It's your business - October 2013

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OCTOBER - 2013 ISSUE NO.5

MOVING FORWARD EXPERT STRATEGIES TO GROW YOUR BUSINESS IN AN ERA OF PBS AND REGULATORY REFORM

PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

PHARMACY LAYOUT

AUTOMATING YOUR STORE THE RIGHT DATA

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Pharmacy News Team Editor: Chris Brooker T: (02) 8484 0908 E: christopher.brooker@ cirrusmedia.com.au News Editor: Nick O’Donoghue T: (02) 8484 0825 E: nicholas.odonoghue@ cirrusmedia.com.au

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CONTENTS Professional Programs Sarah McInerney, RX Management

Sub Editor: Gill Canning T: (02) 8484 0786 E: gill.canning@cirrusmedia.com.au

Robert Allen, CEO, Dose Innovations

Sub Editor: Michael Crooks T: (02) 8484 0806 E: michael.crooks@cirrusmedia.com.au

Paul Harris, IMS Pharmacy Relations

Junior Account Manager: Louise Dewes T:(02) 8484 0812 E:louise.dewes@cirrusmedia.com.au

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OCTOBER 2013

Journalist: Kirrilly Burton T: (02) 8484 0874 E: kirrilly.burton@cirrusmedia.com.au

Advertising Senior Account Manager: Fiona Duke T: (02) 8484 0721 E: fiona.duke@cirrusmedia.com.au

2:33:27

Automation

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The Right Data Business Update

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Peter Saccasan, Director, Pharmacy Services, RSM Bird Cameron.

Store Layout

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Jason McRostie, JBM Projects

Production Sales Co-ordinator: Lara De Carli T: (02) 8484 0603 E: lara.decarli@cirrusmedia.com.au Graphic Designer: Louis Santos T: (02) 9422 2724 E: louis.santos@cirrusmedia.com.au Managing Editor: Nicola Garrett Circulation & Subscription Inquiries T: (02) 8484 0888 or 1300 360 126 Subscriptions: $119.00(incl GST) a year within Australia. Overseas prices apply.

Pharmacy News does not accept responsibility for claims made by manufacturers for their products. www.pharmacynews.com.au

Help thyself T

Cirrus Media Tower 2, Level3, 475 Victoria Avenue, Chatswood, NSW 2067, Australia Locked Bag 4700 Chatswood Delivery Centre, NSW 2067, Australia Phone (02) 8484 0888 Fax (02) 8484 0633 ABN 80 132 719 861 www.cirrusmedia.com.au © Copyright Cirrus Media, 2013

here has been a lot of negativity around community pharmacy in the lead-up to the recent federal election. Accelerated price disclosure - the greatest source of angst - will most likely continue regardless of the stripe of government. However, the new Coalition government has indicated it may look more favourably on the possibility of some kind of compensation for pharmacy. Certainly, the success of the Guild’s petition will provide food for thought for many MPs. But time will tell....

Regardless, what recent events have reinforced is that the most effective response must come from within the profession itself, and drilling down - from

within each individual pharmacy in response to its own particluar situation.

We recently held our first-ever Pharmacy News ‘Its Your Business’ seminar. Delegates heard from a range of inspiring presenters explaining particular techniques or technologies or approaches available to pharmacies considering how they move forward in response to economic and regulatory changes.

In this issue, we provide a selection of these presentations, and hope that you too can pick up a tip or an insight that may help you improve and modify your practice.

Regards Chris Brooker

Average Net Distribution Period ending Mar ‘12 7088

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DIABETES PROGRAM

Planning for professional services Professional services are becoming ever more vital to the future of community pharmacy. Sarah McInerney provides a prcoess for guiding a person with diabetes through your pharmacy Sarah McInerney, General Manager Dispensary and Professional Services at RX Management

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he challenge of connecting clinical practice to patient outcomes is inherent to any disease area, but particularly in diabetes.

Patients are often disengaged, burdened by negative messages and the complexity of the condition. Pharmacies are burdened by time pressure and are in need of training and workflow improvements to meet patient outcomes.

Capitalising on new revenue streams from services, such as MedsChecks and Diabetes MedsChecks makes business sense. Pharmacies are already equipped with the tools – qualified pharmacists – and professional services support, and receive a financial incentive for providing the service.

