Digitizing pharmacy operations: building a more connected healthcare retail experience.

Healthcare is evolving, and pharmacies are increasingly becoming an important part of how communities access essential healthcare products and services.

Beyond dispensing medicines, modern pharmacies must manage complex inventories, maintain accurate financial records, coordinate suppliers, serve customers efficiently, and respond to growing expectations for convenience and accessibility.

For many pharmacies in Ghana, these responsibilities create significant operational challenges. Managing thousands of products with different expiry dates, monitoring stock availability, controlling purchasing costs, and maintaining consistent service delivery require more than traditional point-of-sale systems.

At the same time, changing consumer behavior is creating opportunities for pharmacies to extend their services beyond physical stores through digital ordering, customer engagement, and delivery.

At Access 89, we believe the future of pharmacy retail lies in connecting these activities through technology.

Through our work with PharmaBay, a pharmacy business in Ghana, we are applying our expertise in enterprise software, digital commerce, and operational improvement to help create a more connected pharmacy experience.

By bringing together Foundry Business, Cornershop, and our Outcome Engineering services, we are working to connect pharmacy operations, inventory management, financial visibility, and customer-facing commerce within a coordinated digital ecosystem.

Our objective extends beyond digitizing pharmacy transactions. We want to help pharmacies operate more efficiently, serve their customers better, and build stronger, more sustainable businesses.

The challenge: managing the complexity of modern pharmacy retail

Pharmacy operations present a unique combination of retail, healthcare, and inventory management requirements. Unlike many conventional retail businesses, pharmacies manage products that require careful attention to availability, expiry dates, storage conditions, and stock movement.

A pharmacy must maintain sufficient inventory to meet customer demand while avoiding excessive stockholding that ties up working capital or increases the risk of product expiration. Purchasing decisions must balance supplier pricing, product demand, inventory turnover, and available cash.

At the same time, pharmacy owners and managers need visibility into daily sales, profitability, expenses, employee activities, and financial performance. When these activities are managed through disconnected systems or manual processes, maintaining control becomes increasingly difficult.

A pharmacy may generate substantial sales revenue while still experiencing cash flow pressure from slow-moving inventory, inconsistent purchasing decisions, or inadequate visibility into product-level profitability. Stock discrepancies can also make it difficult to determine whether products have been sold, transferred, damaged, expired, or incorrectly recorded.

These challenges become more pronounced as a pharmacy expands its product range, customer base, or number of locations.

For Access 89, addressing these issues requires a broader approach than simply implementing software. It requires connecting the technology used to run the pharmacy with the operational processes and management practices that determine business performance.

Building a connected digital foundation with Foundry Business

Our work with PharmaBay begins with Foundry Business, Access 89’s integrated business management platform designed to help organizations manage their everyday operations.

Rather than relying on separate tools for sales, inventory, purchasing, expenses, and reporting, Foundry Business brings critical business functions into a connected operating environment. For pharmacy operations, this provides a digital foundation for managing transactions, monitoring inventory, reviewing purchasing activities, and understanding business performance.

Sales recorded through the point-of-sale system contribute to inventory and financial records, helping create a more consistent view of business activity. Inventory management capabilities support the tracking of stock levels, product movements, adjustments, and replenishment requirements.

Purchasing and supplier management functions help pharmacies maintain better visibility into procurement activities and the cost of acquiring inventory. Financial reporting brings together sales, expenses, and other operational information to support more informed management decisions.

By connecting these processes, Foundry Business helps reduce the fragmentation that can occur when different parts of a pharmacy operate independently. For pharmacy owners and managers, the objective is straightforward: provide a clearer understanding of what is happening across the business and the information needed to manage it effectively.

But having access to information is only the beginning. The next challenge is ensuring that the information leads to better operational decisions.

In their words

These are not necessarily software problems. They are operational execution challenges.

Going beyond software with Outcome Engineering

One of the lessons we have learned from working with African businesses is that implementing technology does not automatically improve operational performance.

A pharmacy can have a sophisticated inventory management system and still experience stock discrepancies if physical stock counts are not performed consistently. It can generate detailed financial reports while continuing to make poor purchasing decisions. It can track product expiry dates while failing to take timely action on products approaching expiration.

These are not necessarily software problems. They are operational execution challenges. This understanding is central to our Outcome Engineering approach.

Outcome Engineering combines digital technology with practical operational support to help businesses translate information into measurable improvements. Through this model, our team works alongside business operators to strengthen important management processes, identify operational risks, and follow up on actions that affect performance.

