The man most associated with the development of the Bar-code, Alan Haberman, recently died. The first product scanned in a US Supermarket was in 1974, and by the 1980’s bar-code scanning had been widely taken up around the world. Haberman’s original committee evolved into the Uniform Product Code (UPC) Council, which has now become GS1, a global not for profit organisation that issues and administers bar codes.
Despite the inventor having sadly passed away, many UK community pharmacies are still not using scanning preferring to price (and reprice) items of retail stock individually. Whilst it is true that for most independent community pharmacies retail turnover may constitute no more than 10-20% of turnover by value, this is no good reason to undervalue the importance of retail sales. For a start the profit margin on retail is higher than on dispensing, and apart from a few Internet sales, retail sales create vital repeat customer traffic in the pharmacy.
In my experience the biggest benefits of scanning products are: quicker shelf stocking, more certain stock control resulting from real sales data and improved knowledge of shoplifting by product. Without a doubt the biggest benefit of all is knowing what is selling best and keeping in stock at all times of the key lines, by linking sales data from EPOS to semi or fully automated re-ordering. As customers we all hate going into a shop and being told “sorry we are out of stock”, and in those pharmacies still relying on manual ordering and manual sales recording, this phrase is bound to be heard more often.
There are simple (and therefore low cost) EPOS systems available to pharmacists and there are also PMR systems that integrate retail sales with dispensing records so that a more complete record of medicines consumption is available to dispensers. Such systems can, with caution, even be configured to highlight to retail pharmacy staff suitable products to recommend to customers based upon implied conditions or other products already consumed.
It is I feel time that all pharmacies got on board with the use of bar-code scanning. Further technologies like RFID tags and payment by mobile phone lie just round the corner and yet we have not yet all implemented a beneficial technology that has been the norm in UK retail for 20+ years.