Oxford Pharmacy Store

Oxford Pharmacy Store is an NHS organisation and part of Oxford Health NHS FT. The company was established in 1988 and is based in Kennington, Oxford where it employs 34 people at its warehouse facility.

The business specialises in the wholesale and distribution of prescription medicines and other pharmaceutical products to NHS hospitals and other healthcare providers across the whole of the UK.

Over 1000 products are kept in stock, with items being sourced from around 50 UK based suppliers. On the sales side, the business handles around 150 orders per day which are predominantly received by email and fax. Alongside the pressures of running an efficient general business operation, the company must also maintain strict regulatory compliance. Here, Commercial Stock Manager Michael Timms tells us more about the issues the business faces and how OrderWise is helping to maintain efficiency and deliver end-to-end traceability.

With these more stringent regulations, together with business growth and expansion, Oxford Pharmacy Store found that compliance was becoming more onerous, time consuming and costly. Using an Excel based system was no longer suitable and as Michael tells us;

“The business needed a system with more power and ability in terms of traceability.”

As a business managing a large product range, multiple suppliers and customers, as well as having strict regulations to comply with, Oxford Pharmacy Store needed a system that was both robust and adaptable. Key requirements were features to increase efficiency and provide time saving functionality, as well as powerful product traceability features.

“Comprehensive stock control and visibility, forecasting, management of special prices and pricing structures, Excel imports/exports, batch traceability and tight control of expiry dated products were all important required elements.”

The challenges faced by the business and the system requirements being sought led the business to OrderWise and the company has been using the system since 2012.

Michael goes on to discuss the benefits Oxford Pharmacy Store has seen by stating that:

“Being demand driven and dealing with expiry dated products, it’s important that we’re not buying too many products so as to reduce the risk of wastage. OrderWise gives us tight control of stock and key information is available at a glance, so we can see how many products we’re selling and to where we’re selling them.”

With increasing regulation being a growing challenge for businesses in the pharmaceutical and healthcare sector, Michael notes that:

“OrderWise has made maintaining compliance easier and we’re able to trace products and handle any recalls much more effectively and efficiently than we could previously.”

Streamlining processes and increasing efficiencies are at the heart of OrderWise and Michael also points out that:

“We’re able to manage special prices and different pricing structures much better and we need less staff than we would if we were using manual processes. Being able to customise documentation and output via email is more efficient and saves us both time and costs.”