Touchwood is a group of (currently!) eight pharmacies around London and the Midlands.
The
privately-owned company is run by three professional pharmacists who
have known one another since University days. Touchwood is highly
regarded for its commitment to service in the local community, whether
embedded in a Health Centre, a local shop or in a busy shopping
precinct.
As the group expands it becomes important that
there is a common system across all the shops to manage stock and to
provide integrated management reporting. At the same time it has to be
easy enough for all staff to use with minimal training, and it has to
be flexible enough to deal with the high volume of new products, which
may not be on the system when they are delivered.
On top of
this, one of the shops runs a Londis-franchised convenience store as
well as the pharmacy, so the volume and variety of products is huge.
StoreTrader
Pharmacy Edition fills this prescription, but Touchwood wanted to make
it as easy as possible to run across an expanding group with minimal
management. So we worked with Touchwood to extend the system to allow
new products to be defined when they first turn up at any shop, and
then for that definition to be shared almost instantly with all the
other shops in the group. At the same time each shop can still set its
own retail price.
So now Touchwood's staff check in the
items they've ordered online using a handheld computer to scan each
item barcode. The system identifies them by searching its own database
and also a master database which is regularly refreshed from C+D and
other supplier data. On the rare occasions there is an item which isn't
found on the system the staff member creates it then and there using
the handheld keyboard, and notes the quantity delivered, the
description and the retail price. It's then passed to all the other
shops, who can change their sell price if they wish.
"The key thing for us is that the system is easy for our people to use,
and doesn't need a lot of maintenance. We don't want to employ
full-time IT staff !" says Bhupinder Dhaliwal. "We are particularly
pleased that Pacific are willing to listen and to change the system to
work the way we want it to"
Touchwood's
management team now have instant access to product sales and stock at
every shop, an accurate picture of the day's consolidated cash position
and the ability to set prices and transfer stock from head office. And
they can use their iPhones to get any report and see each store's sales
graphically!Find out more about our customers and how they use StoreTrader here.
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