ePharmacy — eFantasy

With growing technology, transport and innovation human life has been made much easy now. Survival is no more a struggle and hence we all have been shifting our ideology from basic needs to wants (convenience)

e-commerce is in perfect sync with this ideology, not to mention the amount of business flow this sector has got in recent times, there are many industries which are trying to boost their business using the same principle of convenience, ex: Food, fashion, groceries, etc., though we all have been craving for convenience there is one industry still trying to figure it’s way to make things happen — ePharma.

Let us try to build a system where we can address the major concerns of ePharma and the solutions for the Indian Context

For some stats:

1. https://www.mobicommerce.net/blog/b2b-ecommerce-trends-statistics/
2. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare-systems-and-services/our-insights/trends-disrupting-pharmacy-value-pools-and-potential-implications-for-the-value-chain

Problem statement 1:

Venturing into the B2C market of ePharmacy.

Economic times

Challenges:

1. Placing an order by the user — The legibility of the prescription given by a doctor and prescription as mandatory in many cases.
2. Last mile delivery — apart from chronic conditions which have repetitive orders many other medical conditions need immediate delivery of medicines.
3. Government regulations.
4. Storage of the medicine before reaching it to the user — vehicles with temperature controls.

Unlike the B2B where the entire process was built around the business development, In B2C we shall have the user as the center of our ideation process.

Imagine that a user is sick, what actions would one perform? (In order)

• Would try to search for the nearest doctors available and book a consultation (Ignoring the self-medication prior to that) or would call a family doctor.
• Get a prescription after the consultation.
• Take the prescription to the nearest pharma store for medicines, if too sick or already knows an ePharma would order online.

Let us divide the process to 3 different stages and try to come up with the problem statement and the possible solutions for the same.

1. Before — ordering the medicine:

• Have to search for a doctor
• Consult a doctor for appropriate medicine to take

2. During — ordering the medicine:

• In case of an existing prescription — one can just upload it and wait for the customer executive to call and confirm the quantity and price of the order for cash on delivery
• In the case of no prescription — there are limitations on what medicines can be ordered — Answered under P1

3. After — ordering the medicine:

• There has to be a continuous status update of the process
• A call from the Customer executive for the confirmation/rejection update — Answered under P1
• An estimate of time for the medicine delivery
• The medicine has to be delivered — Answered under P2

Combining the challenges and the process flow

Answeres

• P1 — Due to heavy government regulations (for good) on which medicines can be delivered online a prescription is mandatory. In case of non-OTC (Over the counter) medicines due to which many orders fall under the rejected category. To solve this problem, we can schedule a call to the user with a certified doctor once we receive the order and can generate a prescription for the same and process the order, though there are certain limitations as some conditions need a physical examination before suggesting a prescription.
• P2 — There are two types of medical conditions in general chronic and nonchronic. As a person who needs medicine for chronic conditions which need a repetitive medication for longer periods can pre-order and might have some time to spare but in other cases where immediate medication is needed the problem boils down to getting the medicines delivered on the day of ordering. Hence the problem boils down to last mile delivery which is a bigger topic to cover.

Conclusion:

Let us take a step back and try to have a bird eye view of the same, in case of B2C to have a most effective working model of ePharmacy I would suggest to approach the problem form the root where the user is sick rather than scratching the surface of just ordering the medicine after he knows what to order.

A user’s problem statement is to get rid of the sickness — not to consult a doctor or not to get medicines delivered in hours. One such startup which is solving the problem in an effective way is Lenskart, where the user wants to have a clear vision not a consultation with an ophthalmologist. Hence Lenskart has made eye checkup at their stores as free making it a formality to answer the major concern of ordering a lens and frame to have a good vision.

