilled to share this with everyone

stress, financial freedom and the peace

inside and outside the pharmacy industry

pharmacists regain control of their

of mind of a realistic exit strategy.

– via my book, regular podcasts, and

pharmacy destiny – confident in the

As a second-generation pharmacist, I

now the ‘Transpharmation’ Magazine – to

knowledge that, with access to purpose-

understand the issues and challenges

transform the way all pharmacists deliver

designed technology solutions unique

pharmacy owners face. By leveraging

pharmaceutical care and improve their

to their individual needs as pharmacy

smart technology that delivers genuine

owners, they have the tools to operate

solutions, I can help pharmacies in

patient relationships.

a thriving business in today’s changing

Australia – and internationally – engage

market.

with their customers easily and efficiently

I believe there are three key ingredients

I founded Pharmactive as a pro-active

hundreds of pieces of innovative, easy-to-use technology to benefit

sequence and ensures Australian

increasing costs.

Here’s to creating your ‘Pharmacy Freedom’ together!

CHECK OUT MY VIDEO BUSINESS CARD Simply click on the image and be directed to the video URL

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THE PHARMACY FREEDOM INDEX The Pharmacy Freedom Index (PFI) rates the potential of your pharmacy against 9 critical success factors

IF YOU OWN A PHARMACY TAKE THE TEST! Rate your success as a pharmacy discover you score - Its free Pharmacies have changed dramatically in the last 15 years. You can still be profitable and deliver the best patient outcomes, but the rules have changed forever.

The Pharmacy Freedom Index (PFI) rates you potential for success against nine critical success factors. The test is free, takes about 7 minutes, and you’ll instantly receive a summary report based on your responses.

This report covers a snapshot of nine critical success factors, and shows you what you could do better to improve your business’s operations, and profitability of your pharmacy today.

Take the Test. It’s Free.

Instant Report.

OPERATIONAL EFFICIENY Your Money, Your Pharmacy, Your Team

PATIENT CENTRIC BUSINESS MODEL Your Money, Your Pharmacy, Your Team

SMART USE OF TECHNOLOGY IT Systems, Mobility, Automation

TAKE THE TEST!

WHY YOU SHOULD TAKE THE PHARMACY FREEDOM INDEX? Simply click on the image to watch instantly.

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HOW CAN I IMPROVE MY OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY?

MY MONEY

Create Cash Flow

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How can I improve my Operational Efficiency? My Money

4 SURPRISING THINGS YOUR ACCOUNTANT CAN DO FOR YOU Has there ever been a more tumultuous period of change for pharmacists than the one we’re hurtling through right now? In the face of climbing costs and falling revenues, who can you trust for solid financial advice? Peter Saccasan, Director of Pharmacy Services at RSM Bird Cameron suggests you should see a whole lot more of your accountant.

SHINE A LIGHT ON YOUR DATA

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A few years ago when GST requirements pushed pharmacy owners into crunching their numbers monthly, many business owners saw it as an extra drain on their time. But in fact, frequently reviewing the data coming out of your business is the first rule of management best practice. It’s not that pharmacy owners are shy of data. In fact most of my clients are up to their ears in POS stats, trying to understand customer traffic, average spend, upsells, cross-sells, conversion rates, staff costs and so on. The problem is that, in isolation, POS makes you data-rich but knowledge-poor; it only gives you half the picture.

The other half comes from your Profit and Loss, and your balance sheet. For a more illuminating perspective on the health of your business you should know – at any given point – what you own, what you owe, what’s the value of what you own and therefore what is the value of your business? If you only sit down with your accountant once a year to look over the balance sheet, you’re not running your business, your just catching up with it. Keep a weather eye on Profit and Loss, and you will always know your true financial position.

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TUNE IN TO THE SHOW

LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW with Peter Saccasan Simply click on the icon above

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Do This: Have weekly POS and P&L reviews with your accountant; get up-to-date, be agile and adaptable, deal with problems and opportunities as they arise. Use your accountant’s training and experience to turn your retail data into strategic business insights.

Don’t Do This: Don’t expect every accountant to be good enough. Not all accountants will be ready to step out of the ‘once a year balance the books’ role and into the role of strategic adviser and collaborator. If yours can’t, get yourself a new one.

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MEET YOU IN THE CLOUD

Once upon a time, accountants did all their numbernoodling with desktop packages like MYOB or QuickBooks. These days that’s all moved into Cloudbased accounting platforms shared and accessed via the web. Before, you would have four separate stages: you capture your data, send the file to your accountant, they review it then they give you their advice. Now, Cloud technology allows us to have a seamless and automated cycle of data capture-send-review. You can collaborate remotely with your accountant or a whole team of financial advisers, simultaneously viewing your latest data on a Cloud-based dashboard.

So you could be having shorter more frequent (daily or weekly) interactions with your accountant. You could be chatting about changes that are happening on a weekly basis as opposed to a quarterly or half yearly basis.

This gives you a huge opportunity to understand the numbers in your business with greater clarity than ever before by learning which levers influence which data streams. Make small, informed calibrations throughout the year rather than lurching dramatic changes once in a blue moon. Access to data allows you to be nimble.

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KEEP AN EYE ON YOUR KPIS

What’s the point of having an accountant or bookkeeper? Financial administration? Compliance?

So you don’t have to do it all yourself? No. The real point in using the services of an accountant (or at least a good one) is so you can answer that age-old question “Am I okay? How is the business doing right now?” You don’t need a full year-end profit and loss statement or balance sheet to answer this question at a reasonably low level. An accountant can help you throughout the year to zero in on a few key metrics, those numbers that are the most important indicators of your business’ health.

My top three daily KPI diet recommendations for pharmacies are: 1) Customer numbers, 2) Gross Profit per customer and 3) Interest cover. The first two are obvious. If your customer numbers aren’t improving you could be doing everything wrong. If your customer numbers are dropping but your gross profit is going up, it may be that you’re servicing fewer customers but they are more valuable, or you are delivering better experiences. Interest cover is a metric banks use to measure your Profit:Interest ratio.

Essentially your profit should be at least twice the size of your interest bill. I prefer to see three to four times.

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Do This: Understand how Cloud technology could

Do This: Check your KPIs every day and go

work for you. Look at your current data flows and make sure they are tidy; inefficient processes in the Cloud are still inefficient processes. Then decide which workflows you want to transfer to the Cloud.

through them with your accountant every week or so. Run them against other metrics regularly and look for relationships between different parts of your business.

Don’t Do This: Don’t neglect to tie all your technology

Don’t Do This: Don’t use sloppy data. There’s

investments into a desired strategic advantage e.g. “I’m installing this so I can free up my time and spend longer helping my customers. I’m investing in this so I can improve my revenue per customer.”

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IMPROVE YOUR HEALTH

Really? Yes. Apart from the clear business benefits of a closer, more collaborative and Cloud-based relationship with your accountant, you also stand to gain a huge sense of calm and confidence. For small business owners, stress lies in the unknown: “Will we make payroll this month? When will I be able to free up some time and get back to helping patients? What will profit levels be in six months? Am I in a position to invest in new technology?” Data – or specifically the insight it brings – removes the unknown. It allows you to understand, question, try things out, predict, prepare, plan and reduce uncertainty. Use time spent with your accountant to build your own expertise and eventually you’ll feel empowered to take bolder and bolder steps.

only one thing worse than no data: inaccurate data. Eliminate any errors that might exist in your collection and collation processes.

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Do This: Listen carefully to the way your accountant talks about your business. Most accountants see educating their clients as a core part of their role in helping a business grow. Try to absorb their expertise and build a stronger grasp of your own finances.

Don’t Do This: Don’t be afraid to make changes in order to grow. Let your data decide: track the financial impact to quickly see if something’s working or not.

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The Pharmacy Freedom Index (PFI) rates the success potential of your pharmacy against 9 critical success factors

OPERATIONAL EFFICIENY Your Money, Your Pharmacy, Your Team

HOW DOES YOUR PHARMACY RATE FOR ‘MY MONEY’?

Discover your score in just 7 minutes. Instant Report.

TAKE THE TEST!

This section assesses your pharmacies level of participation in business planning, analysis, KPI setting & benchmarking, business strategy, business process management, and adaptability. In other words, do you know your current financial position and are you able to use this knowledge to proactively influence your everyday business processes and management?

