Almost 18 Months back, Sigma Healthcare, the Australian-located wholesale pharmaceutical firm that also controls Guardian Pharmacy and Amcal (the pharmacy retail brands), has been employing the same wholesale ordering service for the past two decades.
“The tech services we were operating with were antiquated. They were based solely on old-fashion manners of working and requirements of warehouse,” head of e-commerce at Sigma Healthcare, Luke Shaw, claimed to the media.
“Basically, we are a wholesaler and so shifting boxes has not actually altered all that much and the tech to do that is good, but when you are making an effort to service a user and offer them a better experience, the abilities of what we were employing, just was not up to the mark.”
Shaw highlighted that one of the primary errors in the earlier system was not being capable of offering hospitals and pharmacists precise costing of their buyouts when they were placing orders. Instead they had to hang around until the orders were given.
As fraction of the firm’s broader journey of digital transformation that started 3 Years back, Sigma looked to restore its e-commerce service. The firm joined hands with Accenture to design Sigma Connect, a service incorporated with Qualtrics and SAP Commerce Cloud.
“The digital change has been a development. We do have inheritance tech we depend on, so we required a platform that can develop with us, but also be sufficiently flexible to plug into the legacy tech we could not remove at the time,” Shaw claimed.
With the new service, Sigma Healthcare can provide clearer product details, quicker checkout, and enhanced customer experience, Shaw claimed.For example, raising requests of return has now moved to a self-service feature on the new service from a 2–3 Minutes phone call.