For pharmacy businesses, this includes supporting inventory verification, reviewing stock discrepancies, monitoring slow-moving products, identifying replenishment requirements, and strengthening purchasing controls. It also involves examining financial and operational information to identify opportunities to improve profitability and working capital management.

For example, inventory data may reveal that certain products consistently sell quickly while others remain on shelves for extended periods. That information can help management reconsider purchasing quantities, adjust reorder levels, or prioritize products with stronger demand. Similarly, regular reviews of stock adjustments, discounts, and expenses can help identify areas where the business may be losing value.

Our role is not simply to provide reports, but to help ensure that important operational issues are identified, understood, and addressed.

We believe businesses should not have to choose between having good software and running good operations. They should have both.

Connecting the pharmacy to its customers through digital commerce

While improving internal operations is essential, the future of pharmacy retail also depends on making healthcare products more accessible to customers. Consumers increasingly expect convenient ways to discover products, check availability, place orders, and arrange delivery. For pharmacies, meeting these expectations creates opportunities to extend their reach beyond the physical store.

This is where Cornershop, our consumer commerce platform, becomes part of the solution. Through our collaboration with PharmaBay, we are connecting pharmacy retail operations with a digital ordering and delivery experience.

The initiative is being developed around a localized commerce model, beginning in the Oyarifa area of Accra. Customers can use Cornershop to discover and order eligible pharmacy products without necessarily visiting the physical location. The pharmacy remains responsible for preparing and fulfilling orders, while the commerce and delivery workflow connects customers with the products they need.

This creates an additional channel through which pharmacies can engage existing customers and reach new ones. Importantly, the objective is not to replace physical pharmacy operations. It is to complement them.

By connecting online ordering with the pharmacy’s operational systems, we are working toward a model in which digital commerce becomes an extension of the existing business rather than an entirely separate operation. This approach can help pharmacies expand customer convenience while maintaining better coordination between inventory, order fulfillment, and delivery.

For healthcare-related products, the model must also respect applicable requirements for medicine sales, prescription verification, professional supervision, and delivery.

Bringing inventory, commerce, and fulfillment together

One of the most important opportunities in digital pharmacy retail is the connection between product availability and customer ordering. A customer placing an order online expects the product to be available. A pharmacy receiving that order needs to confirm stock, prepare the correct items, and coordinate fulfillment. Without connected systems, these activities can create additional administrative work and increase the risk of errors.

Our approach brings together the capabilities of Foundry Business and Cornershop to support a more coordinated process. Foundry Business provides the operational foundation for managing products, inventory, and business transactions. Cornershop provides the customer-facing commerce experience through which orders can be initiated and managed.

Together, these platforms are designed to support the flow of information between the pharmacy’s internal operations and its digital sales channel. This creates opportunities to improve product availability information, reduce duplicated administrative work, and strengthen order processing.

The broader objective is to make digital commerce a natural extension of pharmacy operations. As this model develops, it can support more sophisticated capabilities, including localized fulfillment, customer engagement, delivery coordination, and multi-location inventory visibility.

Rethinking last-mile delivery for community pharmacies

Convenient ordering is only one part of the digital commerce experience. Customers also need reliable fulfillment. In dense urban communities, last-mile delivery can represent a significant part of the cost and complexity of digital retail. For pharmacies, delivery operations must balance speed, accuracy, cost, and appropriate product handling.

As part of our Cornershop initiative, we are exploring a localized delivery model that uses electric bicycles to serve customers within defined geographic areas. The initial operating model focuses on the Oyarifa community, where proximity between participating businesses and customers creates opportunities for shorter delivery routes and more coordinated fulfillment.

By focusing on specific service areas, we aim to develop a model that can improve delivery efficiency while maintaining manageable operating costs. Electric bicycles also provide an opportunity to support lower-emission urban delivery compared with conventional fuel-powered alternatives.

However, the success of last-mile delivery depends on more than the transportation method. It requires effective order allocation, product verification, rider coordination, customer communication, and delivery confirmation. Our work therefore considers the entire fulfillment process, from the moment an order is received to the point at which it is handed over to the customer.

The goal is to develop a repeatable operating model that can eventually support additional pharmacies and other neighborhood businesses.

Using business data to improve pharmacy performance

A pharmacy’s transaction and inventory records contain valuable information about how the business is performing. They can reveal which products generate the most revenue, which categories contribute the strongest margins, which items remain unsold, and where working capital may be tied up unnecessarily. However, this information is only useful when it is translated into decisions.