Pharmacies that can overcome workflow challenges and implement a Diabetes Professional Services Program set themselves apart from the discounters. It takes work, but by focusing on tools of engagement for employees and customers to improve implementation, pharmacies are well on the way to creating new revenue streams that will safeguard their future.

BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER A diabetes service plan for engaging your customers, loosely structured, might look like this: 1. Dispense medication – identify the patient and look for relevant teachable moments; 2. Start a conversation; 3. Provide the customer with a short term achievable action plan were you can both share the results; 4. Invite the customer back to provide feedback; 5. Repeat .

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Structured self-monitoring reduces the burden of testing for the patients and provides relevance which engages them; they become willing participants in the process and return for repeat visits.

Those repeat visits spell additional touch points with a customer and possible revenue opportunities.

To engage with customers, start by being a participant in a conversation about a customer’s lifestyle needs, rather than giving them information and moving on to the next person.

Use consistent language that breaks down disease management into smaller, manageable steps.

Use structured self-monitoring tools as a way to focus a conversation on a patient’s current treatment patterns and to see beyond HbA1c to understand different glycaemic fluctuations that requires a tailored treatment approach for every patient.

YOUR PATIENT The long term complications related to living with diabetes are linked to high blood glucose levels. Good glycaemic control can reduce these complications.

Blood glucose control, however, is not the only factor that will determine whether a person will develop diabetes complications. Other factors, like family history and high risk health behaviours such as smoking, also play a role.

Take your average diabetes patient, Max - a 46-year-old long-term smoker, with a number of unsuccessful attempts to quit. Max’s mother is a type 2 diabetic and developed retinopathy at the age of 65, and his father has a history of stroke.

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DIABETES PROGRAM

Max also has type 2 diabetes and an average HbA1C of 8.4 per cent.

He is currently taking Metformin (1g/day), ACEI, aspirin and a statin.

Max arrives in your pharmacy with a prescription for Gliclazide 60mg. The introduction of a new medication is a red flag.

• Why was the gliclazide introduced?

• Has Max been adherent with his metformin?

• Does Max monitor his blood glucose in a structured way?

These questions are important because we know that diabetic patients are non-compliant with taking their medications often only taking their medications 50 per cent of the time. Gliclazide can result in Max experiencing hypoglycaemic events; and an awareness of his HBA1c without an awareness of his daily blood glucose variations limits our ability to predict the effect of compliance and the addition of a new medication.

To enable the pharmacist to engage with Max in a positive and effective manner, we need more information. That information is gained through structured self-monitoring of Max’s blood glucose, and it is a collaborative process.

The first engagement point is establishing whether Max has the right tools and skills to monitor his blood glucose?

Pharmacy assistants and pharmacists can utilise the Accu-Chek’s Meter Match tool to ensure Max has the right meter to match his needs and lifestyle. This is a health solution sale.

Providing a tailored solution for Max individualises the engagement. Providing Max with an Accu-Chek e-voucher for the meter removes any financial barrier to the purchase of the metre and contributes to your meter sales.

It’s not enough to simply sell a product, educating them on how to use, relating the information that can be gained from monitoring directly to improvements in their diabetes and and inviting them to come back to the store is imperative to ensuring you build a relationship with a customer.

MEETING THE STANDARD HbA1C has long been considered the clinical standard to determine overall glycaemic control and the risk of developing serious long-term conditions is relative to an increase in HBA1c.

It is a valuable long-term measure of good diabetes management, however it does not reveal day-to-day and intra-day blood glucose fluctuations.

It is important to understand that HBA1c can identify hyperglycemia but not hypoglycaemia or post-prandial glucose.

HBA1c does not provide information on the effect of meals, physical activity, stress reduction techniques and medications on blood glucose levels. For pharmacy the good news is that structured self-monitoring of blood glucose can provide all that information.

Using a tool like the Accu-Chek 3600 View 3 Day Profile Tool can show variations in blood glucose levels throughout the day, including the impacts of food intake, medication or activity.

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The Accu-Chek 360 View 3 Day profile Tool provides a structured monitoring framework that guides people like Max to test preand post- meals and before bed for three days. The timeframe and testing regime is not too onerous for the patient and ensures their commitment. The analysis by the pharmacists ensures their engagement in both the outcome and their disease state.

