As a traditional brick-and-mortar retail industry, the pharmaceutical retail industry mainly sells through physical stores such as pharmacies and health care product stores. However, in recent years, with the continuous advancement of technology and changes in consumer behavior, the pharmaceutical retail industry is also facing unprecedented challenges and opportunities. With the popularization of Internet technology and the promotion of policies, pharmaceutical e-commerce has developed rapidly. In the future, with the outflow of prescriptions and the in-depth development of Internet medicine, physical pharmacies and pharmaceutical e-commerce will go hand in hand, complement each other, and give full play to their respective advantages to serve consumers.
Brick-and-mortar pharmacies with a sense of innovation focus on the layout of pharmaceutical e-commerce or carry out new retail businesses such as O2O with the help of pharmaceutical e-commerce, while pharmaceutical e-commerce has also continuously deepened its cooperation with physical pharmacies, and the retail terminal presents a development model of deep integration of online and offline. Pharmaceutical retail enterprises provide additional medical services such as light diagnosis and treatment, AI consultation and other medical services in addition to drug sales, and actively build a pharmaceutical and health ecosystem of "big data + membership + Internet medical treatment + health management". The development model of pharmaceutical retail enterprises has been comprehensively transformed to a platform, and the traditional role of "selling drugs" has been upgraded to the role of "big health service".
In order to adapt to the rapid development of pharmaceutical retail enterprises, coupled with the demand for industrial upgrading of the pharmaceutical industry driven by the digital economy and the wave of AI, pharmaceutical retail enterprises urgently need to go digital, which can not only improve service efficiency, but also enhance customer experience, and ultimately promote the innovation and growth of the entire industry. It can be said that digital transformation has become the key to the sustainable development of the industry, which has not only changed the business model of the industry, but also has a profound impact on the entire pharmaceutical industry chain.
Breaking the Dead: The Challenges of Digital Transformation
The digital transformation of pharmaceutical retail enterprises is a key measure to cope with market competition, improve operational efficiency, and optimize consumer experience. With the popularization of the Internet and the growing demand of consumers for medicine and health, digital transformation has become an important strategic direction for the sustainable development of pharmaceutical retail enterprises.
In terms of the depth of digital requirements for pharmaceutical retail, it can be said that 2023 is a watershed year. Over the past decade, traditional monolithic systems have supported the main business operations of various enterprises. In 2022, during the epidemic, the vast majority of enterprises, driven by O2O, have experienced a profound gap in the experience of the peak support of the POS system and the support for the lean operation of the supply chain under the large business volume. In 2023, 10 pharmaceutical retail companies will upgrade their monomer systems to cloud-native management software that supports elasticity, which is a manifestation of the demand for digital capabilities to help better expand their businesses in the future.
At present, the current situation of digital transformation of Chinese pharmaceutical retail enterprises shows a positive development trend, but at the same time, it is also facing some challenges.
Judging from the current situation, more and more pharmaceutical retail companies are beginning to realize the importance of digital transformation and actively invest resources in transformation. Enterprises use advanced technologies such as big data, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence to reshape and optimize business processes and improve operational efficiency and service quality. For example, big data analysis of consumers' purchasing behavior and health needs can be used to achieve precision marketing and personalized services, data storage and processing capabilities can be improved through cloud computing technology to ensure business continuity, and artificial intelligence can be used to assist drug recommendation and health management to improve consumer satisfaction.
In addition, some leading pharmaceutical retail companies have begun to explore new models of online and offline integration, expanding sales channels and improving service coverage by building online platforms and carrying out O2O business. This transformation not only provides consumers with a more convenient and personalized drug purchasing experience, but also brings more growth opportunities for enterprises.
However, in the process of digital transformation, pharmaceutical retail enterprises also face some challenges: first, the cost of technology input is high. Secondly, data security and privacy protection are also aspects that enterprises need to focus on, and how to make full use of data resources while protecting consumer privacy is an important problem that enterprises need to solve; finally, insufficient talent pool is also a factor restricting the digital transformation of pharmaceutical retail enterprises, and enterprises need to strengthen talent training and introduction to support the smooth progress of digital transformation.
In response to these challenges, pharmaceutical retail enterprises need to formulate a reasonable digital transformation strategy, clarify the transformation goals and paths, and continuously explore and adjust in practice. At the same time, enterprises also need to strengthen cooperation with relevant industry chains to jointly promote the process of digital transformation and achieve resource sharing and complementary advantages.
