Business: Awalugu Pharmacy
Location: Zebilla, Upper East Region – Ghana
Industry: Pharmaceuticals
The Dangerous Problem
Awalugu Pharmacy is a local pharmaceutical shop located in Zebilla in the Upper East Region. It is a pharmacy that caters for the health needs of hundreds of people in the community. Unfortunately, the very first problem is that Mr. Wilson, the owner, lives in Tamale and only gets the opportunity to visit his shop during the weekend. To gain a better understanding of his geographic situation, Zebilla, where his shop is, is located about 209km from his residence in Tamale. That is approximately 3 hours, 29 minutes travel distance by car. He is therefore not able to visit his shop as frequently as he would want to. Meaning, for the entire week, his sales attendants are left completely unmonitored. The second problem is that Mr. Wilson is not very good with computers.
Consistently, the pharmacy’s daily sales did not tally with the amount of stock that was running out. Mr. Wilson was very frustrated and felt totally helpless about the situation. He had tried other solutions and all had failed him. He knew his employees were consistently stealing from him and yet still, he could not prove it or hold them accountable.
He desperately needed a solution that would be his “eyes” in the shop even when he was away during the week. A solution that would also allow him to remotely manage and checkup on his stock values no matter where he is.
How We Met Mr. Wilson & Our Solution For His Business
Mr. Wilson saw our advertisement on Facebook and decided to reach out to us. We spent over 4 hours consulting with Mr. Wilson remotely to deeply understand his problems and allow him to open up about all his frustrations.
His case was particularly challenging because of his location being far away from us. Notwithstanding, due to our experiences over the years, we were able to paint a lucid picture of his shop and give him a candid assessment of everything that was wrong operationally. We came up with a plan and executed it accordingly as outlined below:
- We advised Mr. Wilson to send us a list of all the items he sells in his shop. We created an account for him on Sumundi Keepsales and imported all these items after typing them.
- We then sent out a 2-member stocktaking team to Zebilla.
- They spent 3 days at Zebilla ensuring that the quantity and appropriate prices of every single item in the shop was accurately captured into Sumundi Keepsales. We met some resistance from the sales attendants but that didn’t stop the stocktaking team from doing what needed to be done.
- The team then setup Sumundi Keepsales on his existing computers and took the staff through training.
The Results
Mr. Wilson now has complete insight into his sales. It is impossible for any attendant to make away with any transactional cash without him knowing. This is basically due to the fact that any unrecorded sale leads to stock discrepancies.
- Elimination of employee theft.
- 100% increase in the convenience and ease of managing products and tracking sales
A Word From Mr. Wilson
I am very impressed with the Sumundi Keepsales software. I have gradually been able to learn how to update my stock even when I am not in the shop. The software is very simple to understand. I can see all the sales activities that go on. Also, the sales attendants are not able to manipulate the daily sales as they used to in the past.