With his five medications, and out-of-target HBA1c indicating his diabetes is not well controlled, Max may benefit from a MedsCheck or Diabetes MedsCheck, improved outcomes through identification of clinical intervention, and a collaborative management approach through involvement of his GP, diabetes educator, and pharmacist.

His current script for gliclazide 60mg provides an engagement point to speak with Max about his medications. Rather then overwhelm him, we can break the journey down into stages of information gathering and engagement. The first stage is to introduce the new medications and counsel of the benefits of the medication and potential side effects. As we are introducing a new medication with potential side-effects this is the opportunity to counsel Max on using the Accu-Chek 3600 View 3 day Profile Tool to highlight the benefit of following a structured SMBG routine.

The tool ensures that the patient receives an action plan in writing and it gives a pharmacist a reason to invite the patient back into the store to benchmark their progress.

Max returns to the pharmacy the following week and his monitoring using the Accu-Chek 360 View 3 day profile tool is assessed. The effectiveness of the new medication can be reviewed as well as whether he suffered any hypoglycaemic events. You schedule the next time Max should undertake the Accu-Chek 360 View 3 day profile tool over the next three months.

Max returns to the pharmacy two months later, having visited his diabetes educator. HIs HbA1C has dropped. Even though his numbers are looking better, you review his completed three day profile and a closer look at his blood glucose values reveals significant variations

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DIABETES PROGRAM

The Structured Testing Program (STeP) study1 showed that over the course of the day, including a number of post-prandial blood insulin-naĂŻve patients with poorly controlled type 2 diabetes can glucose spikes and hypoglycaemia. benefit from a structured program that requires them to monitor Two patients with the same HbA1C can experience very different their blood glucose levels at seven points each day over three days. glycaemic fluctuations and may require significantly different This creates a patient profile that can be used to improve glycaemic treatment approaches. control by facilitating targeted and timely changes in treatment.

As studies reveal the correlation between unresolved or Structured self-monitoring of blood glucose leads to greater escalating glycaemic abnormalities and diabetes-related diseases, it accuracy and control because it provides a clearer picture of the is becoming more important to identify and treat hypoglycaemia, impact of food, activity and medication throughout the day. post-prandial hyperglycaemia and glycaemic variability. recognise these changes and to act This ofablood A D _is Pwhere N P Rstructured O M A R _self-monitoring 1 3 . pdf P g e glucose 1 2 1 / 0 2 / 1 It 3 allows , 4 :patients 1 3 to PM accordingly, in consultation with their healthcare team. u (sSMBG) comes in.

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AUTOMATING PHARMACY

Getting automated Robert Allen, CEO, Dose Innovations and Think Pharmacy asks the key questions pharmacy owners must answer when faced with the decision of automating their dispensary.Why should they automate?, what are the automation options? and how can the investment be maximised?

P

harmacy is in the middle of a perfect storm.

Retail sales are down, PBS reform has just been accelerated and wage and rent costs are continuing to rise.

Most of my colleagues are switching into survival mode, believing, as I do, that professional services are the key to retaining margins into the future. The challenge they face is how to do this efficiently.

You could employ an additional resource to beef up your services offering, increasing your staffing costs at the same time.

Personally, I chose to automate my dispensary, and free my existing staff to implement my service offering.

I’ve seen significant benefits already and achieved better results than if I’d employed additional resources.

These benefits include: • Professional development opportunities for my current staff , allowing them to develop their skills • Positive and consistent customer experience by automating the dispensary • Available time for my pharmacists to consult, and recommend additional treatment options for customers • Increase in sales and services from my existing sized premises, even creating space to install a separate consultation room • Extra value-add services can now be offered by my pharmacists who visit local retirement villages and offer activities such as dose packing services.

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WHY SHOULD I AUTOMATE? I see many pharmacists trying to solve a variety of problems through dispensary automation. Most of them can be sorted into three main categories.

1: Saving time: replace low level tasks with high payback activities. Automating the menial and repetitive tasks frees up your skilled staff , allowing them to focus on increasing sales and consultancy services.

2: Gaining space: or generating more sales from the same space.

While traditional shelves or drawers store up to 800 packs per linear metre, automation can hold up to 4000 packs per linear metre, so you will need a lot less space in your dispensary.

