Do You Really Have a Pharmacy Point-of-Sale System?

There’s a difference between point-of-sale and pharmacy point-of-sale. Everybody has point-of-sale of some sort. A place where transactions are processed. For many, point-of-sale starts and ends there.

Pharmacy point-of-sale means something more. More than credit card processing capabilities and signature capture. And more than a list of features that look good on paper, but don’t really mean much when it comes to the overall success of your pharmacy business.

True pharmacy point-of-sale should open doors and do some very specific things that have nothing to do with feature sets. Here are the top 5 things that a good pharmacy POS system should do.

Improve the customer experience.

Customer experience can bring people in the door or be the reason they don’t come back. Your pharmacy POS system plays an integral role in the experience for a few different reasons. First, aesthetics matter and do impact the overall perception customers will have of your pharmacy. Not only should the system look modern, but it should also offer a modern experience. This means fast and easy with the options customers have come to expect. Curbside or drive thru, home delivery and emailing receipts if they prefer.

Increase staff efficiency.

Can your POS free up time for your team to focus on more important things? It should. There are many ways for pharmacy point-of-sale to improve efficiency but one of the most common areas where we see clunky processes wasting valuable time is behind the scenes. Product ordering should be automated and easy. Receiving should be fast and separated from your pricing processes. And if you’re individually labelling items, try automating shelf label printing based on the products you carry. Lastly, if you’re tracking inventory, what does this process look like? Is it a time consuming, soul crushing process? Tracking inventory is valuable for a number of reasons but it should be streamlined and free from anxiety.

Reduce your costs.

Pharmacy point-of-sale represents an expense. You should expect to get something out of it. While increasing staff efficiency and improving customer experience is indirectly reducing your costs and preventing attrition, point-of-sale should reduce your costs in other ways. Outside of inventory and staffing there’s another major cost center for pharmacy businesses. Credit card processing. Do you have the freedom to choose the credit card processing solution that is the most cost effective for you? Or are you locked into a solution that’s been chosen for you? If you’re locked in, how much extra money is that costing you every month?

Make you money.

Forget reducing costs. What about adding money to your bottom line? Pharmacy point-of-sale should be able to help you accomplish this. Look for support for ancillary services like drug induced nutrient depletion recommendations. Integrations for improved online presence like Pointy from Google or eCommerce integrations.

Provide you with data.

Data brings everything together. Reporting should be robust and easy and help you make key business decisions. And that data has to come from your pharmacy point-of-sale because it’s the only system that has information about every product that’s sold and every dollar that’s spent in your pharmacy. End-of-day reports simply aren’t enough. You need to be able to easily identify items that aren’t selling (your cash flow killers) see your best performing items and departments, understand inventory turns and know your gross profit return on investment.

Now that we’ve gone through some pharmacy point-of-sale essentials, it’s time to ask yourself if you really have a pharmacy point-of-sale system or whether you have a system that accepts payments at the point-of-sale.

If you’re still undecided about what your pharmacy needs, check out our full video guide on how to evaluate your pharmacy point-of-sale system.