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PATIENT CENTRIC BUSINESS MODEL Your Money, Your Pharmacy, Your Team

SMART USE OF TECHNOLOGY IT Systems, Mobility, Automation

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MY PHARMACY

HOW CAN I IMPROVE MY OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY? Building Systems

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How can I improve my Operational Efficiency? My Pharmacy

PHARMACY AUTOMATION: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE There’s nothing new about patient-centricity.

In fact if you zipped back a few generations, it’s probably the one thing our predecessors would recognise in modern pharmacies: our desire to listen to and advise our customers.

WHAT DID PHARMACY TECHNOLOGY LOOK LIKE WHEN YOU ENTERED THE PROFESSION? P

Peter: The history of pharmacy embracing technology in Australia is a long and a very successful one. We’ve actually been among the quickest professions to realise the benefits of automation.

The challenge for today’s clinicians is how to afford valuable time with patients while running a smart, sustainable, successful business. We sat down with senior pharmacist and dispensary design veteran Peter Feros and his business partner, automation evangelist Setrig Yozghatlian from Cincotta Chemist Blacktown to talk about what’s changed, what’s the same and what opportunities technology offers today.

SO IN TERMS OF AUTOMATION, WHERE IS THE BEST STARTING POINT? P

Peter: Well it takes about 38 seconds to key in

S

Setrig: Yes the relief, the efficiency and productivity

I started out in the mid-70s and technology wasn’t really on the horizon at all. Then a survey by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Remuneration Tribunal in the 80s decided that computerisation would improve productivity and bang, by 1992, every pharmacy in Australia had a PC. That’s the biggest step change I can remember and, it’s true, we saw strong productivity gains of 3% each year – the national average was only 1%.

Over the past 20 years or so, we’ve seen challenge after challenge piling up on pharmacy owners and we’ve lost our accelerator a little. But as an industry, we’re in a great position to grab opportunities now.

S

Setrig:

I went through university in the early 2000s and we worked with all the computerised labelling the systems and databases.

The emphasis in our training was on counselling and patient-interaction. So I expected to walk into a job and spend a lot of time with patients. But as soon as I started, reality hit me. Even in a fully computerised pharmacy, unless you had the luxury of ten pharmacy assistants and dispense techs you were still pretty much stuck behind the computer.

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prescription data so I would say a priority for any size business is electronic prescriptions. After that it depends upon the size of the pharmacy. When volumes are manageable we just kick off with something like Rhombic, a sloping drawer system with back filling; this gives you automatic date rotation of stock and reduces stock selection times from eight to ten seconds to two or three seconds. When prescription volumes are higher or when you start to get staff congestion – like in our Main Street pharmacy in Blacktown – we put in a robot, the RoboPharma. It’s a channel system, like a vending machine where you press the button, and the coke drops down, the RoboPharma has channels, and it delivers three products a second, so it’s very, very quick. That’s removed a lot of the congestion and product selection time.

boost was overnight. We managed a 100-150% increase in prescription volume without too much stress, without too much craziness in the workflows. No patient ever wants to feel rushed, or compressed in the time that they spend with you in their pharmacy. Good workflows bring calm into your environment: no one’s pushing and shoving, conversations are happening in their own time.

A large part of efficiency is down to technology but it really starts with workf low efficiency.

WHERE HAVE YOU SEEN GREATEST EFFICIENCY GAINS COME FROM? P

S

WHAT OTHER BENEFITS OF AUTOMATION ARE YOU SEEING? P

Peter: Senior pharmacists like me will remember having to know all the codes for prescriptions; you would have to know the code of Aldomet or Nebutel for example. And because you would code prescriptions in chronological order, it was impossible to get a patient medication profile because you’d have to go through 10 prescription books to find out what they’re taking. Computerisation allowed us to centralise patient data and that has transformed the quality of pharmaceutical care we are able to give.

P

Peter: One thing you have to get rid if you still have

S

Setrig:

it – is that step or raised level in your pharmacy. Just get rid of it. I think those steps represent such a big, oldfashioned barrier to appearing more available and more visible. Looking down on customers is not a good way to establish empathy and build relationships. Besides, quite often the storeroom is behind the dispensary and you have to go up and down the step to get stock in and out. You can’t even use a trolley so people are carrying things up and down and you’ve got OH&S risks. It’s one of those 1 per-centers: people think “Oh, how big a difference is that going to make?” but a huge amount of time accumulates.

Absolutely. Simple efficiencies like this are the best strategy for combating PBS reform. We’re all getting paid less per prescription, so we need to start thinking about how to compress our workflow and also the cost of that workflow, as well. Seemingly simple things like the 80:20 rule – put your high volume stock closest to you in dispensing, and your low volume stock further away to optimise your selection time. Over the months or years, you can build up to very high levels of automation, which can include conveyors for baskets and products; it can grow and scale with you.

it’s allowing us to go and actually talk to patients a lot more. And just having the smile there, the confidence of being able to talk to the pharmacist and asking the extra few questions that they might not been able to ask when you were stuck behind pulling your hair out trying to get all these prescriptions out. They can have the chat like in the good-old days when they used to come and have a nice, old chat with the pharmacist. We’re trying to get back to that while trying to do this many prescriptions at the same time. We have a lot more customers who were quite happy and commenting that it’s nice to be able to have a bit of a longer chat and discuss a few other things as well.

And in terms of sales, now I’m out there having more discussions, I can suggest various products that the customer may not have thought of. That may lead to a sale there and then or the next time they come in. It’s a cumulative thing; you instil the confidence in patients that they are being listened to, and by doing that, we can provide them solutions which turn into sales.

Setrig:

A large part of efficiency is down to technology but it really starts with workflow efficiency. You can accumulate a lot of efficiencies without any technology.

To get a process right you don’t have to spend a single dollar; you just have to get a bit smarter and rearrange your dispensary and your workflow. Automation can come at the end of it all and that will make it more efficient as you grow. For example in one of our pharmacies we’re only doing about 140 scripts a day, and that doesn’t need a robot at this point, but we can make it so much more efficient just by giving the prescriptions straight to the technician. That reduces the process from two steps to one and saves us significant time.

Peter: With the decrease in actual dispensing time,

S

Setrig:

I think automation has also helped us shift the battleground away from price competition and run our pharmacies the way we want to. In Blacktown, we have two discounters – Chemist Warehouse and Oze Pharmacy – both within 75 to 100 metres of us. But both our prescription business and our medicine business still continue to grow. And that’s directly attributable to the efficiencies we’ve made. They allow our pharmacists more time to talk to patients and with that level of service you don’t need to wave dollars in front of patients. more efficient just by giving the prescriptions straight to the technician. That reduces the process from two steps to one and saves us significant time.

TUNE IN TO THE SHOW

LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW with Peter Feros & Setrig Yozghatlian Simply click on the icon above

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DISCOVER YOUR SCORE IN JUST 7 MINUTES. INSTANT REPORT. CLICK HERE

The Pharmacy Freedom Index (PFI) rates the success potential of your pharmacy against 9 critical success factors

OPERATIONAL EFFICIENY Your Money, Your Pharmacy, Your Team

HOW DOES YOUR PHARMACY RATE FOR ‘MY PHARMACY? This section assesses your pharmacies level of business systems, collaborative performance, business purpose & mission, and continuous quality improvement.

In other words, do you know whether routine tasks performed in your business can be delivered to the same standard by each team member?, and whether your business has a clear niche and vision which is known by everyone who visits your pharmacy?

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PATIENT CENTRIC BUSINESS MODEL Your Money, Your Pharmacy, Your Team

SMART USE OF TECHNOLOGY IT Systems, Mobility, Automation

It’s predicted that nearly 9000 jobs will need to be cut in pharmacy this year.

Cutting staff will boost short-term profits, but it’s not the best long-term approach.

View our whitepaper for tips on reducing costs whilst retaining the staff you have invested in.

GET THE WHITE PAPER

www.easyemployer.com

Michael Hazillias - Easy Employer

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MY TEAM

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How can I improve my Operational Efficiency? My Team

WHY CLINICIANS SHOULD THINK MORE LIKE RETAILERS Do you spend your evenings and weekends chasing timesheets, processing payroll and planning rosters? It’s frustrating, stressful and a big waste of time, especially if you’re doing it all on paper. Michael Hazilias, CEO of easyEMPLOYER urges pharmacists to look at admin from a business perspective.

