The local pharmacy is an essential part of any community, dispensing advice on health matters, as well as prescribed medicines. One company which has been highly successful in this industry is Lloydspharmacy, part of the Pan-European Gehe Group, which has 1,300 high street and health centre outlets in the UK.

To build on its success, Lloydspharmacy is investing heavily in its IT systems, including a communications network, merchandising, validation, address software and a new EPoS solution, which is polled nightly by Head Office. The objective was to further enhance communication and efficiency throughout the company, and to provide management with high quality information on which to base decisions.

While the rollout is not yet complete – 250 stores have gone live, so far – Lloydspharmacy is already reaping the benefits of its investment in IT. The use of handheld devices for managing inventory in the back office, for example, has improved the company’s control over stock, while its new validation software has highlighted any anomalies in the system, enabling Head Office to tighten its security procedures. Meanwhile, detailed sales data and better communication links ensure management decisions can be made and disseminated on the basis of detailed and accurate information.

At the point of sale, Lloydspharmacy is running NSB’s ‘ObjectPoS’ store solution with integrated Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT). The stores are linked to the company’s Coventry Head Office. In addition to barcode scanners, the PoS system hardware includes Epson’s versatile TM-H6000II receipt and cheque printers, which have a wide-slip capability, enabling Lloydspharmacy to print other important documents at the till, such as customer account statements.

"Our existing EPoS system used dot matrix till printers," explained Roy Maddison, Head of Systems Delivery. "We envisaged that till receipts for the new system would be longer, because we proposed to include promotional or marketing messages. As a result, dot matrix printers would be too slow. Additionally, they wouldn’t give us the flexibility to introduce new features, such as the inclusion in future of high resolution graphics such as the Lloydspharmacy logo, or barcode. We therefore decided to invest in Epson TM-H6000II thermal printers to ensure the speed, print quality and potential for future enhancements we needed.

"With the Epson TM-H6000II, printing receipts and credit/debit slips takes a couple of seconds at the most, while routine procedures such as replacing till rolls, are also extremely quick and easy. As a result, customer waiting times have been significantly reduced. Overall, in terms of cost and performance, the Epson printer has already been an excellent investment."