To improve the effectiveness of pharmacies, pharmacists are now using digital technology to streamline their processes. At the same time, they want to reduce the cost of overhead.
The main reason behind the move to digital is to eliminate the inefficiencies within the workflow process. and avoid errors by reducing reliance on manual tasks.
Thus, automated pharmacies smoothen business operations, promote competitiveness, and enhance the overall business quality.
The use of digital technology is considered to be a must to revolutionize the health industry. One report from McKinsey advised Indian companies to catch the digital wave to satisfy consumer demand “Indian consumers have been incredibly embracing digital technology. Today, Indian companies must be following suit.”
A pharmacy must manage many internal processes such as purchasing, billing and store maintenance, order information, customer details, and employee data.
Maintaining all these documents is a significant undertaking, and completing it repeatedly can be an overwhelming task. Additionally, the process becomes more complicated when one wants to conduct an audit or review.
This is why the digitization of pharmacies is getting more attention every day.
India is among the first countries to use electronic health records (DHRs). This report for 2019 by Royal Philips establishes that 76 percent of healthcare professionals from India have already implemented digital health records as part of their work.
Why is it necessary to digitize pharmacies?
To know why digitizing your pharmacy is necessary, let’s look at the day-to-day tasks required to run an online pharmacy and how digitization can enhance the efficiency of these operations.
Maintaining the Ambient Atmosphere:
Keeping the temperature at a certain level for sensitive drugs is essential. This is because the storage conditions affect the quality of the drugs. They have to constantly monitor their temperature and maintain it in a specific group. It is almost impossible to complete this task manually, and there is every possibility of error.
Pharmacists can use automated electronic devices that constantly keep the temperature at predetermined levels. Also, such devices alert in case of failure or power outage by sending SMS messages to the registered mobile number.
Purchase:
Pharmacies must constantly check the stock and make purchase orders for low-stock medicines to ensure all needed drugs are available in sufficient quantities. Making this check manually could result in being short of life-saving medications.
Through technology, pharmacies can view the availability of drugs and then approve purchases.
There are many steps in the process of completing an order. It includes taking new orders, deciding whether new drugs need to be ordered, verifying treatment requests, delivering the drug to the customer, and finally completing the payment. Automating this process is sure to improve overall efficiency.
Billing:
Once the order is successfully delivered, the pharmacy store issues an accurate bill for that purchase. This manual statement is a time-consuming operation with a high risk of mistakes. The pharma billing software concept can easily be managed in your pharmacy software.
Everything is automated and precise when you use Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software to manage your business. Additionally, you will receive complete information on remaining stock, the most popular goods, and income produced.
Point of Sale (POS):
The loss due to the expiry of the drugs causes significant damage to the pharmacy. And this is such a loss that can be controlled with the right system.
Using POS solutions provide easy ways to make payments. POS can be seamlessly integrated into an ERP system or eCommerce platform.
In this, you assign IDs to your employees and then add them to the POS; it is possible to monitor the orders processed by them and evaluate their performance.
Employee Management:
Digitizing the management of details of employees’ attendance, employee information leaves, salary, and attendance will speed up the process and make the onboarding of new employees simple.
Vendor Management:
Examining discounts offered by specific vendors, their delivery dates, and the quality of their products allows the user to make an informed decision in establishing and maintaining a relationship with the vendor.
Smart Tags:
You can label each package with smart labelling and RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags to facilitate identification when handling bulk orders. This helps in sorting products quickly.
Digital Payments:
At present, consumers are increasingly using online payment methods such as Unified Payment Interface (UPI) Credit and Debit Cards Net banking, Debit and Credit Cards, etc. The most commonly used way to pay in India is UPI since it allows transactions by a scan of the QR or barcode.
What’re the benefits of digitalize your pharmacy store?
Greater Accuracy:
Manual processes have a greater risk of causing mistakes. When you digitize your processes and reducing the chance of errors is drastically diminished.
Increased Effectiveness:
The automated handling of manual tasks is a huge time saver for your employees and helps them focus on pressing charges.
More Transparency:
The digitization of pharmacy processes increases transparency, identifies which tasks are performed by who, and gives reports and analysis.
What steps are to take to digitalize pharmacies?
1. Integrate Online Pharmacies:
Today, consumers are used to buying their essential items on the internet, which is why online medical selling platforms are growing in popularity. People are purchasing drugs online because buying medicines online offers many advantages.
To learn more about the advantages of online pharmacies to customers and pharmacists, check out our website’s blog.
Integrating an online pharmacy into your existing business is easy because it requires no infrastructure. Additionally, the returns on investment (ROI) are substantial and fast. If you are proficient in coding, you can make it happen independently. However, you’ll require a database to operate it correctly. To get around this, the only thing you need to do is reach out to an organization that offers the pharmacy platform.
2. Use ERP Software:
ERP software integrates various aspects of your business to simplify it. ERP software helps streamline numerous processes. Let’s look at what ways ERP software can aid you to manage your company.
- Do quick billing
- Keep on top of expired or soon to expire products
- Generate GST bills
- Create and maintain the records of all prescriptions for medicines.
- Generate stock reports
3. Utilize IoT Devices:
As we’ve mentioned, IoT devices have plenty to offer in enhancing your pharmacy store. Tags with RFID, scanners for barcodes, and temperature-monitoring devices must incorporate into your pharmacy system to enable wireless monitoring.
3. Setup Online Payment Facility:
Offer payment gateways to accept online payments from customers. For this, your system must have the Pharma billing software concept, that manages all your business billing and accounting.
Conclusion
We have discussed the most crucial aspects of the digitization of pharmacies. But, there’s no universal solution that works for all. It is unnecessary to incorporate all of these features in the pharmacy for digitization. You can select those that best suit your needs.
If you’re looking for the best software for Pharmacy industry and want to digitize it, kindly contact to SWIL team. The team will assist you in the best possible way.
A reader, an avid researcher, and a tech enthusiast. She loves to read and write about the latest technologies that are shaping the retail and wholesale business sector. She helps boost sales using the best technology has to offer for trade and commerce. In her free time, She loves to travel to new historical places and listen to light music.
