Thanks jet328 - thought you would be referring to the...

Thanks jet328 - thought you would be referring to the Gance/Verrocchi My Chemist/Chemist Warehouse group. They certainly have developed their own POS systems in house but you say they are now developing there own integrated dispensary software as well to give them something equivalent to Corum's LOTS ONE POS plus RPM package.

To answer your questions first about LOTS capabilities. There should not be any particular issues with group price changes if they were running RPM ONE. If not the stores would have to have group pricing communicated by other means an administered at each site. Generally multiple pack pricing should not present any difficulties in my experience working with LOTS. I presume their issue would arise dispensing non PBS quantities where someone had a private script for several months supply. The CW advertised discount prices for their loss leading prescription items (dispensed at essentially a negative dispensing fee) pertain only to single PBS quantities. Their pricing model probably does not suit multiple supplies as they want customers to come into the pharmacy as often as possible. Also LOTS is quite compatible with the mobile app SMS reminder/ordering/information bolt ons. I know Priceline pharmacies are successfully using the MedAdvisor software on their LOTS dispensary systems and when I was in was still working (now retired 3 years) we used one of the early SMS products which worked fine with LOTS but it did not have as many features as MedAdvisor.

Chemist Warehouse/MyChemist pharmacies account for just less than 7% of Australia Pharmacy numbers but reputedly have 25% of the market by turnover. As much as I believe they are the worst thing that has ever happened in pharmacy it is obviously from a professional view point and not from the public purse perspective which I also respect. This is because their model works only by cannibalising the business of the smaller community pharmacies who are essential for provision of services to the wider community. It has also "discounted" pharmacists worth who are now among the worst paid university graduates. The oversupply of pharmacy graduates has facilitated this also. On the other hand from a business perspective you have to admire what they have been able to achieve in such a short time. Their media profile is so impressive. However, you have to wonder about their sustainability of their discount model having grown so quickly and I can't imagine their extent of leveraging to get where they are. With so many other pharmacy discount groups of varying grunt emerging the fight is truly on and blood will be let eventually unfortunately.

If CW/MC group are in the process of developing their own total IT system you would think it would be a cloud based software platform with their own data centre. However, I don't know enough to fully comprehend the cost of doing this or the scalability to make it cost effective for them. We know Corum has now moved to cloud based systems and with 2000 clients it is clearly practical and secure.

If CW/MC are going ahead with this I guess it will probably have at least a half a million dollar impact on revenue (guessing they were already getting a pretty good deal). Might be just impetus to see Corum get serious about finding revenue opportunities by investing their cash into something that generates better than interest.