Fair market, or how to reach 30,000 pharmacies

Saving Private Ryan

Pharmacies and pharmacy chains - members of the Capital portal - are located all over the country. In fact, this is a national service that only a major player can organize. FC Grand Capital managed to become such a player in a fairly short period.

"Five years ago we had one warehouse in Moscow and an annual turnover of about 9 billion rubles. This year we became a proper national distributor. We opened branches in Kaliningrad, Vladivostok and Smolensk and are now represented by 13 branches across Russia. The turnover this year will be about 65 billion rubles. The basis of this leap in development is the emphasis on customer loyalty," said Denis Remenyako, the head of FC Grand Capital Group.

According to him, two reasons dictated the creation of the portal. The first is that independent pharmacies and small chains are going through hard times, so we had to do something so that our partners would develop and make a profit," he stated the first reason.

The second reason is the growing dissatisfaction of pharmacies in terms of working with marketing associations.

"Unfortunately, many pharmacies have had to deal with blatant deception, when they simply were not paid bonuses, not infrequently most of the bonuses go to the associations, and little reaches the pharmacies," Remenyako explains.

The Capital portal appeared at a time when many owners of small pharmacy chains thought about closing the business, not seeing the prospects. After all, on the one hand the market has ceased to grow, on the other hand began the active expansion of large pharmacy chains. Therefore, the first name of the portal was "Saving Private Ryan," to emphasize its focus on independent pharmacies.

Grand Capital resource allowed small retailers to meet directly with the manufacturer and become participants in bonus programs. The pharmacy can choose promotions with a volume sales plan or a line plan. There are no penalties for failing to meet the plan. It will simply get no bonuses.

"Bonuses are counted from the estimated notional prices, which are fixed before the start of work, the discount has the format of retro bonuses. The size of the discount is set by the manufacturer and it does not affect the price at which the pharmacy buys the goods", - said Oksana Khalonen, Deputy Head of Marketing Department.

She added that the distributor does not charge any fee for connecting and using the portal.

At arm's length

Capital service provides an opportunity to reach out to the so-called noncontract retail, which is scattered throughout the large country, to offer them the promotion of certain positions. FC Grand Capital takes care of the defect-free availability of items that are presented on the portal. This is an important point that is always of concern to the manufacturer.

"All of our company's services are involved in the portal process," says Dmitriy Varakin, Deputy General Director for Sales and Regional Network Management. - On a daily basis, inventory specialists generate a residue report. Together with representatives of pharmaceutical companies, they monitor the defect-free availability of items. Pricing specialists make sure that prices on the portal are competitive with other vendors. Also in a daily format, office managers make reports on promotions and let producers know if there are any changes."

Finally, the manufacturer receives transparent, real-time reporting.

"All pharmaceutical companies enter into volume agreements, according to which the pharmacy chain has to sell a certain amount of goods during the quarter. The chain can buy other chains to build up sales or resell the product. We have a planning process for each point in the chain, and there is also reporting on it. So you will always see that out of the blue 10,000 packs are sold through some point. We can always put the manufacturer in touch with the pharmacy so they can ask for an explanation for this "explosion" in sales. Or vice versa, the pharmacy can always ask the pharmaceutical company to reconsider the amount of bonuses if it believes that there was some mistake," adds Denis Remenyako.

Growth disorders

The dynamics of project development requires adjustments. A large number of pharmacy retailers would be logical to divide into certain categories, so it would be more convenient for manufacturers to form their offers. This will be accomplished in 2020.

The creators of the Capital portal continue to work on the transparency of stock reporting. From 2020, manufacturers will have the ability to track the sales of each SKU online. FC Grand Capital has entered into an agreement with several fiscal data operators (FDOs), which will supply the necessary information for the portal.

In addition, according to the Head of Internet projects of FC Grand Capital Pavel Shamrin, the audience of the portal is getting younger, so the services of the portal are being developed with this trend in mind. For example, a mobile version of the portal has been created. Also, for the convenience of users, one password will be made for all services used by distributor customers.

Denis Remenyako noted that these are not the last innovations: "As the portal is developing, we will make these or those changes, create new services. However, I can confidently state that the ideology of the Capital portal will remain unchanged - it is a platform where manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies meet on mutually beneficial terms".

Source: https://pharmvestnik.ru/content/articles/Rynok-po-chestnomu-ili-kak-dotyanutsya-do-30-tysyach-aptek.html