Blooms the Chemist is a well known national pharmacy chain with over 60 individual sites across Australia.
Blooms called on TechFlare Solutions in 2008 to provide their management services with an IT Solution for
the entire group. After several months of consultative process TechFlare won the business to take on the
IT managed services for the group. The solution included a range of services for over 500 users and terminals
including;
- Helpdesk and 24/7 Support
- Monitoring of Terminals, Servers and Networking Equipment
- Hosted Email and Messaging
- Offsite Backup for Business Critical Files
- Anti Virus and Security
- Reporting and Project Management
- Intranet and Web Solutions
- Hosting and Domain Name Services
- Hardware and Software Procurement
- Consulting Services
Prior to rolling out services to the stores our first challenge was to migrate all group services
from the existing provider across. This involved a marathon 26 hour haul for 2 technicians and 20 hours
for another 3 technicians. This lengthy period wasn’t planned for however the migration had to be cut
over due to a tricky deadline and all scripting failed on the night due to the previous email system in place!
The initial rollout phase included project management and communications with management services
and also consulting within the pharmacists and partners. A trial of up to 10 sites was carried out to get
a feel for sites and work through any difficulties encountered. This proved to be extremely challenging
as the sites were not standardised and there were a number of different POS systems and other applications.
In addition hardware, software and equipment ranged from modern to quite old. This caused problems
with monitoring, backups and antivirus so we had to develop more flexible solutions particularly as
standardization was not an option initially.
After leaving the trial we had to work with Telstra to provision every single network connection to
each store and install all services to stores within a tight 3 month period. This meant technicians needed
to drive and fly to remote parts of Australia to provision each site and get signoff whilst hoping Telstra
were able to deliver over the Christmas period. In the end we completed the rollout despite several failures
from third parties and challenges to our technicians including equipment not being shipped on time and
personnel not be available.
After completion of the rollout TechFlare went over 6 months of working through the systems and
slowly tweaking them and improving including communication and training for pharmacists and their staff.
The experience at times was frustrating for all involved as each individual site had site specifics and
many different providers. Thus far TechFlare has dealt with over 15 providers that service the group
making sure for some serious headaches for management in handling staff training internally.
After getting systems optimised and stabilised TechFlare provided some value adds and took over
procurement of equipment. Negotiations went through distribution direct to Vendor and soon pharmacies
were saving up to 35% on purchasing of equipment and licensing. This helped not only the pockets of the
group partners but also TechFlare as we were able to ensure quality of equipment and correct setup of systems.
Currently TechFlare is working with Blooms on improving a number of sites and systems and is
working on bringing on more technology to assist in reduce labour costs and speed up efficiencies.
For more information on this case study please contact TechFlare.