The first location was the chain’s highest-volume store, with the largest staff, and a strong pharmacy manager.
Within the first 30 days, prior to an opportunity to evaluate labor savings and impact on inventory, the chain requested to expand the pilot to three additional locations based on wait time reduction and employee adoption alone. Subsequently, labor savings and inventory turns provided sufficient returns to justify the chain’s internal hurdle for acquiring capital equipment.
We installed the 3 additional locations with smaller prescription volumes and a variety of pharmacy management styles and enjoyed similar outcomes in labor savings, customer wait time reductions, reduced inventory, and employee adoption. Additional benefits surrounding handout error reduction were also attributed to the use of the Will Call System. The chain requested to further expand the pilot to additional locations.
PickPoint® was challenged by the chain to accommodate the layout restrictions of a significant percentage of their pharmacies. The challenge involved customizing our Will Call System to fit inside the pharmacies' existing cabinetry that resided outside of the pharmacy gate and contained roll-up security doors. PickPoint® quickly customized fixtures to fit within the dimensions of the cabinetry, and those pharmacies were installed within the initial 90-day pilot term.
These Phase 3 locations had similar prescription volume and management characteristics to the Phase 2 locations, and the results continued to demonstrate significant reductions in labor and customer wait times while also improving inventory turns. Employee adoption was also very high.
PickPoint® was challenged by the chain to roll out to a large number of locations within a small period of time to further test our ability to roll out to their entire chain. PickPoint® was able to meet the goal of more than 1 store per day over a multi-week period. At the end of this final phase, the chain rolled out the Will Call System to the majority of their pharmacies (those meeting a minimum prescription volume threshold).
Once the Will Call System was live in multiple locations within the first brand of the chain, the next challenge was to test whether the success metrics translated to another brand. After a similar test phase, the results were identical to the first brand, and PickPoint® rolled out the Will Call System to the majority of that brand's locations as well. A third brand also tested the success metrics of our Will Call System, and like the first two brands, realized similar results. Rollout into that third brand is now complete, and rollout into a fourth brand is underway.