Through Foundry Business and Outcome Engineering, we are working to help pharmacy operators use their business data more effectively. This includes examining sales trends, inventory turnover, product profitability, stock availability, and purchasing patterns.

For example, a pharmacy may discover that a relatively small group of products accounts for a substantial portion of its revenue. Maintaining appropriate stock availability for these products can become a priority. At the same time, identifying products with low turnover can help management reduce unnecessary purchasing and improve cash utilization.

By combining operational data with regular management reviews, pharmacies can move toward a more disciplined approach to inventory planning and business performance. Over time, this creates opportunities to introduce more advanced capabilities such as demand forecasting, automated replenishment recommendations, and intelligent business alerts. These are areas where we see significant potential for continued innovation.

Creating a foundation for a more connected healthcare ecosystem

Our work in pharmacy retail forms part of a broader vision for connected healthcare services. Today, many healthcare interactions remain fragmented. Patients may receive care from a hospital or clinic, obtain laboratory services from a separate provider, and purchase prescribed medicines from an independent pharmacy. Each provider may operate different systems, making coordination more difficult.

We believe there is an opportunity to create better-connected digital infrastructure that supports collaboration across healthcare providers while respecting patient privacy, professional responsibilities, and regulatory requirements.

Through our broader Foundry Health vision, we are exploring how hospitals, clinics, laboratories, pharmacies, and patients could interact through more integrated digital services. Pharmacies are an important component of this ecosystem. By modernizing pharmacy operations and developing connected commerce capabilities, we are establishing practical foundations that may support broader healthcare integrations in the future.

This could include improved coordination of eligible prescription fulfillment, better inventory visibility across participating pharmacies, and more convenient access to healthcare products and services.

Our immediate focus remains on solving practical operational and commerce challenges. But we are designing with a longer-term view of how these capabilities could contribute to a more connected healthcare ecosystem.

A partnership focused on continuous improvement

At Access 89, we view digital transformation as an ongoing process rather than a one-time implementation. Technology must continue to evolve as businesses grow, customer expectations change, and new operational challenges emerge.

Our work with PharmaBay reflects this approach. By combining business management technology, operational support, and digital commerce, we are developing a model that addresses multiple dimensions of pharmacy performance.

The relationship also provides valuable opportunities to understand how technology performs in real operating environments. These insights help inform improvements to our platforms, operational processes, and customer experiences.

Our ambition is to use what we learn from these engagements to develop solutions that can support a wider range of pharmacy businesses. Rather than creating isolated technology implementations, we are working toward repeatable digital capabilities that can help pharmacies operate more efficiently and participate in emerging digital commerce opportunities.

Building the future of pharmacy retail in Africa

The future of pharmacy retail will be shaped by businesses that can combine operational discipline with digital convenience. Customers will increasingly expect accessible services, reliable product availability, and flexible ways to interact with healthcare retailers. Pharmacy operators will need better tools to manage inventory, control costs, understand performance, and respond to changing demand.

Meeting these expectations requires connected technology, effective business processes, and continued innovation. Through our work with PharmaBay, Access 89 is demonstrating how enterprise software, operational support, and digital commerce can come together to address these challenges.

The opportunity extends beyond a single pharmacy or digital storefront. It is about developing an approach to healthcare retail in which business operations, customer engagement, and fulfillment are better connected.

As we continue to refine and expand these capabilities, our focus remains on creating practical solutions that help African businesses become more efficient, competitive, and responsive to the communities they serve.

Engineering better healthcare retail experiences

At Access 89, we believe the value of technology should be measured by the improvements it enables in everyday business operations and customer experiences. Our work in pharmacy retail brings this belief to life.

By combining Foundry Business, Outcome Engineering, and Cornershop, we are helping create a more integrated approach to managing pharmacy operations and serving customers. From inventory control and financial visibility to digital ordering and localized delivery, our work is focused on connecting the systems and processes that make modern pharmacy retail possible.

And as the healthcare ecosystem continues to evolve, we see opportunities to build on this foundation through deeper integration, intelligent automation, and more connected services.

The future of healthcare retail isn’t just digital. It’s connected.

• Pharmacy
• Healthcare Retail
• Foundry Business
• Cornershop
• Outcome Engineering
• Inventory Management
• Last-Mile Delivery
• Ghana
• Access 89