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| Jeff Harris: be the best |
Unichem’s aim was to provide greater customer satisfaction than any other
European wholesaler, the conference was told.
Mr Jeff Harris (chief executive, Alliance Unichem) said that his aim was not
to become the biggest, or even the second biggest European wholesaler, but to
be the best for customer satisfaction. Only then would financial success follow.
Mr Harris did not expect legislation to be introduced at national or European
level to liberalise group pharmacy ownership. Some Scandinavian governments
might allow pharmacy groups, but the most important markets of Germany, France
and Spain were likely to keep the one pharmacist/one pharmacy rule.
The secret for international success was not to impose large-store pharmacy
practice, but to understand and improve on the formats local consumers wanted.
The real opportunity was to offer excellence in medicines supply and advice.
That was pharmacy’s unique selling point.
So far as the internet was concerned, a recent article by the McKinsey management
consultancy had stated that the leading US health care website was, on average,
losing $11 on every $64 prescription. More and more commentators agreed that
the future for pharmacy was to combine convenient local pharmacies with web
enabled systems.
A second challenge to health care distributors came from a recent European Union
Economic and Social Committee report.
It suggested that pricing systems should be linked to the added value of the
services offered by wholesalers and pharmacies to the pharmaceutical system.
“There is no doubt that our margin structures in Europe will have to be
justified in order to be maintained,” Mr Harris said.
He concluded by looking to the future for Alliance Unichem.
There would be no let up in the pace of expansion. If it continued at its present
rate, in a couple of years the company would have more staff than the National
Health Service.
He did not want to see Alliance Unichem departing from its core activities of
wholesaling, community pharmacy and prewholesaling. There was still a lot of
work to be done to complete European coverage before looking at wider markets.