Use this space to your advantage by: – Adding a counselling room – Growing your DAA’s business – Adding a new service such as naturopathy – Increasing your retail space – Reducing your store size and rent.

3: Adding structure to the pharmacy - Easily manage your valuable inventory – Consistent customer experience, you can better cope during busy times – Get a locum – Get some more business, visit retirements villages or health groups with your free time.

The advantages for pharmacists who have already been through this process are improvements in time, space and organisation.

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AUTOMATING PHARMACY

WHAT ARE MY AUTOMATION OPTIONS? First, identify which part of your pharmacy you need to automate.

Which tasks are taking up most of your staff resources?

• DAA Packing • DAA Checking • Dispensing to customers.

This will determine which automation systems you need to evaluate.

Research your options, and educate yourself on each system currently available in Australia, and its market share overseas. There are different systems and methods of automation and each has unique advantages and disadvantages.

For example, if automating your dispensary you could compare a channel system vs a shelf system. If you’re automating your dose packing you could compare Webster vs Tosho machines.

Regardless of the brand name, remember that the Australian automation industry is still in its infancy, while overseas markets like Europe have been well established for over a decade. Global trends can help to forecast the Australian market’s progress, which is why I searched overseas extensively when I went through this process

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myself. I found some excellent brands of robotic machinery, and saw a real need for this machinery in Australia.

Whichever system you look at, make sure you compare apples with apples. Ensure you fully understand the individual features of each system, and exactly how it will solve your unique dispensary problems.

In my experience, you normally get what you pay for.

Robert Allen, CEO of Think Pharmacy (left) and Pharmacist Brian Spooner (right) at the Think Pharmacy Kippa Ring store, next to their Rowa Vmax

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“Whichever system you look at, make sure you compare apples with apples. Ensure you fully understand the individual features of each system, and exactly how it will solve your unique dispensary problems.”

While a system might be less expensive now, it may cost more in service fees, or it may not save you as much time as the more expensive system. Ensure that the system will fully solve the problem that you’re experiencing, don’t just settle for half-solutions. It’s all about Return on Investment (ROI) and not price.

Finally, request a site visit with existing customers who have automated their dispensaries using the system you’re interested in.

They will be an excellent source of information on how the system works, and the quality of support available.

So you’re investing a significant amount of funds into automation – how can you make sure you maximise the benefits to your business?

DISPENSARY AUTOMATION. Automate more of your customers. Automating using a channel system is based on the Pareto principle (the 80:20 rule) suggesting that you only need to automate 20% of your drug stock. This only partial automation, as pharmacy drawers are still required for the other 80% of your items.

Shelf systems such as the Rowa machines that I’ve chosen, do not rely on the Pareto rule, as 97% of pharmacy stock may be stored in the machine, without the need to use additional drawers.

This achieves greater efficiencies as all your stock is stored and retrieved from the one place, and managed in the one process.

Essentially you automate far more of your customers.

Involve your team with the implementation of your machine and be amazed at how creative they can be with the extra time they will save, work with them to set KPI’s for them and your pharmacy.

Grow your business – with automation you are now fit for future growth in your Dose Administration Aid service, or by visiting sports clubs or retirement villages.

DOSE ADMINISTRATION AIDS AUTOMATION When people think of Dose Administration Aids, they normally think “Webster Packs”, which I personally have found to be time consuming, and fraught with human error even if using a Webster machine.

But there are alternatives, such as the Tosho Xana that produces packettes. Each packette can hold up to eight doses, and the machine can output up to 50 doses per minute.

These machines can hold up to 400, individually calibrated cassettes of drugs, meaning you don’t need to change canisters frequently.

Dispensing errors are reduced and patient safety increased through automation. The error rate is equivalent to 5 in every 100,000 doses; this is up to six times less than competitor’s machines. This figure is reduced further if you couple your packing machine with a checking machine, which can check and verify the contents of each pouch or accuracy.

I have found the Tosho machines to be efficient, effective, and highly accurate, so well worth investigating when you’re considering automating your DAA service.

The current outlook doesn’t have to be bleak for your business.

Community pharmacies are still best placed to offer much-needed health services and advice to the community, and this won’t be changing anytime soon. It’s up to us as business owners to adjust our methods to cope with a fast-changing world.