Even if you have in-house pen pushers and a bookkeeper for a best buddy, I can guarantee you’re still spending too much of your own time on workforce admin. Many pharmacy owners have spent so long processing tedious and time-consuming paperwork in the evenings or on the weekends, they don’t really notice it any more. They’ve accepted it as the business owner’s burden. It’s not.

I’ve been working with pharmacy clients for over 10 years now but through easyEMPLOYER I have gained a lot of experience in other industry sectors as well. Obviously every industry brings its own pace of change, problems and challenges, but I have to say, I’ve never seen an industry with a bigger, brighter opportunity than pharmacy right now in terms of workforce automation. To deliver a truly patient-centric business model you need to optimise workforce resources. You’re a clinician.

But just for a moment… think like someone else.

TUNE IN TO THE SHOW

LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW with Michael Hazilias Simply click on the icon above

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THINK LIKE A RETAILER Show me a profitable retailer and I will show you a master of efficient staff management. Retailers live and breathe footfall, customer counts, staffing levels, shift schedules, staff availability, rostering, time sheets, payroll processing – for one reason. They know that without sufficient employee levels during the day, their store has zero ability to serve its customers and convert sales. To a retailer, every staffing fail is potentially a customer lost. Customers that have to wait too long will just go elsewhere.

Customers that can’t get private time with the pharmacist will just go elsewhere. But on the flip side businesses with too much staff or that inefficiently use their workforce will suffer from high labour costs and this is just as detrimental… it’s all about getting the balance right and you can’t do that with your head in the rosters.

You need business metrics at your fingertips and a system that allows you to use these metrics for smart staff management.

THINK LIKE A FINANCIAL CONTROLLER You have the highest hourly rate in your business. An hour of your time is worth more than an hour of anyone else’s time. If you can shift some of the admin workload from your shoulders down to the store managers – to every employee in fact – then your business will improve. We have a client with eight pharmacies and 120 staff. They have a manager at head office whose role is officially a business development one, but in reality she used to spend 40 hours a week just managing staff plus six or seven hours on a Sunday evening doing the week’s rosters. We implemented a workforce admin software solution including payroll and she got her admin time down to around five hours a week. Intelligent automated rostering and accurate time/ attendance clocking allows you to see inefficiencies and minimise your costs. You get a fully reflective picture of your labor costs, valuable real time information at your fingertips and an ability to administer remedial actions on the fly.

THINK LIKE A COMPLIANCE OFFICER If you find Australia’s pharmacy awards and Fairwork policies hugely tricky, you’re not alone.

A lot of pharmacy owners pay consultants or buy the Plain English Guide to the Pharmacy Industry Award because it’s so hard to understand what it means and how to interpret it for your business.

We still frequently see underpayments and overpayments occurring, one of our pharmacy clients was paying penalty rates on top of loaded casual rates before we pointed out that this was an overpayment.

That error was costing them thousands of dollars a year. Good workforce solutions have tools and automatic triggers that can manage compliance tasks for you. Look out for a provider that understands award interpretation, a solution flexible enough to meet your exact needs and someone who provides the option to have your awards managed for you. Talking about “managed” services, what about payroll?

The potential for error here is also massive when manual processes are involved. Why mess around with payroll at all when you can get your payroll done for you. Managed payroll – it’s not a luxury these days, it’s a necessity. Look for a provider who can take care of it all for you.

THINK LIKE A HR MANAGER Did you realise that automation and selfadministration creates transparency, empowers staff, boosts loyalty and generates job satisfaction?

If there’s room for errors and delay in your staff admin processes, you’ll get mistrust, disputes, frustration and stress. With automation, staff can submit online timesheets, request leave, accept or request additional shifts, all via SMS or email. In my experience, staff begin to feel like they are being treated like adults and the knock-on effects are positive.

With easy EMPLOYER for example, pharmacy staff can go into the system, put in a shift swap request and have a look at who else is suitable and available to work that shift. Only people who match the role and the task and who are available will show up as options for the swap. All the manager needs to do is give it the final approval. If a staff member can’t work a given shift, you can make it his or her responsibility to find someone else to cover it, so you don’t have to. It’s about delegating responsibility down but in a way that minimises risk.

IN A NUTSHELL If you’re not using technology in your business to manage your staff, it is going to be very difficult to manage your workforce in an efficient and compliant manner. My suggestion to those that ask “where do I start” is to review your employee admin processes. Define and describe the tasks you do every day, every week and every month to manage and administrate your workforce. Then look at how you can streamline those processes. Can you simplify them? Can you cut any steps out?

If your processes are inefficient or unnecessary in the first place, all the automation in the world isn’t going to help you.

We cover all of this and more in a comprehensive Workforce Management Health Check before we even begin talking about products and solutions for our clients.

Once you’ve documented your processes, streamlined tasks etc you can look at automating one or more processes: perhaps the worst offending, least efficient, most time-consuming, error-prone, admin-heavy ones might be done first. You could start with online rosters or perhaps you could begin to collect timesheets online. The beauty of cloud-based software means you can access a lot of simple solutions just with the Internet and set out on the path towards automation one step at a time.

You don’t have to automate every process from start to finish right away, however, automating in bulk is the best way to go about it. It doesn’t have to be a daunting process to do so, products like easyEMPLOYER can automate one area at a time but they are also capable of assisting you to automate all areas of staff admin… a one stop shop for workforce management automation if you like. Whichever way you decide to go, jump in, have a play with some of the products that are out there, make the leap. Remember: every minute you save yourself from admin is another minute you can spend taking care of your patients, growing your business or doing the things you’d rather be doing… whatever that is!

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The Pharmacy Freedom Index (PFI) rates the success potential of your pharmacy against 9 critical success factors

OPERATIONAL EFFICIENY Your Money, Your Pharmacy, Your Team

HOW DOES YOUR PHARMACY RATE FOR ‘MY TEAM’?

Discover your score in just 7 minutes. Instant Report.

TAKE THE TEST!

This section assesses your pharmacies level of team communication, collaboration, role assignment & correct delegation, performance management, flexibility/accessibility, and vision connectedness. In other words, do you know if your team feel well supported, work well together and are performing at their best?

PATIENT CENTRIC BUSINESS MODEL Your Money, Your Pharmacy, Your Team

SMART USE OF TECHNOLOGY IT Systems, Mobility, Automation

easyEMPLOYER is currently offering a FREE workforce management health check for pharmacies valued at $1495.

It’s a great opportunity to get an assessment of the way you currently manage your staff and how it can be done better.

CHECK IT OUT

www.easyemployer.com 18

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MY PATIENTS

HOW CAN I CREATE A PATIENT CENTRIC BUSINESS MODEL? Create a remarkable patient experience

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How Can I Create A Patient Centric Business Model? My Patients

MY PATIENTS

WHY PHARMACISTS CAN MAKE GREAT MARKETERS According to Adam Posner, CEO & Founder of Directivity marketing is a way to connect with patients, a way to kick off conversations and deepen relationships.

Things pharmacists do best, when given the chance. Here he explains why modern marketing is so important for pharmacists who want to grow their business.

Marketing is not just an activity. It’s a mindset. Marketing is not just a newsletter or a loyalty scheme. It’s a fulltime effort to be relevant and helpful to customers. Marketing is not about who shouts loudest about the lowest prices.

It’s about using data to understand who your customers are and give them what they need. And marketing is not primarily about growth through customer acquisition; it’s about retention. If you look after customers who already come to you, they will become loyal, buying more, more often. And if you really look after them, they’ll recommend you to other people and you’ll get new customers.

As clinicians, pharmacists already look after their customers; it’s what they do. That’s why I think pharmacists could have a natural head start on this marketing lark. The minute you can think of marketing simply as an extension of this care, then you’ve got it nailed.

And once you start seeing marketing in this light, you start to see things like loyalty schemes, emails and newsletters as mechanisms for you to deepen your understanding of customers and demonstrate your care.

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THE RELEVANCE OF RELEVANCE When pharmacists ask me “What offers should I be sending out to my patients?” I say, send what’s relevant to them. So, brainstorm some simple content themes. For example if you know that cold and flu season is upon them, empathise with their concerns.

What preventative measures can you recommend? If they have children, how can they keep them hydrated? How can they prevent spread of illness in the home? What products might relieve their symptoms? Basically, it’s a case of working out what your customers’ biggest problem is – and trying to fix it.

is that it demands attention at least every month. If people walk past your pharmacy and keep seeing the same things in your window or the same things on your gondolas more than a couple of times, they’ll be wondering whether you’re a dynamic business or whether you have a limited range of services and advice to offer. Same with your email, newsletter and social media content: change it up and keep it fresh. It’s not enough to simply have a loyalty program, you have to make sure it stays relevant. Like direct mail, like newsletters, these things are only vehicles for showing your relevance.

