Pharmabroker

Steady growth since that time has seen Pharmabroker become one of the leading sales brokers for pharmacies in the country, says owner and managing director, Jim Davis.

Accredo has been integral in helping manage the company’s multi-faceted arrangements with manufacturers, contractors and other supplier partners.

“We like Accredo because it is so flexible,” Davis says. “It interfaces seamlessly with our contract distributor’s SAP system and has allowed us to introduce what we believe are industry-leading innovations in invoice processing.”

Accredo support person, Nyree Voogt of Top Flight Computers, says she has worked with Pharmabroker to develop sophisticated and customised scripting to automate and speed up its complex ordering and invoicing procedures.

“The scripting we have established allows them to process orders from pharmacies that require multiple products from multiple suppliers. With a quick keyboard shortcut, the Pharmabroker staff member can automatically sort the products into the relevant supplier groups and immediately fax, print, email or XML the order to those particular wholesalers. It is very detailed from a scripting point of view, but for the user it is simply a few mouse clicks.”

Working online with his contract distributor is a breeze with Accredo, Davis says.

“They pick, pack and dispatch the order once we send it to them and we handle the debtor and stock control using Accredo. There is a terminal at their warehouse with Accredo loaded on it, which they use to process the order and through which they can access our stock inventory.”

Pharmabroker has to manage two different order and invoice sales cycles. It predominantly acts as a rep for other pharmacy wholesalers, placing turnover orders through them to supply pharmacies, while also having the facility to invoice the goods direct to pharmacies, health food stores and hospitals.

“We were one of the first distributors in the country to offer wholesalers electronic ordering. Accredo has allowed us to remove our manual paper-based processes and provide a direct online connection. The pharmacy places daily orders with our sales team which we pick up and process on the wholesalers’ behalf.”

This has lead to improved visibility of both turnover orders and invoicing of direct orders to the retailer, says Davis. “We have sped up our processing, which has allowed us to turn over more orders and get our suppliers’ products into the market quicker.”

Davis says the company places a big emphasis on internal reporting and uses Accredo to slice and dice financial data, serving up company performance metrics in a number of ways.

“Working closely with Top Flight we have been able to create and send a range of different reports and sales figures out to the companies we represent. Without Accredo this would be an arduous and time-consuming process.”

Now Pharmabroker runs around 15 different reports and can produce even the most complex in a matter of minutes.

“With Accredo I know by line item, by product and by company exactly what the sales turnover for our sales representatives is on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. I can compare against last year’s sales and against budget. It gives me in-depth visibility into the health of the business and crucially, it can provide this information very concisely.”

Davis says Top Flight has proven to be a valuable resource, not just in terms of customising the product so it can handle the type of straight through processing his business demands, but as an on-the-spot support resource as well.

“They helped us out with financial processing when our accountant left at short notice. That was invaluable as they were able to update our standard operating procedures manual detailing the modifications we had made to all areas of our accounting department – something which the previous accountant hadn’t completed."

“All our key financial processes are now regularly updated by Top Flight, which enables us to train any new staff, and make the knowledge available to the organisation as a whole. Our business runs so much more effectively with Accredo software and Top Flight as support.”