I believe that automation is a key weapon in my business’s future survival, and I can’t think of a better time to implement it than now. ◆

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DATA

Data vital to success Getting the right information about your business could be the secret to boosting your profitability, writes Paul Harris, IMS Pharmacy Relations manager, specialising in both dispensary and POS systems.

T

here is a lot of data within your pharmacy, but learning how to collate and use it can help you maximise your business potential.

With pharmacy bankruptcies hit record highs over the last three years, getting your store running to its maximum potential has never been more important.

STOPPING THE ROT Companies that provide data analysis systems can help pharmacy owners benchmark their businesses and work out how to make the most of their stores’.

It’s a changing pharmacy environment with the declining profitability of the dispensary – which in most cases is about 70% of your business – increasing competition between pharmacies, the growth of the discount model, supermarkets now having two aisles beautifully lit with all sorts of signage, with health and beauty products to affect your business.

You have to attract and retain customers. So if you know about your business you can react to your customers better. Don’t let them walk across the road for a 10% drop in price, make the value of your sale [and] the experience the customer gets worthwhile.

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Systems like IMS Compete can monitor products that are selling well, those that aren’t and provide information to stop the rot many community pharmacies are experiencing.

NEGOTIATIONS Data analysis services can help owners and managers when negotiating with manufacturers and wholesalers, arming you with vital information to counter their demands to buy more of their stock Suppliers come to you with reports of what you bought, but that doesn’t matter, it’s what you sell that’s more important.

The reports you get from data systems will be able to identify your top sellers, and products that you really should be stocking, so you can be armed with relevant up-to-date information.

You can say, ‘I’m actually growing your products against market trends, I want to maintain my deal without buying extra’, so straight away your money is used better by having less of the wrong stock on your shelves and more money either in the bank or buying stock you’re actually selling.

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DATA

TOTAL PHARMACY Using reports from data services, rather than ones generated by Point of Sale (PoS) or dispensary systems, enables you to look at the whole store, rather than one area at a time.

You can monitor your overall performance, OTC, ethical, by category and by manufacturer, so if manufacturers are both front and back of store you can combine what you sell so when you negotiate with them you can talk about the pharmacy in total.

A BROADER PERSPECTIVE While PoS and dispensing systems can tell you about your pharmacy, data analysis products can provide you with reports ranging from de-identified stores in the surrounding area, state, or across the country.

Not only can you use the data reports to compare how your store is performing compared with others, but you can also identify products that you should be stocking that you haven’t got in your store.

Having the right information can also inform other areas for your business, including marketing.

With data systems you can track the marketing of each product you I Y1 0 1 3 _ 0 0 0 _ RSM

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“You have to attract and retain customers. So if you know about your business you can react to your customers better. Don’t let them walk across the road for a 10% drop in price” stock and assess if your pricing structure is correct. You can see if you have been changing prices too often, maybe your mark-downs have been too great, you can identify the issue and adjust it to meet the market. ◆

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BUSINESS STRATEGY

Push for more scripts not the ONLY answer

W

ith the acceleration of PBS reforms, pharmacy owners can expect their average gross profit dollars per prescription to fall by somewhere between $2.00 and $2.50 over the next two years, but there are strategies to mititgate the impact, wrties Peter Saccasan, director of Pharmacy Services at RSM Bird Cameron.

The last 12 months have provided community pharmacy with some very tumultuous times, but with moves to accelerate price disclosure, the pressure to maintain the viability of businesses is set to rise.

CHANGE MANAGEMENT Managing change is about achieving the business growth you need to survive, but in a way that allows you to maintain and have stability around business profits.

Putting the head down and just going for more scripts is not going to be the answer. If the fall in gross profit dollars per script is $0.50, you need a 3.45% growth in scripts. If you want to make up for a $1 fall, it’s 7.14%, and if you want to go for $2.50, you’ll need a 20% growth in script numbers.

For the mathematically-inclined, if you do 1000 scripts and make an average of $14.50 a script, you’re making $14,500 from those scripts in gross profit. If you increase your script numbers to 1208, but you lose $2.50 per script, you’re going to make about the same money (in fact $14,496 which is $4 less), and that’s with a script growth of 20.8 per cent.

Pharmacy owners need to look at the whole of their business, and work to ensure each part of their pharmacy is working well.

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The business can be broken down into four areas to concentrate on: dispensary growth, retail growth, professional services growth and cost management.

