Healthcare Delivery Through Online Pharmacy Services

Executive summary

The business plan is about opening an online pharmacy shop, where the customers can place their orders for the medicines and other pharmacy products to get it immediately at home. It is an innovative business plan, where the entrepreneur would like to serve the customers in the recent pandemic era, where social distancing and lock down phase have serious impacts on the living style of the individuals. The online service and selling process are also increasing rapidly due to such COVID 19 situation, and thus this innovative business in the health and social care sector would be beneficial for the customers to get immediate medicines and pharmacy products as per doctors’ advice and prescription. The market analysis and competitive forces provide an overview of the health care sector of the UK. If you require business dissertation help, we can provide the best-specialized help that will be tailored according to your needs. The entrepreneurial competence such as risk taking and managing style and opportunity seeking, resistant with the plan further helps the business leader to develop the operations and establish the new venture successfully by arranging investment capital and allocating the other organisational resources. The operations of the business would be warehouse management, maintaining product stock, handling online customers, developing the supply chain in health care sector, creating organisational website and social media marketing to make the new venture successful.

Concept of the business Model

The new venture will aim at establishing a medicine shop at the central London in order to serve the individuals across the market by delivering quality medicines and other health care products to them at affordable price. The name of the new business venture will be Assured pharmacy, which mainly focuses on establishing the medical shops in London for the benefits of the customers. The main motive of the new business venture Assured pharmacy would be to develop retail medicine chain in the UK, where the customers can place their order of medicines and get the products at their home. There would be effective warehouse and one physical shop in London, to run the operations.

Opening this new business venture will be fruitful for the entrepreneur to make the planning successful by utilising the external business environment of the UK and ensure sales maximisation in long run through reallocating the organisational resources and capabilities. In the recent pandemic era, the entrepreneur aim at serving the customers immediately with quality medicines and prescribed drugs, so that the customers can intake the medicines as per the doctor’s advice and prescription. Due to COVID 19 critical phase, there is lock down and social distancing rules in the UK and other international countries also and in such phase, the entrepreneur renovate their business idea and open online e-commerce services for providing emergency medicines to the customers across the UK. The main motive of the firm would be to serve the customers, who are suffering from Corona virus as well as the individuals who need immediate medicines.

Entrepreneurial competences

In order to develop good strategic planning for the new business venture, it is essential to have good entrepreneurial competences, so that the entrepreneurs are able to plan the whole operations and run the business successfully. Opportunity seeking and good communication skill is effective for the entrepreneurs to progress in the business, where the entrepreneurs can seek the market opportunities for exploring new business scope (Tuan, Thanh, and Le Tuan, 2019). The entrepreneur and the team are efficient to seek new opportunities and enhance communication and cooperation for running the operations (Chakraborty, Ilavarasan and Edirippulige, 2021). It would be possible to strategize the business process in order to strengthen the operational activities and serve the customers successfully. Additionally, decision making and critical analytical skill as well as empathy and emotional intelligence, continuous monitoring and supervision skill of the entrepreneur are other entrepreneurial competences in order to progress in the new business venture successfully. Commitment to work, risk-taking, demand for efficiency and quality, persistent towards the work are also mandatory to run the business and lead the team members towards achieving the aim of the new business venture.

Objectives; expressed in SMART terms

The objectives of the new business venture will be,

To provide the best quality medicines to the customers as per the prescription and doctors’ advice

To develop online mobile application for the firm to manage the online customers

To maximise profitability within 3 years by retaining the online clients

To enhance sales volume in 1 year through e-commerce business solution

To strengthen their customers base in the UK market

The above mentioned objectives of the new business venture would be SMART, which will be explained further.

Market analysis: PESTEL factors

Political stability in the market, economic growth, social development, technological advancement, legal affairs and environmental principles can be analysed through PESTEL analysis (Terra, Rodrigues and Maia, 2019). In the UK, there is political stability along with government support. Economic growth and social development further influence the entrepreneur to develop creative business. The technical advancement and legal compliance reshape the business firm and strategies efficiently to sustain in the market (Vasilevna, 2021).

Product

The products of this new venture would be all the medicines and pharmacy products. The company will conduct partnership with NHS to access the pharmacy supply chain, in order to stock and manage warehouse of the medicines and other health care products in order to serve the customers. There are diverse medicines where the clients can place orders for any medicines and pharmacy products. Hereby, the product portfolio as well as quality of the products would be the business strengthens where the entrepreneur would be able to run the operations and develop creative planning to sustain in the UK health and social care sector.

