“Pharmacy software” can mean the dispensing system the pharmacist runs, or the sales tool used by the brand selling to them. This article is about the second: organising visits, recording orders and passing them on to invoicing and logistics. The right scope depends on which tasks are holding you up.
Identify the problem before comparing tools
Follow five recent orders, from receipt to despatch. Note the re-keying, the waiting and the corrections. A wrong discount calls for work on commercial terms; a duplicate calls for better reconciliation between sources; a forgotten order calls for tracking of transmissions. These problems can coexist, but they are not solved by the same screen.
Bring in the sales admin team, a rep and whoever follows invoicing. A management team may like a dashboard while the sales admin team still spends an hour preparing the data that feeds it. The specification has to make that work visible.
- Observe
Follow real orders and note the re-keying and the blockages.
- Describe
Write down the rules, the exceptions and the data required.
- Test
Run a pilot with field sales, sales admin and logistics.
- Decide
Compare total cost, measured gains and the ability to leave.
The demonstration also has to show cases that were interrupted, corrected and rejected.
Six criteria to check against your own orders
1. The catalogue and the terms
Check the selling units, the prices excl. VAT, the effective dates, the volume tiers and the free goods. Ask for an order that straddles a threshold, then change the quantity. The result has to match the agreed price list and stay explainable. Keep a record of the rule applied at the moment of approval.
2. The channels you actually use
Rank your incoming orders by volume and by processing effort: visit, email, telephone, portal, file or partner feed. A useful integration covers a specific format, a frequency and error handling. A logo on a website does not guarantee that your own feed is supported.
3. The link to invoicing and logistics
Send a test order all the way to its recipient. Check the identifiers, the amounts, the address and the free lines. Then simulate a rejection: who receives the alert, where do you correct it, and how do you resend without creating a duplicate? How the system behaves on failure deserves as much time as the happy path.
4. Territories and responsibilities
The same pharmacy can belong to a national account and to a local rep. Set out who negotiates, who visits and how orders are attributed. Employees and independent sales agents sit in different legal frameworks; the VRP (a statutory employed travelling sales representative) belongs to the employed category. Our guide to VRP and independent sales agent status sets out these distinctions.
5. Mobile use
Try the app on the devices used in the field. Cut the connection, open a customer already loaded, prepare an order and then reconnect. Check what stays unavailable offline and how a price changed in the meantime is handled. The word “offline” has to be spelled out feature by feature.
6. The indicators and their definitions
Ordered, invoiced and paid are different stages. Ask which date drives each chart and how cancellations, credit notes and orders with no known amount are treated. The number of pharmacies that have bought recently is useful; it is not a direct measure of physical presence on the shelf.
Work out the total cost over 24 months
Add up the set-up fees, the recurring usage, the integrations, internal time, training and maintenance. For usage-based pricing, calculate at least three volumes: low, usual and high activity. For licences, count occasional users and separately billed features as well.
Hours recovered have operational value; they only become cash savings if they avoid a cost. Do not count a whole revenue increase as a benefit: it is the additional margin, after costs, that belongs in the calculation.
A worked example to set a sensible budget
Assumption: 300 orders a month take eight minutes of repetitive work each, or 40 hours. If the pilot shows that 25 of them can be recovered, valued internally at €30 an hour, the capacity freed up is worth €750 a month. A project costing more than that may be justified for other reasons, but not by this gain alone.
Add separately the errors genuinely avoided, based on documented credit notes and reshipments. Deduct the time still needed to handle exceptions. This approach gives you a defensible budget without claiming that every brand pays back its software in three months.
Organise a pilot and an exit
Shortlist two solutions and give both the same pack: a test catalogue, the terms, representative orders and transmission requirements. Agree an owner, a duration and acceptance criteria. The timetable will depend on the feeds available and on data quality; a new connection should be costed as a separate piece of work.
- →Before the pilot: inventory the data, the access rights and the error cases.
- →During: compare the totals, check the recipients and observe usage without constant hand-holding.
- →Before rolling out: validate support, backups, exports and the fallback procedure.
Salesia covers the field CRM, orders and their follow-up, with connections to Sellsy, Pennylane and eLogik. Have the scope of your own feeds confirmed during the demonstration and in the proposal. The final choice should rest on that verified workflow and on an explicit cost.
Compare using your own working cases
Catalogue, terms, territories and orders: let us prepare a demonstration where the sales admin team and the field can check the same workflow.
To assess the reporting features, ask for a sales dashboard with defined indicators, visible sources and comparable cohorts.
By Anatole Briant
By Anatole Briant
By Anatole Briant
CEO of Salesia
Anatole Briant is CEO of Salesia. He is your contact for demonstrations, pricing and partnerships.