Introduction
Ghaya Pharmacies is a key pharmacy chain in Saudi Arabia, established in 2000. Known today as a trusted source of health and personal care products for the kingdom.
Less than five years later, the sky-high ambition and steered vision propelled Ghaya to become a 100-branch pharmacy chain across Saudi Arabia!
Staffed with qualified pharmacists and professionals, Ghaya is now a household name that makes families’ lives easier.
Business Environment
The novel COVID-19 outbreak influenced industries on many levels, and the pharmaceutical industry is no exception!
Even though the demand for medical and healthcare products reached new heights, the brick and mortar restricted access and fear of supply shortages represented new challenges for people and pharmacies alike!
The whole industry underwent one of the biggest challenges ever faced.
The business environment as it is known took a big hit and only a deeply rooted company with clear vision for where to land its next step would be able to make it out of this.
More than ever before, it has now become clearer that improving digital sales and channel integrations will provide the parallel space for on-going operations, delivering the business message.
The Challenge
- The challenge to uphold sales drop during the unusual physical activity and restricted access during these hard times became inevitable.
- First of which, Ghaya was faced by resources shortage, which was the reason for service lockdown on only specific zones and cities.
- The challenge was to represent a rather rapid Medical aid to the public during the pandemic, in a timely quick manner.
- That’s besides more features to help patients during these measures, ones like: pre-book prescriptions, and scheduled orders for smoother operations.
- Mentioned measures shall be done in accordance with the Saudi Pharma authorities and regulations, in a way that would allow Ghaya to compete with other market leaders like El Nahdi pharmacies.
Strategy
The Strategy was to cooperate with Ghaya Pharmacies team to create a strict measures model that would enable a detailed roadmap to uplift the whole online commerce business.
Thus, using XRetail (a software by one of our exclusive partners, and which we master), Link team has put together its accumulated experience and cutting-edge technology to tailor a custom design for Ghaya Pharmacies; which allowed them to maintain high operations levels and continue serving their clientele without breaks.
Execution
Link took Ghaya online for 1st time!
Link, using XRetail enabled Ghaya Pharmacies to go live online for the first time in 14 days!
This was critically important to be carried out in such timeframe, to put a stop to sales drop and slow market dynamics during COVID-19, and hold back the losses in physical stores and resources.
Link TSP implemented a complex Shipping solution!
Link identified Ghaya’s logistics problem as it depends on end-user location, starting off from there, Link managed to put together a complex solution for last-mile shipping that enabled faster and wider shipping networks covering more areas.
Integrated mobile app for governmental medical approvals!
Link managed to build a mobile app for IOS/Android platforms, to be integrated with KSA Governmental Health Authority.
This was critical to verify patient prescriptions in accordance to Ministry of Health Protocols, and follow the KSA medical regulations.
Speeding up the booking process!
Implementing the pre-booking process through the platform to manage resource and plan accordingly in advance any potential shortages that might happen.
This allowed patients to have their own prescription, in order beforehand and eliminated any panic that might occur.
Introducing “Apple Pay” payment to Ghaya’s platform!
As one of the most usable payment gateways in the kingdom, this particular payment method facilitates smoother payments and collections for end-users and served Ghaya’s mission in reaching new depths within Saudi Arabia market.
Results
The collective efforts resulting from business collaboration with Ghaya Pharmacies yielded its set goals positively, and enabled the business to smoothly carry on with its mission as a market leader, leading both by reported shares, and by example, during such hard times.
Link work strategy through XRetail forefront enabled Ghaya Pharmacies to achieve the following:
Optimize operations processes
Via easing operations cycles, introducing a dedicated platform for ordering, regulations and pre-booking prescriptions, this has cut down manual aspect to minimal rates and helped optimize operations on many levels, with less human interaction errors and much more automation into the process.
Higher customer satisfaction
End-users satisfaction rates have increased dramatically as a result of curate product listing and optimized operations, resulting in even better MoM and larger pool of returning customers.
In such tough times, this was critical for Ghaya to boost the confidence rates within the public during the pandemic, making way for more calculated, rather chaotic, treatment steps and safer environments for everyone.
