Small inefficiencies in a pharmacy can be easy to overlook. An hour spent completing a repetitive stock management task might not seem significant on its own.
But repeat that task several times a day, almost every day of the year, and the cost starts to add up.
Understanding where your team’s time is being spent — and what that time is worth — can help you identify opportunities to improve workflow, reduce unnecessary manual tasks and determine whether pharmacy automation could deliver a worthwhile return on investment.
Start with a simple calculation
You don’t need a complicated financial model to begin identifying the potential cost of inefficiency.
Start with four figures:
Average time per task × hourly staff cost × number of tasks per day × days open per year
For example, consider a pharmacy where:
A stock management task takes an average of 60 minutes
The staff cost is $30 per hour
The task is completed four times per day
The pharmacy operates 362 days per year
That equates to an annual labour cost of:
$43,440 per year
And that’s just one area of the pharmacy.
Looking at repetitive tasks in this way can help put a tangible value on the time being consumed by manual processes.
But saving time is only part of the equation
The value of pharmacy automation isn’t simply about reducing labour costs.
The bigger opportunity can come from asking:
What could your team achieve if that time was available elsewhere?
When routine stock handling and dispensing processes are automated, staff can potentially spend more time on activities such as patient care, professional services, medication management, adherence programs and other revenue-generating services.
In our example, improving the workflow could free up approximately 231 staff hours each year.
Those hours represent additional capacity within the pharmacy — without necessarily increasing the size of the team.
Turn additional capacity into value
If that newly available capacity is redirected towards patient-facing and revenue-generating activities, its value can extend well beyond the original cost saving.
For example, if a pharmacy conservatively estimates that its additional capacity could generate $60,000 in additional annual revenue, the potential annual financial impact becomes:
$43,440 in cost savings + $60,000 in additional revenue = $103,440 annual benefit
Of course, every pharmacy is different. Staffing costs, prescription volumes, opening hours, workflows and opportunities for professional services will all influence the result.
The important point is to consider both sides of the equation: the cost of the current process and the value of what your team could be doing instead.
What could that mean for ROI?
Once you’ve estimated the potential annual benefit, you can begin assessing the return on an investment in automation.
Using an annual benefit of $103,440 as an example:
These figures are illustrative only, but they demonstrate why the cost of an automation solution shouldn’t be considered in isolation.
The more useful question is: what value could the investment create for the pharmacy year after year?
Look beyond labour savings
There are also benefits that are harder to represent with a single dollar figure.
A well-designed automation and storage solution can help create more efficient workflows, reduce unnecessary movement and repetitive tasks, improve stock management and reduce the potential for errors and rework.
Most importantly, it can give pharmacists and pharmacy staff greater capacity to focus on patients and the areas of the business where their expertise provides the greatest value.
Calculate the opportunity in your pharmacy
Every pharmacy has a different workflow, which is why Willach takes an evidence-based approach to pharmacy automation.
Rather than starting with a particular machine or configuration, we look at how your pharmacy operates: where staff time is being spent, where bottlenecks occur, your available space, dispensing volumes and where greater efficiency could create value.
With more than 20 years of experience in Australia and New Zealand, we partner with pharmacies to design automation and storage solutions around their individual workflow and long-term goals.
Can a Pharmacy Robot Help Reduce Dispensary Inefficiencies?
For pharmacies managing increasing prescription volumes, investing in a pharmacy robot can be an effective way to improve workflow efficiency and reduce time spent on repetitive dispensing tasks.
Willach’s German-engineered CONSIS robotic dispensing systems automate medication storage and retrieval, helping pharmacies streamline daily operations, improve stock management and free up valuable staff time.
By reducing manual handling and improving dispensing workflows, pharmacy robots can help create additional capacity, allowing your team to focus more on patient care and other revenue-generating services.
Explore our CONSIS pharmacy robotic dispensing solutions to discover how automation could benefit your pharmacy.