The tricky thing about staying relevant

THE IMPORTANCE OF DATA Being relevant requires data. You need to know who your customers are and what they’re interested in so you can provide it for them. UK supermarket giant Tesco have taken data-driven marketing to the nth degree over the last two decades, with their Clubcard loyalty scheme.

Their points-for-spend scheme allowed them to collect detailed data on customer shopping habits and use it to determine pretty much everything: from store layout and pricing to promotions and new product development.

In our pharmacies, data collection doesn’t have to be so ambitious – at least not to begin with. A simple

customer database can tell you who’s buying what. Have you got a high proportion of new mums in your catchment? Have you got families with young kids or a more elderly demographic? Knowing this would help you decide what key messages to focus on in your newsletter, what to do with your gondola end displays, whether to stock up on nappies or joint care medication. Never has the technology been more accessible for small businesses wanting to create a simple loyalty scheme and automate data collection. Start by collecting the basics: name, address and email.

Then add profile-building details such as date of birth and demographics.

TIMING IS CRUCIAL So how do you work out the perfect cycle of communication through marketing platforms like loyalty schemes and newsletters when we know that you’re going to be seeing customers in the pharmacy as well?

How do you coordinate your channels and messages? I call it finding your rhythm, and it requires a little planning, but a spreadsheet or yearly planner will suffice. First, map out all your fixed communications: a birthday postcard for example, a seasonal health advice newsletter each quarter, email offers each week. Then add in more targeted data-driven elements depending on what information you have. For example if you want to sell more kids’ multi-vitamins in the run up to winter, ask your database to show you all the people who have bought vitamins in the last 12 months and/or all the

people with kids, and send them a targeted promotion around October time.

It’s not that you have to dedicate hours to marketing, but you do need to prioritise it. If you have a loyalty scheme, make time at the till to present the benefits and get customers to sign up. Remember to ask customers to show their card in store. Make time to respond to queries. Make time to ask customers if they’ve seen the latest issue of the newsletter. Set aside some time each week to develop content in response to external triggers: if there’s a health scare in the news, unseasonably hot weather in March or a medical breakthrough for diabetics, sending an informative, reassuring or helpful communication positions you as a trusted adviser, builds loyalty for the future and drives traffic to your store.

EXPECT A RETURN ON YOUR INVESTMENT Marketing is personal. Your pharmacy occupies a unique place in the world and has a unique message for customers. It’s your role as pharmacy owner – with the support of technology – to identify those and connect your merchandise, your services and your products with your community. Getting a third party such as banner group to carry out your marketing for you might get you a generic customer newsletter once a month but it won’t necessarily bring you real customer connection or solid growth. Invest your time and effort, enlist some expert advice and you can hope to get out more than what you put it.

I worked with a pharmacy client to implement a loyalty scheme (using knowITall) across 60 stores. Their first communication generated a 40% uplift in basket value. Since then they have identified their top 100 customers – those who spend more than all the others – whom they now give special treatment, send exclusive offers or special thank you vouchers. The net return on their initial campaign turned out to be 3.53 times more than it cost. If you want to send a newsletter once a month, fine. But be clear about why you’re doing it and what kind of return you expect to get back.

TUNE IN TO THE SHOW

LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW with Adam Posner Simply click on the icon above

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DISCOVER YOUR SCORE IN JUST 7 MINUTES. INSTANT REPORT. CLICK HERE

The Pharmacy Freedom Index (PFI) rates the success potential of your pharmacy against 9 critical success factors

OPERATIONAL EFFICIENY Your Money, Your Pharmacy, Your Team

HOW DOES YOUR PHARMACY RATE FOR ‘MY PATIENTS? This section assesses your pharmacies level of patient/customer communication, helpfulness, insights, f lexible service delivery model, consumer awareness, responsiveness, relationship management, engagement, and collaboration.

PATIENT CENTRIC BUSINESS MODEL Your Money, Your Pharmacy, Your Team

SMART USE OF TECHNOLOGY In other words, do you really know your patient/ customer? and do you really help them solve their problems?

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IT Systems, Mobility, Automation

INNOVATION

HOW CAN I CREATE A PATIENT CENTRIC BUSINESS MODEL? Create with your patients for your patients

Transpharmation Magazine / Issue 1

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How Can I Create A Patient Centric Business Model? Innovation This article was originally published on cathiereid.com and has been re-published with the author’s permission.

“

IS PHARMACY FACING IT’S

KODAK MOMENT? This is the third post in a series from the Digital Health Summit that formed part of CES 2015, with the first

CLICK HERE TO READ MY FIRST POST talking about the role of sensors and wearables and the second

CLICK HERE TO READY MY SECOND POST on how the traditional doctor visit is facing significant disruption.

P

harmacy has been fighting for greater recognition as a genuine member of the primary healthcare team in Australia for an extended period of time, and I was really interested to hear the speakers thoughts on the opportunities that the emerging digital space could provide.

With the growing cost burden of health providing governments and other funders with significant challenges, Randy Parker, CEO of MDLive Inc suggested many healthcare businesses are now facing their own Kodak moment and if they don’t find a way to reinvent, then they can expect to suffer the same fate. Pharmacy, to me, in its current format is at high risk of sitting in this camp.

So much of pharmacy remuneration is still linked to reimbursement for medication supply, despite years of various parties suggesting a shift to incorporate more service based revenue generating activities.

How will a shift to digital prescribing impact on this, where the prescribing of digital programs which collect data and facilitate behavioural change becomes as commonplace as the prescribing of medicines? This is a great opportunity, but pharmacy needs to position itself to be able to fill this new type of prescription just as efficiently and effectively as we supply medications.

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CATHIE REID I’ve long been frustrated by the lack of It’s a different story in pharmacy though.

Pharmacists have the luxury of having their willingness of pharmacists in Australia to patients visit on a far more regular basis see the opportunity that engaging with than doctors do, and can not only have wearables presents (I wrote about it here conversations about the type of information (http://cathiereid.com/why-isnt-pharmacythat their health conditions more-excited-about-wearabletech/) would best benefit from back in 2014). While to date the tracking, but then have majority of wearables have the patient come been more fitness tools back, review the rather than genuine Many healthcare data collected health devices, they did businesses are now and identify create an opportunity facing their own and discuss for pharmacists to Kodak moment and if potential trends both create a new, they don’t find a way revealed, that health-relevant revenue to reinvent, then they can then be category but also more can expect to suffer passed onto the importantly, to start the same fate.” doctor. having conversations

“

with consumers about how capturing and tracking data about themselves could benefit their health management.

A number of physician at the summit spoke about the challenges of having patients capturing data that they thought was relevant but the physician didn’t, and then how that data was presented in a manner that was actually relevant. All of this is really challenging to work through in a standard 10-15 minute consultation, that also requires a myriad other matters to be discussed.

There are so many opportunities here, and they don’t just stop at devices and wearables. One of the trends discussed at the summit that we can expect to see enormous activity in for the over 50s market is neuroplasticity, and the ability to ‘retrain’ your brain. With medical grade EEGs now available from retailers like Best Buy and Amazon in the US, combined with apps and programs that provide brain exercises, a huge opportunity presents for pharmacists. One of their key customer demographs, who are very focused on avoiding dementia and delaying the onset

+

MC10Inc sensor tattoo

of Alzheimer’s now have the opportunity

about the opportunity for Australian

While there are no shortage of opportunities

to readily access products to help with

pharmacists to do video consults for their

for pharmacy today, we also need to get

these goals. Isn’t their pharmacy a better

patients in the same way doctors can.

ready for what is coming in the emerging

place to do this than Best Buy? Walgreens

In addition to the over 5os, parents of

areas of genomics and personalisation of

fully understands this opportunity, and not

young children are another key pharmacy

medicines. Rav Sheth from MC10Inc

only does their Balance Rewards program

demograph. I know when my kids were

already have 100- 150,000 connected

young the opportunity to do a video consult

devices earning points for consumers every

and then have any necessary products

day, they have just announced a partnership

collected or delivered rather than having

with Qualcomm (http://www.chicagotribune.

to load them into the car and head to the

com/bluesky/originals/chi-walgreens-

pharmacy would have been a very welcome

qualcomm-life-partnership-ces-20150108-

relief. As a pharmacist, the opportunity to

story.html) to futher integrate this and

confirm a head lice infestation by looking

add additional devices and data. Adam

at the head via a video feed instead of

Pellegrini, VP of Digital Health at Walgreens

getting up close and personal also has

There are so many opportunities for

said that with their pharmacists already

some appeal! I just don’t understand why

pharmacists to get involved in this

engaging in 9-10,000 ‘Pharmacy Chats’

more pharmacies aren’t looking offering this

exciting new era of healthcare, but sitting

via their mobile app with consumers each

type of service. It’s certainly something that

back waiting for others, whether that be

WEEK, extending this further into remote

we are working on at Epic Pharmacy (http://

marketing groups, professional bodies

cathiereid.com/its-time-to-get-face-to-face-

or government, to do all of the work in

with-telehealth/), tailored to our areas of

designing and implementing programs is

practice.

not going to be good or fast enough.

monitoring via devices is the natural next step.

