Omnys and AWS Bring Mobile Ecommerce to Italian Pharmacy Network Club Salute

Club Salute had an existing on-premises ecommerce solution that was slow and inflexible and provided only a central service—it was not accessible by individual local pharmacies. The customer experience was poor. Pages took 3–4 seconds to load and payment pages could be even slower, leading some users to abandon their purchases. In fact, the system was so slow that search engines were not correctly indexing all product pages. This meant that potential customers could not find products in their search results, leading to lost sales. Migrating to AWS meant that search engine results were more accurate within days of going live and customers could find the products they wanted.

After moving the central ecommerce system to AWS, the key challenge for Omnys was to create a local ecommerce system that could integrate with a variety of enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions used by different pharmacies. Although online sales through the central ecommerce system make up only 5 percent of total sales, they are growing rapidly.

Just as important as gross sales is how the system improves the relationship with customers. Using a mobile application to support interactions gives the stores and central marketing teams a much clearer view of individual customers and their activities. It also enables geolocation-based advertising and marketing based on customers’ interests.

The protection of personal data was a key goal. Omnys ensured that all data is now stored and encrypted in a safe environment using AWS security services. It used AWS Web Application Firewall to secure endpoints and enable proactive monitoring, and AWS Backup to centrally manage and automate data protection.

The 10-month project successfully created mobile applications for iOS and Android devices and developed all the backend services that Club Salute required on AWS. The solution provides full ecommerce access to a pharmacy’s inventory and enables customers to manage loyalty points, book appointments, and send messages directly to pharmacists using WhatsApp.

The system uses Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), which means that it can scale automatically to meet changing demand and provide fast delivery of pages. Omnys used Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) as an easy-to-operate database for Club Salute pharmacy members, which typically have an inventory of 30,000 items.
One of the most popular features of the application, and the pharmacist’s dashboard, is the calendar function for booking in-store services like electrocardiograms and other health checks. Customers can access this using the mobile app at any time and can even make bookings when shops are closed. Rapid booking provides reassurance to worried customers who need tests. Pharmacists use the application backend to book appointments when customers visit or phone the store.

Customers can use the mobile application to communicate directly with their pharmacist if they need advice on medication or treatments. The app also provides a wealth of data on customer activities—this was previously limited to loyalty card information. By accessing geolocation data and other information from third-party sources, Club Salute can deliver much more accurate and relevant marketing and offers to its customers. “Omnys was a great partner and showed us that anything is possible as long as it is planned properly,” says Valentina Guidi, marketing director at Club Salute. “The mobile application has completely changed our marketing. We have a much deeper understanding of our customers and what they want.”

Pharmacies that actively use the system have added nearly 5 percent to their quarterly sales in the first 6 months since the app was launched. The mobile application deepens the already close relationship between pharmacists and their customers. It means that customers can get advice from pharmacists using messaging systems, if they prefer, instead of having to call or physically visit the pharmacy.

Club Salute is speaking with regulators to see if it can add home delivery services to its offering. And it is using rich customer data from the mobile application to improve marketing and find new customers.“We’re really proud of this unique service that we truly own,” says Guidi. “It is still early days, but we’ve given our pharmacies a huge advantage.”