THE DISPENSARY Your service as a health professional begins with the dispensary.

Given that you have script customers walking through the door, the key is to leverage this into the rest of the business. Allow customers to address all their health and related needs and not just get a script done.

The primary KPI in the dispensary will still be script growth. Initiatives such as SMS reminders, repeat storage and DAA

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BUSINESS STRATEGY

services can all add up to more scripts. Given the anticipated fall in script GP$, a 5% growth in script numbers enough to make up for around $0.65 in gross profit if you are coming down from the peak of around $14+ per script.

PROFESSIONAL SERVICES Professional services add to gross profit dollars and they enhance your position as a health professional, engendering customer loyalty by meeting more of their needs and enhancing their experience.

Services create a reason to talk to customers and create a message that’s not about price, but about adding value. Services can leverage back into both the dispensary, by attracting new customers, and the front of store retail performance, by increasing the average sale through product and solutions related to the services provided.

To measure services, look at the number of engagements per service that are enrolled. This will allow you to track progress and effort. Currently, PPIs are contributing around $0.20 or so per script.

Professional services can be broadened to non-government funded services developed by the pharmacy and a higher contribution per script should be expected.

Pharmacy owners should be looking to push this up to over $0.50 and to around $0.65 per script in the short term.

BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER Through this process we have not dealt with what is probably the starting point – what is your offer, your vision, your unique selling proposition that is going to underpin how you go about this – what stays, what goes, what’s missing.

Again, that’s another article.

THE 3 PS OF PROFESSIONAL SERVICE PROFESSION

PROCESS

PROFITABLE

RETAIL A key area for improvement is the front of store. The average pharmacy has revenue which is made up of 75% of dispensary revenue or even more. This mean there is a huge upside opportunity in retail.

Are you just selling “stuff ” or do you have a retail strategy? This is not a new message and in itself is another article in its own right.

There are simple actions you can take to improve front of shop, like rationalising stock with poor turn. If you have product that turns over just once a year, then you have to question why you have it on the shelf. Stock intensity is another area that can be quickly assessed.

Around $1,400 per m2 seems to be the point where stock intensity begins to tell on sales that are generated. And it’s not about simply having lots of stock, but more of the right stock. In a pharmacy with 60,000 customers, if you sell an extra half a product per customer, you can increase retail sales by somewhere around $300,000. That adds $100,000 in gross profit – for little change in overheads.

Achieving even half this amount will go a long way towards recovering the lost GP from PBS reform. Even at this level, you are pulling back around another $0.85c of the GP$ lost to PBS reform.

COST MANAGEMENT

With $0.40 left to go, we turn now to our last of the four areas: cost management. Cutting costs for savings sake is never advocated. Costs need to be managed to ensure you have the right resources available a. The strategies you are going to implement to implement your business strategy and are making them available as b. The initiatives or actions that need to be done to implement efficiently as possible. the strategy Technology can play a part in reducing costs, for example via c. Identify who is going to be responsible and by when d. Identify the KPI that will tell you and your team that you are on automated dispensing or digital marketing, and should be properly track. integrated into business practices so it is an enabler of the overall pharmacy offer. Joining a franchise or banner group can provide And then ensure you have a management process that meets efficiencies through scale and process, but does require commitment regularly to review your progress. It’s not easy to change habits, but you won’t get there unless you start. And the time is now. to compliance, starting with the owner. You can’t just want bits and A D _ I Y B R S MS E P _ 1 3 1 2 0 1 3 - 0 8 - 1 3 T 0pieces, 9 : 2 generally 8 : 4 8 what + 1 0you : 0have 0 signed up for works as a package, and you and your team need to buy into the “whole” offer. u But you can implement this by outlining in each of the four areas:

T: Freecall 1800 101 296 E: pharmacy@rsmi.com.au W: www.rsmi.com.au/pharmacy

Pharmacy business services connected across Australia.

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STORE LAYOUT

The right layout A s a specialist designer and owner of a shop-fitting company for the pharmacy and medical sector across Australia, Jason McRostie of JBM Projects shares what he sees working well to maximise foot traffic and sales in retail pharmacies.

Here are some factors to consider.

