Pharmaceutical distribution: sales tools

Pharmaceutical distribution: sales tools

In recent years, our portfolio of experiences and digitalisation projects supporting sales networks in the FMCG sector has expanded to the world of products sold through pharmaceutical distribution via the pharmacy channel.

This reflects the trend in the evolution of specialised retail within pharmacies, where today we can purchase a wide range of specific products beyond medicines:

• from supplements to nutraceuticals,
• from personal care and hygiene to beauty products,
• from anti-ageing to cosmetics,
• from children’s health and entertainment to orthopaedic devices,
• from veterinary medicines to homeopathic and herbal products.

Therefore, after analysing the market and sales in the pharmaceutical channel in our previous article Pharmacy: sales in the specialised retail, we now want to share how Aton supports the main categories of pharmacy suppliers, illustrated in these infographics.

Aton for producers

For companies that produce or market specific and innovative products through the pharmaceutical channel and scientific representatives, we provide sales software solutions that cover every stage:

• planning of an intelligent visit schedule that supports salespeople in setting priorities (coverage objectives, growth by product or customer segment, credit control);
• profiling of the point of sale;
• collection of information on the positioning, price and shelf placement of their own products or those of competitors;
• creation of offers and commercial conditions based on previous purchasing behaviour, such as automatic promotions that encourage penetration in the channel and expansion of the product range at the point of sale;
• collection of interviews at points of sale;
• assignment of sales targets and calculation of commissions with the issuing and sending to the salesperson of the pro forma invoice, net of credit notes and advances;
• collection of direct orders or transfer orders.

Aton for distributors

Our solutions are also designed for pharmaceutical distributors and pharmacists’ cooperatives which, at national level, are represented by around 50 companies that handle approximately 70% of the medicines sold in Italy (source: Mediobanca Report ’22).

We offer solutions for the certified management of medicine deliveries, making use of current technologies such as RFID and RTLS, and equipping carriers with integrated mobile devices.

Today, tens of thousands of carriers use our solutions every day to manage the tracking of deliveries to individual pharmacies.

These networks make it possible to guarantee product availability in pharmacies just a few hours after a customer places an order.

Finally, these same distributors often take care of fulfilling orders collected by sales networks, generating transfer orders that are fully processed and invoiced by distributors to individual pharmacies.