Let’s also pause for a minute and think

TUNE IN TO THE SHOW

LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW with Cathie Reid Simply click on the icon above

(http://www.mc10inc.com/mc10-inc-ucbpartner-for-innovative-solutions-for-patientswith-neurological-disorders/) showed us their tiny sensor patch which can be worn anywhere on the body and capture any kind of information, which can then be utilised in ‘adaptive medicine,’ where dosage is adjusted according to patient response.

Whether you’re a business owner or an employee, get online, do your research and get started; there’s no shortage of information out there and that’s the best way to avoid having your own Kodak moment.

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The Pharmacy Freedom Index (PFI) rates the success potential of your pharmacy against 9 critical success factors

OPERATIONAL EFFICIENY Your Money, Your Pharmacy, Your Team

HOW DOES YOUR PHARMACY RATE FOR ‘INNOVATION’?

Discover your score in just 7 minutes. Instant Report.

TAKE THE TEST!

This section assesses your pharmacies level of responsiveness, implementation skills, goal setting, opportunity analysis, environmental awareness, creativity, product/service development & planning, industry insight, and reactiveness. In other words, do you wait until it is too late to help your patients find solutions to new or developing problems? and can you instantly identify your weaknesses and act on turning them into strengths?

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PATIENT CENTRIC BUSINESS MODEL Your Money, Your Pharmacy, Your Team

SMART USE OF TECHNOLOGY IT Systems, Mobility, Automation

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MY PARTNERS

HOW CAN I CREATE A PATIENT CENTRIC BUSINESS MODEL? Collaborate to create a win-win result

Transpharmation Magazine / Issue 1

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How Can I Create A Patient Centric Business Model? My Partners

1

START WITH A VISION

Patients love DAA for its convenience – and the way it makes them feel reassured, connected and cared for. Our figures show that, once people start using the service, only 2% stop – and half of those are due to patient death. Doctors love our DAA service because they can be sure their patients are taking the right medication. Our pharmacists love our DAA service because it gives them the chance to regularly talk to patients and provide a high quality healthcare service.

But does our business love it? Our bottom-line? Our bank manager? Do they think DAA brings tangible dollar value into the pharmacy? Well, in a word, yes.

MY PARTNERS

5 STEPS TO PROFITABLE PATIENT-CENTRICITY WITH DAA STRATEGY

Building a patient-centric pharmacy is easy. Making it also profitable and sustainable is not so straightforward. John Tawadrous, Managing Partner at Think Pharmacy tells us how he and his team adopted a Dose Administration Aid strategy that delivers tangible business growth AND heart-warming patient benefits.

Patients love DAA for its convenience – and the way it makes them feel reassured, connected and cared for. Our figures show that, once people start using the service, only 2% stop – and half of those are due to patient death. Doctors love our DAA service because they can be sure their patients are taking the right medication. Our pharmacists love our DAA service because it gives them the chance to regularly talk to patients and provide a high quality healthcare service.

But does our business love it? Our bottom-line? Our bank manager? Do they think DAA brings tangible dollar value into the pharmacy? Well, in a word, yes.

We launched our Dose Administration Aid service 14 months ago and since then it’s grown by 300% – incurring practically no overhead cost increases. We’ve seen good uptake, retention, satisfaction, fantastic results all round. I strongly believe DAA is a win-winwin strategy that pharmacists cannot afford to ignore.

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We launched our Dose Administration Aid service 14 months ago and since then it’s grown by 300% – incurring practically no overhead cost increases. We’ve seen good uptake, retention, satisfaction, fantastic results all round. I strongly believe DAA is a win-win-win strategy that pharmacists cannot afford to ignore.

2

COMMIT TO DAA AS A CORE PART OF YOUR STRATEGY

We started by taking a long hard look at where we wanted the business to go in the long term. We knew we wanted to grow and we knew we wanted to nurture the kind of business that puts patients at the heart of good healthcare.

So we looked at the demographics around us and figured that not only did we already have an ageing population but that senior citizens are going to be living longer and longer each year. Our vision was and still is that pharmacies can play an important role providing health advice and practical support to the elderly.

We saw that the government was also keen to recognise this need and at that time were offering incentives to provide veterans with DAAs. Only a few pharmacies had taken the opportunity and we would be among those early adopters. But it must be ingrained in your DNA, you can’t just say, “Oh it looks like a lot of pharmacies are making money from DAAs, we should do it too.”

My business partners and I all agreed that investing in DAA services could help us to grow our pharmacy while moving towards our vision of a patient-centric, community-based pharmacy. Customers love talking to the one person that knows everything about their medication.

3

WORK ON OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY

The culture I wanted to infuse into the pharmacy was that we would aim to treat customers as if they were our own parents or grandparents We would have the idea that every single patient coming through the door is a friend of mine, a parent of mine, and I’m going to do everything possible to help them out, they’re going to feel that. We would give them the same level of genuine care and commitment, seek to listen carefully and understand just as we would with our loved ones. We pledged to all our DAA patients that they would get an hour with the pharmacist every month to discuss their medication and any other health concerns.

To fulfil this promise, we basically had to create time from thin air and that meant becoming operationally efficient. There was no point just taking MPS or any robot and dropping it into our existing workflows and processes; we had to tap into some new administrative processes and programs to free up that pharmacist time – all without incurring extra cost. We had to do some serious capacity planning calculations to make sure we could honour our DAA promises, even when patient numbers doubled, tripled and quadrupled.

4

USE TECHNOLOGY TO HELP YOU

Since we were at the start of a 10 to 15-year strategy, we knew that technology would play an important future-proofing role.

Introducing the right kit would allow us to grow efficiently and build operations to a decent capacity. We tried out a few types of DAA packs, Webster-packs, APHS but it wasn’t until we got our hands on MPS that we knew we’d found the best solution for us.

The speed, the ease of use, online integration and the fact that it had the backing of the Guild really put my mind at ease as well. All we needed to get going was one computer screen and from that, we’ve managed to quietly triple our DAAs.

5

CARRY YOUR TEAM WITH YOU

With any new strategy there’s always a transition period for staff to go through and you will get teething problems. I like my team to feel like a big family because when someone over here drops the ball, someone else over there is going to have to pick it up and help out. So I put in a lot of effort to communicate and smoothe the changes through.

We sat down with staff in the very beginning to share the vision and explain the plans. It wasn’t easy to get everyone on board and we did lose a couple of staff early on. But I think it was actually helpful for people to work out sooner rather than later what kind of team they wanted to be in.

People either see change as a direct threat to their employment, or as a something positive that is going to allow them to keep their job and flourish in a company that is moving forward. At this point, as a leader, technology is actually your best friend, because you can position it as a gift, something that will take away a lot of the administrative or transactional donkeywork.

They will see that technology is there to free them up for more fulfilling and rewarding tasks like listening to patients, providing easy-to-understand advice and offering personalised services.

We found that having a robot helped keep our error rates way down, decrease customer waiting times and freed up the pharmacists so they could be out front talking to customers while a tech or an intern is checking the DAA packs. It takes about 30 hours to do 180 patients’ DAAs each week including all the paperwork. We reduced our pack-checking time from six minutes to about two minutes per pack and in two years, I’ve seen two errors. The technology to enable all of this is out there and I think it’s critical to the success of any DAA strategy.

