Summary

Sunpharma’s first retail pharmacy was opened in 1998 and with the selling of the company in
2009, a completely new management team developed. Sunpharma organization included
twenty seven corporate employees in departments of purchasing, finance, marketing, human
resources and operations. These corporate staffers supported Sunpharma’s 203 pharmacy
employees in thirty five pharmacies.

The number of pharmacies in Slovakia was high, creating a highly competitive industry
environment. Every new Sunpharma pharmacy was designed as a modern open space with a
large self-service section where pharmacists could assist in selection of both prescribed and
self-service products. Recruiting was a major source of concern for all pharmacy companies
in Slovakia due to emigration of pharmacists from Slovakia to other European countries for
higher salaries.

Sunpharma provided world class services such as drug consultation, price comparison
information and a loyalty program that gave customer discounts and promoted Sunpharma’s
offerings. Sunpharma’s organizational culture was environment friendly leading to employee
turnover of less than even ten percent. The company offered accredited continuing education
training to its pharmacists and pharmaceutical laboratory technicians. This included
workshops, seminars, and lectures leading to an innovative training system.

To understand the pharmacies from customers’ point of view, mystery shopper visits were
conducted. Overall, the evaluation was quite positive with some imperfections in sales and
communication skills of pharmacists. Linda Doloniva, Human resources manager for the
Sunpharma group, needed to decide the kind of system that would provide continual training
of employees in the organization. She also needed to convince the CEO as to how employee
training would lead to improved effectiveness and productivity thereby improving
satisfaction for customers and patients reflecting in improvement of sales results.
Current training programs

Sunpharma’s current training program provided its pharmacists opportunities to obtain the
necessary credits. The company offered accredited continuing education training for technical
and pharmaceutical knowledge.

Problems

 Which factors are most important to increase the competitiveness of the company?
 What would be the best way to teach soft skills to pharmacists who prided themselves on
their technical knowledge?

Results of the mystery shopping report brought into light the problems with Sunpharma’s
pharmacies and pharmacists as they moved from the traditional Slovak ‘closed space’ model
to the new ‘open-space, self-service’ model:

 Insufficiencies in detecting the customers’ needs (process of drug selection)

 Not providing information about the offered products, price and possible alternatives
(process of drug selection)
 Lack of communication and professional skills. Personal approach in the form of a
smile and ‘thanks for visiting’ were missing (soft skills)
 Negative response about sales skills (soft skills)
 Loyalty program information of customer discounts and promotion of Sunpharma’s
offerings was not mentioned by any of the pharmacies

Solution

Although the mystery shopping report gave negative feedback about sales skills, but training
the pharmacists should be the company’s priority rather than training the salespersons
because pharmacists are the only ones who are able to issue prescribed drugs.

A competency approach should be used for developing a training system combining ‘on the
job’ with ‘off the job’ sessions.

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Implementation plan

‘On the job’ training sessions: These sessions should focus on improving the following areas:

 Appearance of sales person

 Greetings and Salutation
 Completion of sales talk

The idea behind going for on the job training for these areas is that these can only be
improvised upon by practicing in a real time environment instead of classroom sessions.
Secondly, due to the time and budget constraints, these areas can be addressed more
effectively to enhance productivity.

 Appearance of sales persons can be improved by introducing a proper dress code. The
company can hire professional trainees who can evaluate and improve the soft skills
of greeting, salutation and sales talk completion of the pharmacists. However, certain
pharmacists might not cooperate with the trainers due to their individual ways of
handling customers
 The company can also initiate training through video conferencing sessions. This
would involve lesser cost in implementation due to the use of existing IT systems
within the pharmacies

‘Off the job’ training sessions: These sessions should focus on improving the following areas:

 Process of drug selection

 Loyalty program information

Sunpharma’s open space pharmacies, which were quite different from the traditional
pharmacies allowed a more relaxed atmosphere where pharmacists could assist in selection of
both prescribed and self-service products.
 To differentiate themselves from other pharmacies, pharmacists should have good
knowledge of the various health issues, suitable drug offerings to suggest to
customers, and smart cross selling
 Annual workshops should be conducted by practitioners to make the pharmacists
more informed about healthcare issues and the drugs associated with them

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  Apart from the current training program, the newly inducted employees who lack
experience should be assigned mentors who are experienced and have been employed
at each of the pharmacies for a significant time period
 The pharmacists should be made aware of the importance of loyalty program of
giving customer discounts and promotion of Sunpharma’s offerings. For this, lectures
and seminars should be conducted by experienced pharmacists along with marketing
department emphasizing the benefits and advantages of giving customer discounts.
The pharmacy staff should be shown the sales and revenue figures through
presentations so that they start believing in the loyalty program as a competitive
strategy

Combining ‘Off the job’ and ‘on the job’ training sessions: These sessions should focus on
dealing with:

 Negative response about sales skills

We will suggest combined off the job and on the job training sessions for improving sales
skills. For off the job training, workshops should be conducted to practically train
pharmacists on improving cross selling and up selling. This can be done by portraying
different customer stereotypes and sales strategies associated with them. On the job training
session will help them to master their skills practically, on the spot trainers can directly
evaluate pharmacists and work on their weakness.

Challenges of the HR Department

External environment
 Shortage of pharmacists: Their demand was more than the supply, Moreover,
emigration of pharmacists from Slovakia to other European nations further
exacerbated the situation

 Stringent legal obligations: As per the law, twenty credit points were to be earned by
the pharmacists per year by participating in educational programs and this was
governed by a licensing regulatory authority. This did not improve employee
efficiency to a great extent due to the slowly changing knowledge needs of the

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 pharmaceutical industry; it was not every day that a new pharma product would be
introduced in the market. This entire training program was cost and time expensive as
it was repeatedly conducted for all the employees

Internal Environment

 Budget for training was limited so the training methods needed to be prioritized
 The pharmacists wanted to exercise greater authority and thus would be resistant to
the changes in HR policies. This was because each pharmacy had a lead pharmacist
with a license to operate his pharmacy as an independent company and he did not
want to compromise on this authority