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How a global pharmaceutical company achieved 60% growth in revenue by fostering e-commerce adoption within the business
CHALLENGE
Poor product availability on key retailers
This pharmaceutical company is a market leader in Europe, the U.S. and Canada, with a portfolio of thousands of products and hundreds more in the pipeline. In early 2022 they targeted Italy as a key growth opportunity. The company knew in a rapidly growing category it needed to have visibility of digital shelf performance. Availability was particularly challenging as they had no idea which e-retailer or product line was impacting market share. They came to us for guidance in using digital shelf tracking tools to uncover insights and actions they could leverage on online retailers in Italy.
Why Italy? Italy is one of the fastest growing e-commerce markets in Europe and a major growth opportunity for brands.
Online pharmacies are a recent phenomenon in Italy. It was only in 2014 that the government decreed that businesses with a license could sell non-prescription pharmaceuticals online. Relative to other countries, online penetration is low, but growing quickly.
“Italy has one of the lowest rates of e-Commerce penetration in Europe, but growth rates are robust. Interestingly, Italy is the only country to expect a doubling in percentage over the next five years (from 5% to 10%).” - CBRE Global Investors
It was these lowest penetrated countries that grew the most during Covid 19 and now represent a major opportunity for brands in various sectors, including the pharmaceutical industry.
ACTION
The Perfect Store Framework + Adoption
The biggest issue for this pharma company was too much data but insufficient tools for summarizing it in a meaningful way that made sense and highlighted the biggest problems. This is where we came in. We applied our “perfect store” framework to set up automated digital shelf analytics tools to track their priority SKUs across key retailers in Italy including online pharmacies and larger retailers like Amazon. They identified visibility as their most important KPI so we focused our reports on visibility metrics, particularly availability and search. We delivered the results via intuitive dashboards with deep dive reports and automated alerts that brought focus to gaps and actions needed to fill them. Alongside reporting tools, we provided monthly health checks and training to encourage adoption of the tools into their daily business routines. Our collaborative approach gave the company clear cues for digital shelf areas that were underperforming and the impetus to fix them.
“We have a feeling that you’re a part of our team.” - Digital Marketing Manager, Viatris IT
VALUE
+60% increase in revenue
Using our tools, the company discovered that out of stocks were a major issue for one of its key product ranges on one of the major online pharmaceutical retailers. We helped the company identify the biggest problem SKUs and recover their availability, resulting in:
- +60% revenue growth in less than a year at Italy’s most visited online pharmacy
- Maintain top seller status on Amazon for one of their most strategically important products
- Maintain top seller status on Amazon for one of their most strategically important products