TUNE IN TO THE SHOW

LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW

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with John Tawadrous Simply click on the icon above

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+ DISCOVER YOUR SCORE IN JUST 7 MINUTES. INSTANT REPORT. CLICK HERE

The Pharmacy Freedom Index (PFI) rates the success potential of your pharmacy against 9 critical success factors

OPERATIONAL EFFICIENY Your Money, Your Pharmacy, Your Team

HOW DOES YOUR PHARMACY RATE FOR ‘MY PARTNERS? This section assesses your pharmacies level of collaboration with your healthcare network & produce/service suppliers who deeply contribute to your patients healthcare, communication, patient workf low understanding, connectivity, ability to work in synergy, and optimisation of current products/services.

In other words, do you know whether your current partnerships are positively impacting on your patients? and are you receiving the best benefits of a mutually beneficial partnership?

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PATIENT CENTRIC BUSINESS MODEL Your Money, Your Pharmacy, Your Team

SMART USE OF TECHNOLOGY IT Systems, Mobility, Automation

I.T SYSTEMS

HOW CAN I LEVERAGE SMART TECHNOLOGY IN MY BUSINESS? Scale and Grow

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How Can I Leverage Smart Technoology In My Business? I.T Systems

I.T SYSTEMS

FOUR POPULAR IT MYTHS BUSTED FOR PHARMACISTS Pharmacy owners don’t come out of a university with IT degree and we certainly don’t recruit staff for their advanced computing skills. In fact many pharmacists view IT as a bit of an enemy.

George Alam, National Manager at Chemist POS Direct has written a thesis on the state of information technology systems in Australian pharmacies. Here he busts 4 popular myths for us and explains how IT can be one of your greatest allies in the battle to reduce costs and improve customer experience.

1 “I’M SAVING MONEY BY NOT UPDATING MY EQUIPMENT” You look at the computer in your pharmacy and you think: “That works fine. That could last another year maybe two…” So you get on with business and five years down the line, the same computer is still there, chugging away. It looks OK, maybe a little yellow round the edges. Have you ever wondered what’s happened to it during that period and measured the impact on your business? Probably not: most of the effects are not in-yourface noticeable. But don’t be fooled: the damage is being done, creeping up on your business. Like blood pressure, IT can be a silent killer.

When you think about it though, you’ll realise transaction time has slowed down, you’ve had more troubleshooting to do, more errors coming back to you, more calls for maintenance – less reliability overall.

After a certain point, the longer you keep out-of-date hardware, the more money, time, and effort it costs.

Statistics tell us the ideal life cycle of most computers, servers and printers is

2 “YOU CAN BE TOO WORRIED ABOUT SECURITY” Never let it be said that pharmacists are slow to adapt to new IT. They pretty much jumped online for PBS and made their systems Medicare-ready – because they thought were going to get paid quicker. Nothing like a clear business driver to spur business owners into action and there’s nothing wrong with that. But sometimes the benefits of getting your IT upto-date are less directly obvious; this is where I find pharmacists do tend to dilly-dally. Password management is one example. If you’re reading this on your office PC, the chances are you’ll have a curly Post-It note stuck to the side of your monitor with a bunch of passwords on it.

Or stuck in the back of the diary. (Or worse, you don’t even use passwords).

Over a week it probably takes staff at least half an hour to retrieve and type in passwords for various terminals, packages and websites. I’m sure you can think of better ways to use half an hour in your business. Not to mention the giant black hole you’re creating in your security by leaving key passwords lying around. All your

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private patient data, all your sales records just waiting for someone to come in and take a look? If you had a security breach, how easy would it be for you to find and change all your passwords you use in your business? A simple password management application such as LastPass can save you time and give you peace of mind.

The facts: There are millions of live computer viruses at any time that can easily wipe your system out. Many small businesses are moving into Managed IT services where you commission a third party to take care of your IT security for you. They keep your passwords and antivirus software robust and up-to-date and they carry out daily backups and test restores. They proactively investigate problems or possible infections and alert you before it becomes a major downtime issue. Who wouldn’t want to know about issues before they become business-critical? Managed IT is worth considering.

around three to five years. That’s how long you’ve got before these machines actually start to drain more resources than they save. The field studies I looked at for my thesis shows that 75% of pharmacies still have equipment that’s 10 years old or more.

The facts: On a 10 year-old machines, a sales transaction will take you a couple of minutes. On a new machine, you’re done in 45 seconds.

To your waiting customers, that translates as speed and convenience.

To your pharmacy assistant, it translates as time they can spend focussing on patient needs. To your business that translates as efficiency and value. IT prices have come down so much in the last five years that you can upgrade to the latest computer for example for around $1,000. A few years ago you would have had to pay double that. So think of it as an investment in long-term costreduction; bite the bullet and update your kit.

3 MY CUSTOMERS ARE JUST NOT THAT INTO TECHNOLOGY” Pharmacists know what an important role they play as a point of social contact for older patients. But don’t imagine for a second that this age group aren’t ready to embrace technological change.

I installed an in-store touchscreen dispensing unit for a pharmacy client last month. I dropped by to see how they were doing and there was an elderly lady using it, she must have been at least 85. Senior citizens love technology because it allows them to be more socially connected to the world around them, their grandchildren and so on.

To them technology means less isolation. It’s a great social enabler and social connector for them.

Banks have been rapidly developing new mobile services on Generation Y-ers (millenials) but people from every generation now do their banking on their laptop, order pizza and plane tickets via their smartphone.

Cloud interfaces allow us all to selfserve products, services, information

and advice whenever we need to.

It only makes sense that pharmacy goes down a similar path.

The facts: Pharmacy is about five or 10 years behind finance in terms of Cloud technologies. But it will come. In 10 years, pretty much all applications will be run from the Cloud and it will mean you have no need for equipment beyond a basic computer with Internet access.

You might even want to think in terms of hand-held devices so you can walk up to a elderly patient who’s struggling to get out of the chair in the waiting area and serve them right there, process their transaction, charge it to their account.

Wouldn’t that be a great customer experience? And that’s what embracing technology really means to pharmacists: embracing a better customer experience. The sooner you adopt it, the happier your customers and the more secure your business.

TUNE IN TO THE SHOW

LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW with George Alam Simply click on the icon above

4 “MOBILE TECH IS A GIMMICK NOT A BUSINESS BENEFIT” Mobile access is the single biggest opportunity for pharmacy owners to reduce costs and grow an efficient business. In the last year or so, I’ve seen a lot of owners start to manage their pharmacies remotely.

With remote access, owners can generate reports and tap into business intelligence whenever and wherever they want. Many of our pharmacy clients are trying out the new HP tablets with built-in scanners. It’s transforming the way they work: staff are walking around the shop doing stock takes, going back to the back office, dispensing scripts, doing meds check from one single device. They pretty much have a mobile version of their point of sale and their dispensing program. Everything can be done on the spot.

A full mobile solution for pharmacies is the MX10 Retail Solution. It’s about $2,500

including the tablet, the scanner and the docking station. It’s more expensive than a desktop computer but it gives you all the advantages of being mobile. Having this tool in place can reduce your level of investment desktop computers, create a more intimate patient experience, and improve team productivity by completing data entry and tasks at the point of care

The facts: IT is a tool for you to reduce costs and grow your business. Competition is no longer about price. The only point of difference between your pharmacy and the one down the road is your customer service and operational efficiency. If you can achieve high-level customer service and internal efficiency – front-of-shop, middleof-shop and back office – you’ll drive down your cost-to-income ratio and drive up your profit.

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+

+

The Pharmacy Freedom Index (PFI) rates the success potential of your pharmacy against 9 critical success factors

OPERATIONAL EFFICIENY Your Money, Your Pharmacy, Your Team

HOW DOES YOUR PHARMACY RATE FOR ‘I.T SYSTEMS’?

Discover your score in just 7 minutes. Instant Report.

TAKE THE TEST!

This section assesses your pharmacies level of IT management, maintenance, team responsibility, IT security, and product/ service selection criteria. In other words, do you know if your infrastructure meets your patients’ and business needs? and do you know how to solve IT problems quickly and without stress?

