Counter Talk

Employing Digital Tools

How small drug stores can leverage technology to compete against larger players

By Chloe Hahn

Chloe Hahn, director of marketing and sales, Dynamsoft

The market size for pharmacies and drug stores in the United States is more than $300 billion, according to IBISWorld research. With such competition, is there a way for smaller independent drug stores to compete with large, established chain pharmacies? Technology uses are likely critical in such an endeavor.

For customer-facing technology, a point-of-sale system is almost a requirement today. There are numerous known efficiencies they offer. Not only do they speed processing of transactions, but they can also process many payment types too.

When selecting a POS, there are various hardware decisions to make, such as a good quality keyboard, receipt printer and barcode scanner. These devices must hold up to high usage and be speedy at doing so. As a result, the software behind the scenes also becomes important.

Barcoding and Document Processing Considerations

Developing an application to use barcodes is a complex and time-consuming process, but a drug store software solution will need to employ a barcode reading application. If a pharmacy opts to work with an application developer to create its system, it will need to consider open source and commercial barcode solutions.

Often, application developers will rely on opensource solutions. They will deliver the cost savings inherent with open source but at the expense of speed, reliability and comprehensiveness. So, drug store managers should be aware of these shortfalls. There are common barcode scanner issues in pharma that might be challenging for some barcode reader solutions, particularly if done with open source software.

Also, a small pharmacy might consider document capture capabilities. Paperwork continues to be prevalent in drug stores. There will be insurance claims, account creations using ID cards and so on. So, efficient document scanning can be helpful. The more nimble a small drug store can be, the more competitive it can remain via good customer service.

Optical Character Recognition, or OCR, technology is another capability to consider. In many document management systems, OCR is essential and used to extract text from scanned physical documents. So, in a pharmacy, it can be used to scan a customer’s ID and instantly and accurately capture basic information to process an insurance claim. It can save a lot of time versus manually entering data, let alone help remove data entry errors.

Working with an Application Developer

Understanding that you need basic technologies like a POS and barcoding is one thing. But finding an experienced and reliable application development team can be daunting and can make or break a start-up drug store. There are many factors to consider in finding an optimal partner.

For example, what are the design and build capabilities they offer? Do they only do desktop, or can they do mobile? Do their mobile capabilities include support for all common browsers regardless of platform or just iOS and Android app development?

Often, supporting multiple browsers is a more robust approach. It does not require a customer to download and install an app. It also removes a requirement to keep apps updated as a smartphone’s operating system changes.

You will also want to evaluate their project management approach. For example, what components are to be built in house, and which might need to be outsourced. Outsourcing some of the build is not uncommon. The use of software development kits can help reduce development time. These kits are off-the-shelf features that can be dropped into an application, but you might want to understand how much outsourcing is going to be done.

There is more work to do when building a solution compared with buying one. Still, many drug stores might find it worthwhile. The more customized they can get, the more they might uncover new levels of customer service they can use to differentiate their brand over larger, established players. dsn