Your pharmacy’s image is important. Are you drawing customers in, or are you scaring them away? Perhaps your store is in need of a remodel. However, it’s not in your budget just yet. That’s okay. There are things you can do to project a professional image just by cleaning up your shelves and displays. Dust them regularly and keep them well stocked and labeled. Many pharmacies struggle with this. Avoid trying to do everything in one day. Break it all down into manageable sections, then define a set of tasks to be completed in each section on a rotating basis. This will help you resolve numerous front-end issues. But before you being this process, follow these steps:
- Think about how you’re ordering and maintaining inventory. Is your ordering automated based on replenishment logic? Or is it based on minimum/maximum logic? The latter requires much more precise inventory counts. This decision will help you determine if you want to add inventory counts and verification during recovery.
- Make a schedule. Don’t try to recover an entire store in one day. Instead, divide the store into sections that are easily manageable. Consider recovering the top-selling sections more often. Your sales reports can show you what products or departments are your best sellers. Schedule specific times each day and specific team members to complete the recovery process. By reviewing your transaction counts by day and time, you will be able to pinpoint times that are less busy. This will give you more flexibility to assign a team member to recovery activities.
- Label your shelves. If your shelves don’t have labels, they should. Don’t put individual stickers on them. It’s too time consuming, and it can lead to shelves being mislabeled. Use your point-of-sale label program to only print labels for the items you carry. Then set effective dates for the price changes so you have time to get labels on the shelf.
Now you’re ready to begin your recovery program.
Recovery program to-dos:
- Clean. Rid of debris in the area, dust shelves and products, and then look everything over to be sure it’s spick and span.
- Face. Turn all of the products to face forward, and pull them to the front of the shelf. Make sure everything looks aligned and organized.
- Stock. As your totes come in, stock the shelves. If you have backstock or haven’t put all of your orders out on the shelves, get out there and fill up any and all empty areas.
- Declutter. A customer wants to see clutter about as much as they want to see a bare shelf. If you have areas that are overly full of products, take some of that product out to give it a cleaner, more organized look.
- Label. Make note of missing or damaged labels that need to be replaced. Also, if you have items out of stock, put up signs noting the issue. You might even add proposing alternatives.
- Count. Will regular inventory counting be part of your inventory management process? If so, build it into the recovery process. By counting products during this time, you will help keep inventory counts accurate, identify shrinkage, and more.
When you break your store down into more sections that are easier to manage, you’ll have more control and confidence in maintaining your store’s shelves and front end.
A Member-Owned Company Serving Independent Pharmacies
PBA Health is dedicated to helping independent pharmacies reach their full potential on the buy-side of their business. Founded and owned by pharmacists, PBA Health serves independent pharmacies with group purchasing services, wholesaler contract negotiations, proprietary purchasing tools, and more.
An HDA member, PBA Health operates its own NABP-accredited secondary wholesaler with more than 6,000 SKUs, including brands, generics, narcotics CII-CV, cold-storage products, and over-the-counter (OTC) products — offering the lowest prices in the secondary market.