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PATIENT CENTRIC BUSINESS MODEL Your Money, Your Pharmacy, Your Team

SMART USE OF TECHNOLOGY IT Systems, Mobility, Automation

+

MOBILITY

HOW CAN I LEVERAGE SMART TECHNOLOGY IN MY BUSINESS? Anywhere/Anytime

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How Can I Leverage Smart Technoology In My Business? Mobility

MOBILITY

3 GUIDING PRINCIPLES FOR GETTING YOUR PHARMACY ONLINE Do you have a website? Do you see it as a box you’ve ticked and job done? Or do you see it as the beginning of a big adventure into multi-channel sales and service delivery? We talked to Simon Herfort, a second-generation pharmacist and Founding Director of YouSave Chemist. He tells us how he’s been moving YouSave’s value-based proposition into the digital space and shares his top three digital development tips with us.

KNOW WHAT YOU STAND FOR

1

Before you go anywhere near anything remotely digital, have a clear understanding of what your business and your brand represents to customers. At YouSave, we’ve always seen ourselves as problem-solvers: health professionals with the clinical tools and the knowledge to take problems away for people. Our vision was a vitally important guiding principle for us when we entered online space: how can we solve problems with this website?

What problems will this app take away from our patients? Which problem shall we address in this email? It gave us a good idea of what content to develop, how frequently we should make contact, how often we should refresh things, which channels patients might use, which features and functions they might want.

The flipside of our positioning as problem-solvers is, for it to work at all, we need to make sure we understand our patients’ problems better than anyone else. Above all else, understanding requires listening, so we knew we needed to invest extra time in engaging with customers. This has been another guiding light with all of our technology choices: what’s going to make us operationally efficient enough to afford that important time with patients? In fact all our automation technology choices have been catalysts for one thing: to help us become better problem-solvers.

!

Get on this: Understand the unique role you play in the lives of your customers. Look at your location: are your patients time-poor city-based folk? Think of online services that might help – Click and Collect has really taken off in one of our CBD pharmacies for example. Are your rural patients housebound? Explore ‘Chat with a pharmacist’ functionality on your website.

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DON’T REINVENT THE WHEEL

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DEVELOP A CULTURE OF INNOVATION

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A website is just the beginning. Too many small businesses throw one up, stand back to admire it for a while, and then just forget about it. Much the same as your window displays or gondola ends, your website needs to evolve. We all know what it feels like when we walk past the same faded and dusty promotions day after day, week after week: we think old-fashioned, out-dated, slow-moving. In the end, we stop looking altogether. So keep your website updated and fresh, at least change the front page every week, give customers a new angle on your business. For YouSave it’s all about using the website to show the breadth of problems we’re able to solve.

Freshness is a mindset you can easily get into, by practising innovation as a business habit. I know this is not necessarily a strong point of our industry but our customers are already used to a wide range of convenient and fun shopping channels in retail, travel and financial services. Although pharmacy hasn’t even begun to catch up, many of us are fully committed to giving customers a fantastic experience. And when our heart is willing, we’re half way there! It’s just the technology we need to embrace in order to deliver that great experience across a range of convenient channels.

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Get over this: It’s a complete myth that older customers won’t embrace new technology. Over 65s actually show high adoption rates of social media.

It makes sense: they’ve seen the development of technology over their lifetime and they know how life enhancing it can be; plus it keeps them socially connected to family and the wide world. It’s younger customers that actually take it all for granted and might get a little bit less excited.

The one good thing about lagging behind other industries technologically is that you can definitely ‘coattail’. In terms of websites or even mobile technology, we can safely say someone somewhere out there has probably already done it. Bearing that in mind, I wouldn’t try to do any of digital development from scratch. Get in touch with website designers, app developers or banner groups and learn from what they’ve done and see how you can adapt it for your business. Take a look at the apps we’ve developed at YouSave. One is a straightforward shopping app with all our merchandise plus regular special offers. The other is a QR scanner. We have a whole range of little cards we give to customers in store, depending on what they bought.

Obviously they get in-store advice but we send them home with this little QR card that they can scan with their smartphone to get related content or videos recapping the advice they’ve been given.

Don’t be shy, take good ideas and adapt them. Just keep reminding yourself what you really stand for offline and online. There’s a lot of ‘follow-the-leader’ in online pharmacy at the moment and there’s a danger of brands losing their character a little as they venture deeper into the digital space. Look outside of pharmacy for inspiration.

Domino’s Pizza have nailed customer experience and operational efficiency through clever use of technology.

Cherry-pick the best ideas from brands like Amazon, Walgreens or CVS and apply them to your business as long as they are relevant to the values you stand for.

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Get rid of this: If you tell me the only thing you stand for is rock-bottom pricing. I would say you’re probably not going to survive online. You might get early traffic but price-driven customers are not loyal customers. There’s nothing wrong with a value-based proposition of course, but get you can only attract repeat business and loyal customers by also understanding what people want and filling a niche.

TUNE IN TO THE SHOW

LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW with Simon Herfort Simply click on the icon above

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+ DISCOVER YOUR SCORE IN JUST 7 MINUTES. INSTANT REPORT. CLICK HERE

The Pharmacy Freedom Index (PFI) rates the success potential of your pharmacy against 9 critical success factors

OPERATIONAL EFFICIENY Your Money, Your Pharmacy, Your Team

HOW DOES YOUR PHARMACY RATE FOR ‘MOBILITY’?

This section assesses your pharmacies level of adoption of mobile devices in your day-to-day business activities, level of mobile functionality of core systems, device management & security, and performance enhancement of workf lows for for both you and your patients.

In other words, do you know whether you are able to enhance your pharmacies operational processes and collaboration capability with mobility?

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PATIENT CENTRIC BUSINESS MODEL Your Money, Your Pharmacy, Your Team

SMART USE OF TECHNOLOGY IT Systems, Mobility, Automation

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How Can I Leverage Smart Technoology In My Business? Automation

Question 1:

WHAT KIND OF PHARMACIST DO YOU WANT TO BE? There’s a lot of waste in our industry. Day in day out, many of us follow the same time-consuming workflows and adminheavy processes. We look to automation to save us from death-by-inefficiency. “So I’ll throw in a ROWA and then I’ll need fewer dispense techs and pharmacists and my bottomline will improve, right?” Wrong. No pharmacy will improve long-term if their workflows and processes remain the same, no matter whether carried out by man or machine. The trick is to inject the technology at the right point. Automation is your opportunity to reassess and reshape your business and reaffirm your objectives. Once you have done that, technology enables you to do what you want with your pharmacy a whole lot quicker, easier and with a better return. It’s not about installing a robot in your store; it’s about designing it into your workflow, to achieve maximum return on your investment.

That’s just as important as which technology you decide to choose to go with.

IT’S NOT ABOUT THE MACHINE, IT’S ABOUT THE BUSINESS

ACTION 1: Business Planning Revisit and refresh your business plan and, if necessary, update your strategic objectives in light of today’s industry pressures. Consider what it is that you’re trying to automate in the pharmacy, what processes could be improved. What is the end result that you’re trying to achieve?

Most guys clearly remember their first car, first bike, first guitar or first sweetheart. Well my most vivid memory is the day I first saw a Rowa. It was a few years ago at a pharmaexpo in Munich. I instantly fell in love. I now feel the same way about all our automated dispensing and packaging machines. Not for their angular beauty, not for their state-of the-art technology, not even for their reliable performance.

To me, they simply represent the kind of pharmacy I want to run. Let me explain.

About 10 years earlier, I had an employment decision to make. My front-end sales assistant had decided to leave us for a new job overseas. I chose not to replace her. Instead I made a life-changing decision.

I recruited a new pre-registration pharmacist and moved myself into the customer-facing sales consultant role. Upfront, out of the office and away from the admin. I knew this was the kind of pharmacist I wanted to be and I knew this was the kind of business I wanted to run. A primary healthcare service where I could do what I was best at: adding value to my customers, adding value to my business and increasing my own personal satisfaction to boot. So when I eventually saw that ROWA years later in Germany, what I was actually seeing was the possibility for pharmacists everywhere to become the kind of pharmacists they want to be.

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Question 2:

Are you considering automating your pharmacy? Robert Allen, CEO of Dose Innovations shares his insight on the five crucial questions you need to ask first.

WHERE ARE YOUR HIGH VALUE ACTIVITIES? And once you’ve set out on the automation path, the sky is the limit. It’s not just the fact that the pharmacists no longer have to go and manually pick the products (though this alone is often a game-changer for many pharmacies). The real value is in the halo effect of automation as it spreads across your business: inventory management, financial management, logistics planning, staffing, stock ordering and even wholesaler relationships. And your end game? Why are we really eliminating wasteful processes? Why are we really freeing up professionals from the burden of low value administration? It gives pharmacists more time for higher value activities such as caring for customers’ health, generating revenue, satisfaction and loyalty. Ultimately, automation frees you up to be the kind of pharmacist you always wanted to be. A respected provider of vital professional services to your community. A store that can be relied upon to stock what customers need. An expert with the time to listen. Someone who doesn’t disappear into the back room to look for something on the shelf.

