Case study of CVS

According to the filed work results made by PSI team, we know that approximately one in four scripts experienced a problem at some point in fulfillment process. As we all know, the fulfillment process is critical for the transfer of the customer’s need into reality. An inefficient process would lead to a poor pharmacy service which would depress the recent customer. It’s certainly true that a better fulfillment process could prevent 60%-90% of the customer defection that were due to service.

We know come up with solutions to deal with the problems now exist in the CVS fulfillment process. Improvement would never happen until changes are made. On the one hand, CVS should design a more efficient flow chat to reduce the inherent risks and inefficiency during the process. A proper flow chat should start with the analysis of the existing process situation in CVS and find out the bottle neck in the process. On the other hand, from the case, we know that a number of problems could occur in the part of Data entry.

For example, customers pay the prescription and soon leaving the pharmacy, but the prescription may appear without drugs or the payment will not covered by their insurance. When they come back to pick drugs, they would be give nothing but dissatisfied. If things go on like this, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty will inevitably be effected . In order to reduce the defections in this part, changes should be made . CVS Pharmacy should build a comprehensive information system. The IT system should have enough function to support the operation.

The doctor can upload the prescription after diagnosing, then the tech of pharmacy can check the prescription online and finish the remaining work. For the problem of no refill allowed, the IT system which contains prescription guidance by selecting the personal information of the patient in history. For the problem of DUR Hard Stop, IT at CVS should cut down the time for drug review. Since the possibility of different drug to drug interaction have the different time, IT system should have the ability to recognized the maximum time for major drug interaction which would absolutely improve the efficiency.

Also the customers can login the system to check whether their prescription has been completed to decide when they go to take the drugs. After the above improvement, the most likely part to have problems is the situation at the pickup window at peak period. When customers came after work to pick up the prescriptions, most locations found it difficult to staff this time period simply because pharmacy employees did not want to work then. To address this problem, we feel that we can create some self-dispensary machines, just like ATM, so that the customers can take their prescriptions on the machine by themselves.

Because of the establishment of the IT system, there will not be wooden boxes in use. If the system design is too complex, people will feel it is more efficient to use the original method. The results may cause the failure of the changes. In order to prevent backsliding, the system must be easy to use so that both customers and staffs can use it conveniently. Pharmacy Service Initiative can greatly promote the customers’ pickup speed, save time, improve efficiency. Nothing could be better than that to be more attractive to consumers.

Faster pickup-rate than other pharmacies can let CVS win more customers, increase customer loyalty, and attract new customers patronizing. Now most people complain about taking drugs,which is not only wasting long time to queue but also having complicated steps. If we can solve this problem, it will be a milepost of pharmaceutical service industry. This is a great opportunity for CVS companies to increase their market share, to defeat the competitor, and to become a leader in pharmacy.

The economic benefits it brings to CVS is self-evident. Has the absolute authority is an absolute superiority on the pharmaceutical industry, after that it will be hard to endanger the status and influence of CVS. In addition to economic benefits, the reform also brings many benefits to the internal stability of company. Not only reducing the customers’ complaints and churn rate, but also greatly improving the employee’s satisfaction and reducing turnover rate. These make CVS having more stable and rapid development.