THE RIGHT LOCATION ◆ How competitive is the location? ◆ Are you anchored by a medical centre or hospital? ◆ How visible is your store? ◆ Is there adequate parking nearby? ◆ What is the volume of foot traffic and is this guaranteed in the long term?

TARGET AUDIENCES ◆ What are the demographics of those within 5km of your store? ◆ What are their requirements? ◆ What is their capacity to spend? ◆ Do they want scripts only, advice or services?

CASE STUDY

Have you talked to other retailers, allied health professionals or your local medical association to understand the profile of your area?

THE RIGHT TYPE OF STORE

◆ Do you need a ‘hole in the wall’ script dispensary, large store with multiple services and zones, a banner group outlet, an independent family store or a budget store? ◆ What will work best in your local area? ◆ What is the most profitable model for you? ◆ What functionality does your store require? ◆ How much space do you need? What technology will you require?

ADDING VALUE ◆ How much access will your pharmacists have with your customers? ◆ How quickly will you be able to dispense medication? ◆ What other services / advice can you offer? ◆ What convenience products can you offer to increase the value of each transaction?

Coral Coast Pharmacies – seven banner stores in the Bundaberg region West Bundaberg

SITUATION: ◆ New 412m2 store with 34 off-street car parks ◆ Involved detailed planning and advice to create new store innovations ◆ Clever layout required to maximise traffic flow and increase visibility of retail products

INNOVATIONS: ◆ Willach dispensing systems ◆ Workflow stations reducing customer waiting times ◆ Re-configurable, multi-purpose rooms for consulting, professional services and training ◆ Customer loyalty program ◆ Napoleon Perdis makeup display ◆ Consistent branding and customer information via in-store TV, catalogues, posters and brochure ◆ Gondola stands at eye-height, wide aisles for mobility, target lighting and shorter end displays for maximum product display

18 | IT’S YOUR BUSINESS | OCTOBER 2013

◆ Online orders and home delivery ◆ Compounding laboratory ◆ Provision for Consis robotic dispenser system ◆ Workspaces for medication packing team, sales support and medication review team to encourage collaboration

OUTCOMES: ◆ Increased access to pharmacists ◆ Increased capacity for professional services (MedsChecks, sleep studies, naturopath, blood pressure, weight, asthma and diabetes management, compounding for other pharmacies, Napolean Perdis events) ◆ Increased sales opportunities ◆ Consistent branding to create store identity and loyalty ◆ Finalist for Pharmacy of the Year at APP 2013 “Our new Pharmacy is brilliant and our retail sales have increased by 73%,” Coral Coast Pharmacies.

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TRENDS There are four main trends in pharmacy at present: Independent banners are being set up by pharmacists who want to own and operate their own business. They are finding that multiple stores can create buying power and increase the margins of retail products. This is especially relevant when stores are closely located.

Community health hubs are generating strong customer loyalty and repeat purchase by offering professional services relevant to their local demographic. From baby weighing to medication and health checks, customers value the free access to health professionals which creates a ‘reason to visit’.

Script-only stores work well in high traffic areas. They are easy to enter, small, attractive sites with compact design and efficient storage systems. Busy customers can speak with a pharmacist and pick up a script quickly. Social media is proving to be a popular marketing strategy for these stores.

Convenience products are responding to consumer demand for ‘more products and I Y 1from 0 1 fewer 3 _ 0 locations’ 0 0 _ J B M increasing 1 the 2 0competitiveness 1 3 - 0 9 - 1 of 2 T1 pharmacies against supermarkets. Consumers are buying less more

often and these retail outlets are capitalising on the ‘one stop shop’ opportunity by offering products often found in service stations.

RECOMMENDATIONS ◆ Study your local area to know who your customers are and what they want; ◆ Decide which model is best for you and your customers: banner, independent, script only or one-stop-convenience shop ◆ Give access to pharmacists and increase customer engagement – that and the drugs fight the threat of supermarkets ◆ Link with medical centres and hospitals ◆ Offer professional services that keep customers coming back ◆ Analyse your need for an automated dispensing system ◆ Consider social media as a marketing strategy (if relevant to your audience) ◆ Make sure your branding is consistent to create store identity and loyalty enquiries welcome.

1JBM : 0 Projects 6 : 5 1 National + 1 0 : 0project 0 Phone 07 3348 9488 or visit www.jbmprojects.com.au ◆

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