ACTION 2: Workf low Planning Map the processes and activities in your business. Separate the repetitive, non-challenging tasks from your higher value professional services. Ask yourself which activities your pharmacists are bestequipped carry out, which you can leave to your technicians and which you can delegate to a machine.

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Question 5:

Question 3:

IS YOUR TEAM READY TO SUPPORT AUTOMATION? WHAT DO YOUR CUSTOMERS WANT FROM YOU? In the three years following my decision to move front-of-shop with my customers, we saw a 20% year-on-year growth in turnover, attributable to increased customer retention and repeat spend. Essentially, I had created value by building a closer relationship with my customers and engaging with them every time they came in the pharmacy. I even had some customers that had moved away and still came back to the pharmacy: one lady used to drive an hour and a half from the Gold Coast just to come to us. I remember that look on customers’ faces when they realised I was going to stay there and help them privately, discreetly and efficiently, without walking off into the back room, without having to involve other colleagues or leave them hanging around. I think a lot of customers don’t even know a pharmacy visit can be a positive experience or that a pharmacist can be part of their whole health management solution.

ACTION 3: Customer Experience Management Think about your customers and what elements of their pharmacy experience they value most and least. Think about what steps you can take to exceed their expectations and educate customers about what pharmacies can offer.

Question 4:

ARE YOU READY FOR AUTOMATION? Automation is not a one-off event. It’s not a single piece of kit you install and consider it done. Like any other business investment strategy, it’s a journey that begins with research, planning and consultation and continues with ongoing evaluation and adjustment.

First aim to identify your desired outcomes of automation before you talk to vendors. Create a mini business plan that states what you’re trying to achieve and how you will measure performance and success of the implementation. Are you just making any further changes to the pharmacy or just the dispensary? Is this part of a relocation, expansion or contraction? Are you aiming to reduce store size, reduce overheads, increase turnover? Then when you talk to potential technology partners, you can evaluate product functionality in light of your specific objectives.

ACTION 4: Product Research If you’re going to consider buying a robot for your business, have a good think about what’s available, how it works. Perhaps even go and visit some of the other pharmacies that are further down the automation route than you. Ask the business owners about the systems they’ve installed, see how they work, see what improvements they’ve brought. Most pharmacists will be keen to help. Give yourself about eight weeks to get to the point where you are committed to investing in automation and ready to buy.

Once you’ve ordered your machine, it takes about eight weeks to be built and configured and another eight weeks to be shipped.

Use that time to establish automation internally as a significant change management adventure. This means discussing your plans with staff and other stakeholders, seeking their input and gaining their buy-in. You may need to reassure employees that you are not replacing them with robots. Position it alongside professional development, identifying new roles, key responsibilities and training requirements.

Choose a technology partner with the experience and expertise to support you with internal engagement and change management challenges. By the time your robot arrives, your people should be ready to embrace and work with it.

ACTION 5: Get maximum value from your investment Ensure you get a watertight SLA from your technology partner. Ask for a second training phase six weeks after installation. By then you’ll understand the full potential of the machine to streamline your workflow and will have specific questions about getting more value out of it.

So even if you don’t yet love ROWA machines as much as I do, I’m fairly sure efficiency and customer satisfaction are pretty close to every business owner’s heart. With the right planning and preparation, automation can help pharmacists focus on delivering a profitable and professional frontline healthcare service.

TUNE IN TO THE SHOW

LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW with Robert Allen Simply click on the icon above

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DISCOVER YOUR IN JUST + SCORE 7 MINUTES. INSTANT REPORT. CLICK HERE

HOW DOES YOUR PHARMACY RATE FOR ‘AUTOMATION’?

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The Pharmacy Freedom Index (PFI) rates the success potential of your pharmacy against 9 critical success factors

OPERATIONAL EFFICIENY Your Money, Your Pharmacy, Your Team

PATIENT CENTRIC BUSINESS MODEL

This section assess your pharmacies level of implementation of efficient workflows, optimised dispensing process, system integration, efficient business process management, and business intelligence accessibility.

Your Money, Your Pharmacy, Your Team

In other words, do you know whether you are able to enhance your patient’s experience by automating logistics and back office processes?

IT Systems, Mobility, Automation

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SMART USE OF TECHNOLOGY

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TRANSPHARMATION BOOK How to embrace technology to build a smarter, more successful 21st century pharmacy before it’s too late Finally, there is a book that delivers a simple, yet powerful step-by-step framework to help you easily understand the technology you need to ensure your business succeeds in today’s changing market.

Transpharmation also helps pharmacy owners like you decide on the best possible options for their individual needs. I wrote Transpharmation with the practical, realworld insights of a second-generation pharmacist. As a pharmacist for 15 years, I have tested the boundaries of what technologies can be adopted easily into the pharmacy ecosystem and can pass this information on to help your business survive…and thrive. If you have always wanted to embrace technology to help you build a smarter, successful and more profitable business, then this is the book for you.

OUR JOURNEY STARTS HERE...

To give you even greater value and assistance, I have also produced an accompanying workbook mobile application that you can access easily – from anywhere and any time you choose. Reading Transpharmation and implementing the strategies I share will help you craft a 12-month roadmap to take immediate action in your pharmacy.

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WATCH THE BOOK LAUNCH AT PHARMACY FREEDOM

TESTIMONIALS “Robert is highly professional and instinctively smart...

He gets to the point and finds a way to ensure his community gain valuable insights to act on.:

Adam Posner - Directivity

“Thank you for your endeavours in bringing Transpharmation to the Pharmacy Industry, I think it’s a wonderful innovation!”

Leon Thomas - Thomas & Chong Group “Rob is doing a great job in delivering a clear message to pharmacy owners that technology is not the enemy, and that the recipe for a succesful pharmacy business is having a clear vision, well trained staff and product knowledge”

George Alam - Chemist POS Direct “I think it (The Transpharmation Show) is a great forum to encourage pharmacy owners to reflect on what they’re currently doing and to consider taking their next step in developing their retail strategy”

“Ever wondered how new software or technology can be used to drive your pharmacy business?

Follow Robert Sztar’s Transpharmation Series and you will surely be enlightened!”

Ashley Falting - Health Enterprises

Andrew Hall - Minfos

“Transpharmation is a simple way for pharmacy owners to understand how technology can help their business.”

Craig Simmonds - iHealth

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INSTANT DOWNLOAD CLICK HERE!

5 PRESCRIPTIONS FOR A STRESS FREE HOLIDAY Have the freedom to learn, network and plan, all while feeling confident your Pharmacy is under control.

ROUTINE FOR SUCCESS Create a daily routine for success, that helps you refresh, re-energise, and provides you with reassurance.

MOBILE TOOLKIT Learn how to install your FREE mobile toolkit that gives you access to your team and your pharmacy anywhere/anytime (if you really need it...)

CREATE YOUR BEST YEAR EVER! Return to your pharmacy on top of any new challenges or opportunities, and ready to create your best year ever!

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THE PHARMACY FREEDOM INDEX The Pharmacy Freedom Index (PFI) rates the potential of your pharmacy against 9 critical success factors

IF YOU OWN A PHARMACY TAKE THE TEST! Rate your success as a pharmacy discover you score - Its free Pharmacies have changed dramatically in the last 15 years. You can still be profitable and deliver the best patient outcomes, but the rules have changed forever.

The Pharmacy Freedom Index (PFI) rates you potential for success against nine critical success factors. The test is free, takes about 7 minutes, and you’ll instantly receive a summary report based on your responses.

This report covers a snapshot of nine critical success factors, and shows you what you could do better to improve your business’s operations, and profitability of your pharmacy today.

Take the Test. It’s Free.

Instant Report.

OPERATIONAL EFFICIENY Your Money, Your Pharmacy, Your Team

PATIENT CENTRIC BUSINESS MODEL Your Money, Your Pharmacy, Your Team

SMART USE OF TECHNOLOGY IT Systems, Mobility, Automation

TAKE THE TEST!

WHY YOU SHOULD TAKE THE PHARMACY FREEDOM INDEX? Simply click on the image to watch instantly.

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