Industry Deepening: Kingdee assists pharmaceutical retail enterprises in their digital transformation and upgrading
In recent years, Kingdee has played an important role in facilitating the digital transformation of pharmaceutical retail enterprises. As a leading enterprise management software provider in China, Kingdee provides a series of digital solutions for the characteristics of pharmaceutical retail enterprises. These solutions cover supply chain management, store operation, marketing and promotion, financial management and other aspects, aiming to help enterprises realize digital control and traceability of the whole business chain and improve their operational efficiency.
By providing comprehensive digital solutions, Kingdee helps Chinese pharmaceutical retail enterprises achieve the goals of smart retail and smart health, continuously reduce operating costs and enhance digital combat effectiveness.
Integrated management of business and finance: Kingdee provides an integrated digital management and control platform for pharmaceutical retail enterprises, which covers wholesale procurement, supply, sales and finance, helping enterprises realize the integrated management of business processes and financial processes.
· Omni-channel management: Support pharmaceutical retail enterprises to carry out online and offline omni-channel management, including store terminal management and marketing management, so that enterprises can better adapt to the market demand in the digital era.
· GSP compliance management: Kingdee's solutions also include quality control and compliance management in the process of drug circulation, ensuring that the company's operations comply with the relevant regulations of the National Medical Products Administration.
Building an ecosystem: Kingdee Pharmaceutical and Health Industry Solutions is committed to helping enterprises establish digital transformation ideas and build five platforms based on EBC capability system, including customer experience platform, ecosystem platform, Internet of Things application, smart medical big data and health life cycle management, etc., to achieve group and refined management requirements.
· Data sharing and cooperation: Kingdee encourages enterprises to link customers' customers and suppliers' suppliers to achieve data sharing, and cooperate with finance, technology, information technology and other cross-industries to establish an independent ecosystem.
Decision support and cost control: The data analysis and comprehensive budget cost control functions provided by Kingdee Cloud Sky Technology Platform + Kingdee Cloud Xinghan Application Platform help large enterprises move from traditional extensive operation and management to modern refined operation and management.
Reduce operating costs: By changing the supply chain management mode of the pharmaceutical retail industry, it helps enterprises reduce the operating costs of the management system.
Enhance digital combat effectiveness: By helping enterprises build a unified and open enterprise digital platform with comprehensive services and information sharing, we can build the digital combat effectiveness of enterprises and support the sustainable and long-term development of enterprises in the digital era.
To sum up, Kingdee Cloud Xinghan can provide SaaS management cloud services for large enterprises, provide flexible service models for pharmaceutical retail enterprises, and can be selected and customized according to the actual needs of enterprises. Through its comprehensive cloud service products and solutions, it helps pharmaceutical retail enterprises improve efficiency, innovate business, optimize management, and address industry challenges on the road of digital transformation, including but not limited to:
One-stop digital solution:
Kingdee provides a one-stop digital solution, which is essential for pharmaceutical retail enterprises that need to integrate multiple business processes and management systems.
Feature-rich:
Kingdee cloud services include financial cloud, tax cloud, human resources cloud, manufacturing cloud, supply chain cloud and other fields, covering all aspects required for the digital transformation of pharmaceutical retail enterprises.
Supporting Business Innovation:
The Kingdee cloud platform supports low-code development and provides high agility and a dynamic domain model, enabling enterprises to quickly respond to market changes and drive business innovation.
Data Assetization:
Kingdee's data center can transform raw data into data assets, provide data services for pharmaceutical retail enterprises, and help enterprises make more accurate decisions based on data.
Adaptation to regulatory requirements:
With the tightening of regulatory policies, Kingdee provides digital solutions to help pharmaceutical retail companies better comply with relevant regulations and improve compliance.
Stones from Other Mountains: Yixintang's Digital Transformation Practice
Yixintang Pharmaceutical Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Yixintang") was established in 2000, and as of September 30, 2023, Yixintang and its wholly-owned subsidiaries have a total of 10,008 directly operated chain stores. There are more than 39 million active members in the stores all over the country, and 180 million customers are served annually. Yixintang has developed into a large health platform enterprise integrating pharmacy retail, biomedicine, and medical care services, and is a benchmark enterprise in China's private pharmacy chain retail industry, as well as the first enterprise in this industry to go to the cloud system.