• Coming back to ordering medicines, we can have a service where once a user comes to order a medicine we shall know what is he looking for like the type of medicine, the quantity if he has a valid prescription. While ordering the medicine in case of doubt, calling up a doctor to ask for consultation or confirmation of existing medication should be on the go step with “Talk to a doctor” option which can be charged or given as a free service.
• Another way to tackling the same would be having virtual stores where a doctor’s clinic will be provided with a portal to order the medicine on behalf of the user once a patient is done with the consultation — clerks at the doctor’s office can take care of it. — This method is highly scalable and the user need not roam around for medication and the entire hassle of ordering medicine will be taken away.
• One more variation of the same would be to have integration with teleconsultation startups like Docs App once the consultation is done and there can be an option to order medicines in the same flow.

The UI has to take care of getting the user exactly what he is looking for and in case of a valid prescription one may need only some of the medications in some quantity and repetition of the orders (This can be taken care while ordering or after delivery by the delivery executive — preferred or sending them a reminder)

Metrics to measure:

• The average amount of time taken to deliver a medicine
• Number of repetitive orders of chronic conditions
• User ratings after the delivery
• Count of the medicines frequently ordered by the users to have in stock for immediate delivery
• Count of requests for different types of options like the repetition of an order, reminders, partial orders of a prescription etc.., futures can be built as per the user feedback
• Nonavailability of the medicines count and type

To avoid:

One mistake I have observed in the ePharmacy at present — Campaigns like order medicines on Tuesday for 20% off to acquire users. Dissecting the same.

• Our thought process has been biased by all the eCommerce around with offer schemas to attract users
• Unlike eCommerce where I can wait for my order, pharma shouldn’t be perceived the same
• A user is not going to order on Tuesday if he is sick on Monday just because there is 20% off -This might attract only those users who have a chronic condition
• The best customer acquisition strategy to have loyal users is to give them the best service, not the best offer.

Problem statement 2:

To expand an existing B2B market of the pharmacy distribution system.

Challenges of the existing system.

1. Heavy logistics
2. Storage of the medicine before and during delivery — some medicines need temperature controlled storage making it difficult for the transport
3. Weak or no forecasting
4. Returns of near expiry products
5. Government regulations — can be ignored

Let us build the priority order and then try to address them, the priority would be 2, 3, 1, 4, 5

• The above priority order was chosen as if you can’t store the medicines in good condition there is no point to discuss the entire flow, hence 2 comes first (Irony!)
• At present having a transport vehicle with temperature control in quite easy, a little expensive but easy, most of these medicines need a cold and dry storage place and it is achievable.
• Now we shall move to point 3, in order to come up with the entire logic of transport one needs to know what goes where and when. Building an order forecast system for all pharmacy stores shouldn’t be a bad idea, in brief, we can build an inventory saas product or use an existing one and make the pharma stores to use it and on top of it build an analytical tool which gives them the data of what all to procure for the next time and we use the same. Remember what Redbus did at first? — build a system that helps bus operators to ease their booking process and then make them your partner for increased revenue.
• Needless to say, we can have a portal through which all the pharma stores and distributors can order as per their requirement for the future procurement.
• Now that we have sorted the storage and the forecast, we can invest our time onto transportation, having data from multiple pharmacy distributors/stores should ease the entire process of the logistics.
• You might have heard of “Devil is in the detail” sure! but the “Detail is in the data”. Once we have the inventory management system giving us the data of forecasting, it does include the medicine expiry date as well and hence we can reduce the inventory of unsold medicine and the returns due to near expiry date.
• Pharma has a huge layer of government regulations around it but in case of B2B supply of medicine, they can be of the last priority as there will be license regulations for the industry.

Conclusion:

The process discussed here is all round of a structured system which completes a loop of well designed or the end goal of a futuristic industry model, in case of a well-established pharma distributor they can go on with their usual operating model alongside dedicating some resources to test this model out and then expand it as per the results.

Metrics to measure:

Two retailers = pharma retailer who uses the inventory management system and the one who doesn’t

• The difference in the total revenue and maintenance time between the two retailers
• The number of returns between the two retailers
• Feedback from the two retailers

The World’s Biggest Problems = Biggest Business Opportunities — Bold, Peter and Steven