LS Retail gives an expanding Rama Medicare the solution to overcome its operational challenges and grow its stores across geographies. LS Nav helped in the streamlining of the pharmacy business, giving Rama Medicare the opportunity to expand its network to other cities while maintaining international business standards. Rama Medicare Ltd. was founded in 2007. Their first business operation was the setup of a dental care center by Dr. B.S. Kushwah. Since then, they have been working incessantly to become the biggest organization in the healthcare sector by the year 2021. Currently they have 25 stores in Delhi NCR and Kanpur and are planning to venture into the western markets. The stores are a one-stop solution for health, pharma and grocery related products.
Why the LS Retail journey
Rama Medicare Ltd started their retail operations with 5 pharmacy outlets and one warehouse. They were supported with local billing software. One month into operations their inventory control became a major issue, as they did not have any software to track inventory. False stock forecast and pilferage were a major concern both at the warehouse and retail outlets. This had adverse effects on the balance sheet. Soon Rama Medicare realized the need for a centralized solution that would help them map the warehouse and stores together in an integrated manner. They were faced with major challenges in the following areas:- Inventory movement
- Financial
- CRM
- Promotional schemes
The challenge
“We were faced with the challenge of matching the batch number, lot number, and expiry dates. The discrepancies between warehouse and stores had undesirable effects on our stock. We also wanted to run customized promotions. There was a need to record various business processes in a single database and more importantly it had to be addressed efficiently and quickly. Hence we required a solution that could be customized as per our requirements, as a Pharmacy has many more critical requirements than any other retail business.” To address these issues and guarantee the smooth functioning of their business, Rama Medicare decided to implement Microsoft Dynamics NAV and LS Nav, with the help of DVS and its implementation partner RCS Global.Results in brief
- Optimal requisition of manpower
- Reduced cost of ownership
- Increased accuracy in forecast
- Easy and fast financial and inventory management
- Easily identify the causes for pilferage
- Easy billing at POS, with just three clicks
- Easy to achieve targets by simply changing the business strategy parallel with business position and market demands
Approach & unique features
Functional changes with the product features
- Automated generation of TO through simply scanning items
- Reports for items approaching the expiry date
- Setting margin range for each item
- Auditing through scanning item
- Barcode designed with map lot number, expiry, and MRP
- Run more than one loyalty program in multiple stores
- Automated centralized purchasing, through MBQ level, allowing you to send PO directly to vendor through email
- Automated centralized material transfer from warehouse to different stores through MBQ
- Selling items through FIFO
- Execution of promotional schemes
- Loyalty program: issue loyalty card with points on purchase of specific value, redemption of points anywhere in India
- Inventory management through self generated barcodes and batch of the products
- Maintain the database of 15,000 assorted items which included pharmacy products, FMCG products, and grocery products
- Centralized reporting
- Auditing of stores/warehouse through wireless scanners
Unit of measure
The purchase unit of measure was set on each item card. One can also set the conversion between purchase unit of measure and sale unit of measure.Inventory movement
Inventory would be received only by warehouse based on purchase order. All materials would be stored only at regional warehouses. Once material is received at warehouse a unique Material Receipt Note (MRN) would be prepared at the warehouse based on the lot number, expiry, and MRP on each box. As per the requirements of stores, goods would again be repacked in boxes, bar-coded again and transferred to the individual stores. An MRN would be prepared at the store based on lot number and each box would be unique per shipment.Transfer orders
- Inner store / warehouse transactions can be carried out in case of excess stock in store / warehouse
- Material Transferred Note (MTN) would be prepared at store / warehouse by simply scanning items on MTN form
- The transfer orders will be created by the transferring store / warehouse, MTN will be posted by transferring store and receiving will be done by the receiving store. In each and every transfer HO will act as a junction (i.e. all transferring store / warehouse data will go to receiving end through HO).
The following promotional schemes are being used by Rama Medicare:
- Buy one and get one / same item for free
- Discount amount or % based on selling price and MRP
- Fixed reduced price
- Bill value discount
- Discount amount or % on product / product group based on the bill value
- Quantity based discount amount or %
- Combo offer
- Discount / free gift at a particular bill value
Purchase accounting
- Purchase orders to be generated at warehouse on MBQ basis and authorization would be at HO only by manager purchase.
- Goods to be received at warehouse only.
- Unique MRN to be generated at warehouse gate once goods are visually inspected for quality based on lot number and percentage years of life left. Percentage years of life left would be calculated based on manufacturing and expiry date of each batch. Such dates would be entered manually.
- Purchase Return Note (PRN) would be generated for goods received under purchase order and rejected at warehouse.
- Purchase price of pharmaceutical products would be calculated by deducting discount from Price to Retailer (PTR). Purchase price of Fast Moving Customer Goods (FMCG) items would be calculated by deducting mark down discount from Maximum Retail Price (MRP) which would be inclusive of VAT.
- Posting of such entry would be made only warehouse and transfer these entries to HO by scheduler job.
Sales accounting
- Sale of goods to be done only at stores. Entry to be generated and posted only at stores on shift basis
- Sale amount and posting amount will always be the same
- Posting amount will be calculated automatically on the basis of sales amount
- Institutional sale could be affected which would be through warehouse only
- Posted sales invoice can’t be amended
- Sales return to be posted through credit memos and unique Sales Return Number (SRN) would be generated. VAT adjustments would be accounted for. No cash refund is to be given under any circumstance
Inventory accounting
The method for valuation of inventory would be FIFO which would be item specific- Replenishment from warehouse to store will be on the basis of MBQ level of each and every item this MBQ will be store specific
- Physical counting is done from time to time
- Physical counting would be done through scanning an audit form by hands-free scanner and plus/minus inventory would be adjusted by passing positive and negative entry by after getting HO approval.
The implementation of Retail Pharmacy requires exhaustive understanding of the product as well as theoperations of the business. DVS and RCS Global customized the internationally proven LS Retail suite of solutions for successful operation of our stores.
From the management point of view, the streamlining of the operations for expanding the business geographically was a challenge without integration in place. We needed a solution that understands the nitty-gritty of the pharmacy business. If stocks are not managed with great care our business might have to bear grave consequences. We needed a solution that would help us tack the batch code issues efficiently as this issue can put up the shutters for any pharmacy business.