Should I stay or should I go?
That’s what some independent pharmacies end up asking themselves when it comes to their software system. They may have been satisfied at first, but it gets to a point where they realize their software vendor is no longer a good fit. With a bad software system set in place, pharmacies can lose valuable, time, money and resources.
How can you make sure you don’t end up in the same situation?
The Value of Retention
If you’re researching vendors to find a new software system for your pharmacy, it can be helpful to know which vendors retain their customers. It’s not just about getting new customers; it’s also about not losing current customers.
If a software vendor has a significant amount of pharmacies leaving them, this could represent issues with customer service or software functionality. One way to identify this is to look for vendors with a high “net gain” of customers.
This means that they have a high number of new pharmacies converting to their system as well as a very low number of pharmacies leaving their software for another vendor, which could indicate they are overall successful in keeping their customers satisfied.
Which Vendor Retains Customers Best?
In order to identify customer retention patterns among independent pharmacy vendors, we can look at the results of a Direct Opinions survey of almost 2000 community pharmacies in the United States.
Pharmacists were asked whether they recently converted pharmacy systems, then asked which vendor they left from and which vendor they converted to.
The survey results are visualized in this graphic, where the amount of green people represents new customers gained and the amount of red people represents customers that left that vendor:
PioneerRx Pharmacy Software has the greatest net gain of customers, as a result of having the highest amount of independent pharmacies converting to their system in contrast to a low amount of pharmacies who left.
PioneerRx is followed by these vendors, in decreasing amounts of net gain: Rx30, ComputerRx, Micro Merchant Systems, and Liberty.
Conversely, Pharmaserv and QS/1 have an overall net loss, indicating that their new customers are outweighed by the amount of pharmacies that are leaving their system.
Conclusion
The results of this survey help give a better understanding of the competitive market between independent pharmacy software vendors. It analyzes the competitive switching that occurs as a result of pharmacies leaving their vendor to find a new one, usually in search of a better solution.
By analyzing the patterns and trends that occur, we can make informed inferences about the overall satisfaction that customers experience with each vendor.
There are multiple factors that can influence the decision to convert software systems, however, so it is always a good idea to look at the full picture when conducting your own research.
To discover more insights about the market and read other results from the full Direct Opinions survey, visit our Evaluating the Best Pharmacy Software page.
