Third largest pharmacy chain selects new systems to reduce back-end complexity, speed up service and enhance the customer experience
Third largest pharmacy chain selects new systems to reduce back-end complexity, speed up service and enhance the customer experience
Rowland & Co, the UK’s third largest pharmacy chain, has rolled out 534 VeriFone Vx 810 DUET payment devices across its entire retail estate over a period of 18 days.
Rowlands, which offers a wide range of over the counter, NHS and private prescription medicines as well as cosmetics, toiletries and other healthcare products, required a new in-house payment processing system to keep customer queuing time to a minimum that would also be secure and simple for staff to use and enhanced the customer experience.
Preparing for the future
The system also needed to be future proof to enable contactless payments, ensure compliance with the latest security standards and deliver enhanced connectivity. Connectivity was particularly important as future integration with the company’s new RX pharmacy management system, which provides internet protocol (IP) based supply chain management was vital.
The Vx 810 DUET met Rowland’s needs around speed, where customers and staff have benefitted from the Vx 810’s dual user handover functionality, which has speeded payments, reduced queues and increased ease of use.
The new payment devices also offer a range of connectivity, including Ethernet, USB, serial ports and – crucially for Rowlands – IP. This enabled easy integration with Rowlands RX pharmacy management system, reducing complexity between front of house payments and back of house supply chain management.
Industry compliant standards
The terminals are also Payment Card Industry (PCI) PIN entry device (PED) approved to ensure secure PIN-based transactions. While the secure digital IO (SDIO) expansion port will allow Rowlands Pharmacy to deliver contactless capabilities with ease in the future.
“Our initial aim was to make things better for our customers. The Vx810 DUET has achieved this and more,” explained Stefania Amorese, head of indirect procurement at Rowlands. “Not only has it expedited the time spent by the customer at the till point, it has also made our own operations much more efficient. It will link with our back-office systems and ensured quicker, smoother and less costly migration to new EPoS [electronic point-of-sale] releases as they are introduced.
