Beta Launch’s OsuSala.Online Platform
A Customer Portal to Automate Prescription Management, Order Delivery Routing and Customer Service to Enable OsuSala to Serve More Customers Safely, in Less Time at the Height of the COVID-19 Pandemic
From the very onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in Sri Lanka, in March 2020, the country’s already-established mobile food and grocery delivery landscape comprising service providers like PickMe and UberEats was able to cater to the public’s needs amid periods of curfew and lockdowns.
However, the equally important essential need of medicine remained inaccessible for most, without proper systems and pre-existing soft infrastructure including digital communication and delivery means in place to get medicine across to patients and others in need to their homes.
Medicine remained stocked in pharmacies and other medical facilities, while patients and their families resorted to informal means with varying degrees of success in procuring the medicine they needed, with the country’s private and state pharmaceutical establishments unable to service them in the remote environment that transpired amid the lockdowns.
Beta Launch stepped in at the eleventh hour so to speak, in late-March 2020, approaching the State Pharmaceuticals Corporation (SPC) and their OsuSala outlets, to formulate a solution for this critical issue on a fully-voluntary basis to boost the speed/volume of medication delivered to Sri Lankans in need.
We built an online prescription management system that helped OsuSala optimize staff use and improve medicine output; reduce staff/customer physical exposure to COVID-19; and improve client delivery and customer service experience.
Below we briefly explore the problem in more detail, the solution, and how Beta Launch helped OsuSala gain over 6,000 users and 2,900 orders in just 3 days from both Colombo and Galle, receiving excellent feedback from all users.
Outdated Client Delivery System:
Multiple Manual Touchpoints, Poor Response to Customer Inquiries, and Slow Ordering & Delivery Process
Key issues included:
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Manual handling of customer inquiries, responses, and customer experience
Inability to efficiently route orders to specific OsuSala outlets based on location
Issues on the customer-side such as a) inability to travel due to curfew/lockdowns b) fear/anxiety of physical interaction c) plus lack of updates and information, together with the key system/process issues discussed above, led to considerable challenges in OsuSala’s pharmaceutical operation.
Operational/business consequences of above situation:
Low sales productivity/medicine output at OsuSala retail outlets, unable to fulfill orders
Poor customer service response time, bad customer service experience, and thereby reputation damage
Excessively long delivery times and customers unable to receive medication on time
With these poor operational/business outcomes, OsuSala staff remained inefficiently utilized while regular customers as well as potential new customers (with little option amid travel restrictions) were dissatisfied with the service, and the brand stood to be potentially negatively impacted.
Osusale Online: An Industry-First Locally in Online Prescription Management and Medication Ordering
Ranked
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Social Shares
In just 4 days after launching, OsuSala Online recorded the highest volume of traffic and engagement among all health organizations in Sri Lanka with an online presence, ranked 5th in the number of likes received, and garnered over 1,300 shares which spoke to how well the innovative solution was received by customers/clients.
The system’s integration of a series of order validation, prescription management, notification and delivery routing innovations, allowed for operational efficiency across OsuSala outlets while enhancing prescription and medicine dispatching accuracy plus convenience and satisfaction among customers.
It included numerous functions and features tailored to offer benefits to both the service provider and the consumer, improving OsuSala’s operational/business reach through automation and parallelly offering customers a superior service experience.
The OsuSala Online prescription management system included:
01.
Simple prescription upload and location selection
Customers could simply visit the osusala.online/ platform and instantly upload an image of their prescription while selecting the closest outlet to them for delivery.
02.
Easy account registration and log-in for customers
With just their mobile number and a password
03.
Automated order validation
With just their mobile number and a password
04.
Online prescription management platform
With just their mobile number and a password
05.
Simple prescription views plus comments
With just their mobile number and a password
06.
Multiple prescription/order statuses for simpler tracking
With just their mobile number and a password
07.
Automated notifications/customer help desk
With just their mobile number and a password
08.
Online routing of orders/dispatch
With just their mobile number and a password
Utilizing the automated system described above, customers could order medicine and receive it at their homes in just 3 easy steps:
1) Upload prescription
2) Live updates from pharmacist
3) Medicine delivered to customer
Creating numerous firsts in the local pharmaceutical industry, the OsuSala Online platform and prescription management system presented a scalable and automated model for SPC, to optimize use of their limited human resources and improve medication output per outlet, plus realise faster delivery times through streamlined routing to outlets depending on location.
Parallelly, it eliminated the need for customers to visit outlets physically and thereby reduced long lines and risk of staff/customers contracting COVID-19.
The overall result was that OsuSala was able to offer an innovative, practical solution to improve its operation and boost medicine output, while customers could enjoy a simple, fully-transparent experience of ordering medicine online and receive superior customer service to ease anxiety at the height of the pandemic.