"We wanted a world-class technology platform that would help us bring innovation to Pakistan’s pharma retail industry. I am very happy and grateful to the Retail Pro team that they took the initiative with us, understood the use-case, and implemented this successfully. This is a game changer in the field of community pharmacy."

- Yasir Hashmi, General Manager of Operations of Ehad Healthcare

Ehad Healthcare Uses Retail Pro Prism as the Foundation for Community Pharmacies

We interviewed Mr. Yasir Hashmi, General Manager of Operations of Ehad Healthcare in Pakistan and expert in community pharmacies, to hear how Retail Pro Prism is helping the retailer bring innovation to Pakistan’s pharma retail industry.

Why did you choose Retail Pro? What business challenges are you solving with the software today?

We wanted a world-class technology platform that would help us bring innovation to Pakistan's pharma retail industry. We are the first to introduce the ‘healthcare under one roof' concept, i.e. pharmacy, lab, and doctors in a single building. Hence, we needed software that would not only manage our inventory and sales efficiently, but also had the ability to integrate with other solutions like clinic management and help us provide a great customer experience.

Using Retail Pro, we are carrying out day-to-day business with ease and efficiency, but we are also able to manage FEFO-based lots, re-order based on min-max levels, and introduce innovations such as Dosage labels.

In my opinion, the beauty of Retail Pro is its flexible reporting. The way one can export reports into Excel, filter and extract data for any purpose is great. This is a huge advantage and normally you can't find flexibility to this extent in today's software. This was one of the major reasons for choosing Retail Pro. And above all our Retail Pro Business Partner, Computing Solutions Pakistan's, support is extraordinary.

Has your Retail Pro been customized for your business needs? What challenges or needs were these customizations designed to address?

We did an excellent project with Retail Pro in which we designed system-generated Dosage Labels. These are not just labels – they are actually a patient's complete record, showing what medicine he has been taking and in what doses. We are the first standalone pharmacy in Pakistan to introduce Patient Dosage Labels, which are an effective tool for customer engagement.

I am very happy and grateful to the Retail Pro team that they took the initiative with us, understood the use-case, and implemented this successfully. This is a game changer in the field of community pharmacy. I am confident that as we continue to work together, we can bring about many more necessary innovations.

Retailers are striving to unify commerce. What does that mean for your company? What are you doing to unify commerce?

Our Dosage Labels carry QR codes that are linked to our e-store for easy re-ordering by the customer. Also, Computing Solutions Pakistan's Omni-Connect solution has made it possible to us to effectively integrate Retail Pro Prism with our Shopify-based e-store. This enables us to ensure inventory updates and smooth order flow across the organization.

Pakistan is still in the process of establishing its primary healthcare system. The future is to develop comprehensive primary healthcare as per international standards in which Electronic Health Records systems are connected with community pharmacies. Thanks to Retail Pro, we have patient records available now.

What does the future look like for your company? What are some of your plans for growth, expansion, customer initiatives, etc.?

Dosage Labels are just the first step. What is important about dosage is that if a certain patient is unable to take a certain drug in the prescribed quantity due to a medical condition, the pharmacist can intervene. Similarly, in the area of drug-to-drug interaction, if two drugs are being given to a patient that counteract with each other and cause any harmful effect to the patient, the system could give a warning and prompt the pharmacist to intervene.

System-based interventions such as these are not being done anywhere in Pakistan's community pharmacy space. We want to be the first to take such innovative steps.

Going forward, we also want to integrate the Retail Pro POS with our Electronic Health Records systems. Plus, we are planning to have 10 community pharmacies in Karachi and 5 in other cities by 2021.

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