The cooperation between Yixintang and Kingdee began in 2019, and in December 2021, it launched a digital transformation construction project with Kingdee. With the full cooperation of the project teams of both parties, in July 2022, Yixintang's D-ERP system was officially switched to online, and the system is currently running stably and successfully completing the project construction goals. By building a unified, open, transparent and shared enterprise digital platform, Yixintang has successfully replaced the international traditional ERP system, upgraded the technical architecture, and achieved the three core achievements of "improving group management and control, controlling and optimizing key businesses, and building a digital capability platform":
1. Improve the group's management and control
It has realized the comprehensive digitalization, online and process management of the first management process, the comprehensive upgrade of GSP quality, the improvement of comprehensive budget management, and the construction of consolidated statements of the whole group, which has effectively improved the group's management and control capabilities and achieved refined management.
2. Key business control and optimization
1) Management and control optimization: The core logistics control of Yixintang, including "batch validity, logistics plan, logistics delivery", etc., as well as the core processes of the industry, including "GSP control, rental assets, budget control, expense control, fund payment and settlement, sales channels and credit, receipt and issuance of invoices, inventory counting, asset inventory, cash inventory", etc., have been significantly improved and upgraded;
2) Efficiency optimization: many offline manual modes are upgraded to online automation modes, and on the basis of foreign traditional ERP systems, through internal system development and external system integration, etc., the automation processing efficiency of many scenarios is further improved, and the management problems that cannot be solved by the old system are solved.
3. Build a digital capability platform
Based on cloud-native technology, Yixintang's powerful digital platform capabilities have been built to achieve process management upgrades, comprehensive data management upgrades, and system integration management upgrades.
On February 5, 2024, Yixintang and Kingdee held a summary meeting for the acceptance of Yixintang's D-ERP project in Kunming. In this cooperation, based on the assembleable enterprise-level PaaS platforms Kingdee Cloud Sky and Kingdee Cloud Xinghan SaaS Management Cloud, the two parties have created a unified and open, comprehensive service and information sharing enterprise digital platform, promoting Yixintang to build an independent and controllable core foundation for digital transformation, ensuring that the management and control specifications and requirements of listed companies are met, and further realizing the integrated management and control of enterprises, optimization and upgrading.
"During the construction of the project, the teams of both sides worked together sincerely and made continuous progress, laying a good foundation for the future transformation and development of Yixintang. The D-ERP project is an important step in the digital transformation of Yixintang, and it is also the first step towards the future. In the pharmaceutical retail industry, in order to move forward, Yixintang needs to continue to change and carry out digital transformation like Kingdee. It is hoped that in the future, based on the success of Yixintang's D-ERP project, the two sides can explore more in-depth exchanges and cooperation, and continue to iterate and grow with each other. ”
——Daniel Zhang, CEO of Yixintang Pharmaceutical Group
With the continuous application and maturity of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, as well as the increasingly strict national medical reform policies, pharmaceutical retail companies in the overall situation also have to consider "where is the way to break the growth in the future?" In recent years, in addition to Yixintang, many pharmaceutical retail benchmark enterprises such as Gaoji, Jianzhijia, Deshengtang, Huatuo Pharmaceutical, Renhe Yikang Group, and Zhang Zhongjing Pharmacy have chosen to join hands with Kingdee for digital transformation and upgrading.
Among them, Jianzhijia has built an information sharing and financial sharing platform with the help of Kingdee's enterprise-level PaaS platforms that can be assembled, Kingdee Cloud Sky and Kingdee Cloud Xinghan SaaS Management Cloud, which supports the efficient collaboration and rapid growth of the company's business, and comprehensively boosts Jianzhijia's digital capabilities to a new level. Through the application of Kingdee products, Gaoji has achieved financial digital transformation and upgrading with financial sharing, and has built a unified financial sharing service platform with Kingdee to help the company's digital transformation and the coordinated development of industry and finance integration, and continue to write a new chapter.
The digital transformation of the pharmaceutical retail industry is a profound change that requires pharmacies to not only embrace new technologies, but also rethink service models and customer interactions. While the process is challenging, for those who can successfully transform, digitalization will bring unlimited business opportunities and a smarter, healthier future. Through its professional digital solutions, Kingdee can not only help pharmaceutical retail enterprises improve their operational efficiency and management level, but also help them build a strong digital combat force to cope with the rapid changes and fierce competition in the market.
In the future, with the continuous development of technology and the continuous changes in the market, Kingdee will continue to work closely with enterprises in the pharmaceutical retail industry to jointly promote the digital transformation process of the industry and help build new quality productivity in the pharmaceutical industry. Perhaps, pharmaceutical retail, towards the digital future of smart health, is not far away.