How Digitalization is solving today's Retail Pharmacy concerns?
The COVID-19 outbreak has exposed critical flaws in India’s healthcare system while leading to a surge in major trends like healthcare delivery digitization. Leveraging the new technology-driven solutions could completely change the retail pharmacy landscape.
Customers’ lives, communications, and shopping habits have all changed as a result of the pandemic. People are becoming more mindful of their own health, which is boosting the global demand for contactless services. These expectations compel independent pharmacies to employ technology to meet their clients’ needs and improve the pharmacy business and practice.
Challenges Faced By Retail Pharmacies:
- Leveraging Digital Technologies: While we have greater technological capabilities than ever before, the road forward is not always smooth. The difficulties encountered in leveraging digitization are due to a lack of dedicated IT skills, budget concerns and constraints, and inefficient business processes.
- Enhancing Customer Loyalty and Satisfaction: Every pharmacy-customer connection revolves around gaining the buyer’s trust. Due to lack of channels and resources, retail pharmacies are unable to incentivize their customers thereby, leading to low customer retention and restricting expansion of customer base.
- Potential Competition with E-Pharmacies: When it comes to competing with e-pharmacies, there is heated competition as retail pharmacies lack resources to compete in terms of price, deep discounts in order to offer competitive prices and operational logistics.
- Lack of Integrated Systems: To avail a holistic integrated system, retail pharmacies are compelled to use multiple applications and softwares to manage all the processes efficiently to deliver the best possible service to its customers. This requires a huge cost of investment.
- Struggling to Make the Right Technology Choices: There’s no question that technology can and does help pharmacies perform with more precision, accuracy, and efficiency. This, in turn, increases adherence and the perception of improved care quality. Retail pharmacies often struggle to make the right technology choices.
Retail Pharmacy Opportunities
- Mobile Apps: Retail pharmacies can now leverage mobile apps at a lower cost than ever before. Not only can an app make it easier for customers to refill prescriptions, receive refill reminders, and take advantage of discounts, but it can also increase customer loyalty and satisfaction.
- Customer Experience and Loyalty: With customers’ purchase habits changing, the demand for placing orders from the comfort of their homes on their mobile and receiving doorstep delivery along with attractive discounts is increasing. While customer competition is and will continue to be fierce, the good news for retail pharmacies is that the number of potential customers and the services required by customers is increasing.
- Catering to the Hyperlocal: Hyperlocalization of pharmacies is the way forward. One of the biggest opportunities for retail pharmacies is to leverage these solutions to provide last-mile deliveries thereby increasing reach and store’s sales.
- Transparency: Transparency is associated with trust. It is increasing customer loyalty. Retail pharmacies encourage client retention by providing satisfaction and trust through transparency, visibility and participation in the overall processes.
What does Medify offer?
Despite the rise of e-pharmacies, the presence of more than 12,50,000 retail pharmacy stores still dominates the market with a single pharmacy store serving a minimum of 400 families.
Medify offers much more than a holistic digital solution to retail pharmacies to drive their digital growth. Leveraging these solutions, retail pharmacies can now position themselves in this competitive market landscape.
With the option of providing hyperlocal deliveries to patients along with lucrative offers and rewards to incentivise patients, retail pharmacies can now drive better outcomes and build customer loyalty. A positive customer experience encourages loyalty, aids in customer retention, and increases brand advocacy.
It not only offers retail pharmacies to reach the last mile delivery with technology, but also provides an end to end integrated digital solution such as managing inventory efficiently, maintaining transaction history, collaborating with doctors, centralised system for multiple stores, etc.
Wrapping Up
Digital transformation has taken over the retail sector and retail pharmacies are no exception. To fulfil the changing needs of customers and expand their reach, pharmacies must adapt and pivot to a digital presence.
To know more about Medify’s offerings for Retail Pharmacies, please get in touch with us on +91 8879888800.
