Pharma Wholesalers

The role of the Wholesaler in the life sciences supply chain is to make the process of purchasing products from pharmaceutical manufacturers more efficient.

The wholesaler is essentially the intermediary between the manufacturers and the retail pharmacies. The wholesaler receives product in bulk from the manufacturers and then breaks the bulk products down to deliver medicines in smaller units at regular intervals to the pharmacies. Manufacturers can ship bulk quantities of the products to a small number of wholesaler warehouses as opposed to shipping to hundreds of pharmacy outlets.

Uniphar and Celtrino

UniPhar Group is one of Ireland’s largest drug distribution providers to the pharmacy sector. With some 1200 products in its portfolio, it distributes to 500 key accounts in pharmacies around the country.

By partnering with Celtrino, Uniphar moved to an integrated, cloud-based ordering system to streamline procurement and capture sales orders.

Tom McKenna, Commercial Director of UniPhar explains more:

Like all of the existing pharmacy wholesalers, we had traditional order capture mechanisms such as telesales teams, and direct order entry.While all dispensaries can send modem orders, this obliged staff to use the computer physically located in the dispensary, as opposed to a PC connected to the internet. It wasn’t an integrated solution.Celtrino’s web-based platform means lots of data-rich features. It also allows greater flexibility for customers: now anyone with internet access can use our web platform to order medicines. It differentiates our offering and assists in the acquisition of customers from competitors

From initial specification to full implementation, good project management and a close working relationship with UniPhar were the key components helping making the project work.

Celtrino were very good: really enthusiastic and attentive. The best endorsement I can give is that we’re back using them again for other projects,” Tom concludes.