Marketing the business: Segmentation, Targeting & Positioning

It is important to conduct market segmentation, targeting and positioning, in order to retain the customers for the new venture so that it is possible to deliver them the best quality products and services at affordable price (Sem, Gou and Aljabban, 2018). Market segmentations are conducted on the basis of occupation of the people, income status, demographic factors, health care and locations. This new venture will target all the people from diverse demographic and cultural background, so that all the social communities have equal access to order for the medicines and get good services immediately. Additionally, as per the income status, all the income groups are targeted, including low, middle and high, as the company will aim to deliver high quality pharmacy products at affordable price. Thus, it would be beneficial for the social communities to access the medicines at effective price range and different offers (Chada, 2020). The family person and old age people are also targeted, where the old person are mostly suffering from different diseases and they need immediate services at home to meet their health care needs (Alm and Lindblad, 2021). As per the locations, the people in urban areas and also rural areas across the UK will be targeted. For positioning this new venture, the entrepreneur must develop operational planning further starting from investment funding, operational activities, warehouse management, client handling and marketing planning, which would be developed further.

Sales and operations

In order to maximise the sales volume of the business and run the operations efficiently, it is essential to create good strategies with time table, so that the entrepreneur of the new business and management team would be able to handle the pharmacy venture, named Assured pharmacy and establish the organisation successfully. The time table for establishing this business venture along with the strategies will be represented below,

Operational activities of the new start up

The new venture will be related to developing organisational website, with creative content and adequate information, so that the customers can access the services and place their orders through a systematic process.

The entrepreneurs must develop the official website of the business named Assured pharmacy and protect the client data and organisational computerised system information so that the customers can feel secure to share their personal details. The payment options would be there including online payment, debit and credit card payment as well as cash on delivery so that all the clients can choose the options of payment as per their convenience.

The information would be there on the website, including the offers, price levels of the medicines, A to Z category for sharing the name of the medicines as well as the drug combination as well so that the clients can choose their prescribed medicine and get the services immediately.

The partnership with NHS would be beneficial to access the supply chain of the UK in order to store and manage the medicine and other pharmacy products at the warehouse of the business. The Enterprise resource planning system must be implemented to manage online operations and handle the clients across the country.

The marketing planning would be there to promote the new official website to get the medicines at home within minimum time at its best price. The major marketing planning would be through social media marketing for successful positioning of the brand (Vijai and Wisetsri, 2021). The entrepreneur would like to promote the business through Facebook, managing twitter account and uploading videos on YouTube in order to share all the necessary information related to the new venture with the social communities of the UK.

As per the operational strategic planning, it is expected that, the entrepreneur would be able to establish the new venture and there will be 20% increase in the sales volume and after completion of the 2nd year, it will be 35%. It is also expected that, after completing the 3rd year of the business, the sales volume would be increased by 50%. As per the profitability prediction, the profit volume would also be increased by 15%, 25% and 40% respectively in upcoming financial years.

Financial projections

It is essential for the entrepreneur to develop financial projection to provide overview about the investment in the new business venture. This would be helpful for the investors to analyse the market opportunities and required investment capital to establish the business successfully in the UK.

The major activities in this financial projection are such as product quality management, developing pharmacy supply chain across the UK, partnership with NHS pharmacy department, social media advertisement and posts as well as administrative cost, staff salary and management, technological creativity for official website and establishing the warehouse. The expected expenditure for this innovative start-up of online medicine shop is approximately £10500 and in this context, it is the responsibility of the entrepreneur to arrange investors and develop strong relationship for further investment in this new start up.

Strengths and risks of the business

Strengths of the business

The strengths of this new venture would be strong product portfolio management, affordable pricing policy and financial investment for the benefits of the social communities. In the recent pandemic era, the entrepreneur aims to serve the customers across diverse social communities by providing home delivery of the medicines. Hence, for maximising wellbeing of the individuals, the entrepreneur will be looking for providing the quality medicines at affordable price immediately, to create values for the social communities (Ramberg and Lewin, 2021). The operational efficacy is the major strength of the organisation, to sustain in the competition and develop the venture efficiently to serve the social communities across the UK. The entrepreneur conducts market analysis through competitive force and PESTLE analysis, which would be beneficial for the business leader to develop creative business ideas and run the operations successfully (Alamari, Alabdulkarim and Al-Wabil, 2019). The strategy of developing online medicine delivery services is one of the innovative strategies in such pandemic era due to COVID 19, and it is considered as the major strength of the new venture.

Risk factors associated with the new business venture

The major risk factors of the new business venture would be lack of effective capital investment planning and shortage of funding, as the new venture is mainly based on the technological innovation to utilise e-commerce facilities for providing the best services to the online buyers immediately in the health and social care sector (Linkola, 2019). Other risk factors are related to presence of inexperienced labour, lack of management at the operation department of the pharmacy, poor marketing plan and lack of availability of the suppliers in order to run the business operations as per the above mentioned strategic plan (Huynh, 2019). These have negative impacts on the business activities and it is essential for the entrepreneurs to identify the risk factors and develop further solutions to establish the new venture and meet the strategic objectives of the firm.

Closing summary

The entrepreneur aims at establishing online medicine store, named Assured pharmacy, in order to serve the social communities across the UK in such COVID 19 critical phase. There are lock down and maintaining social distancing as per the UK government, though recently the situation is improving day by day. In such phase, opening the online pharmacy would be beneficial for the patients to get their medicines at home within effective time. Pricing strategies along with low price and different offers would also be beneficial for the societies to improve their wellbeing in long run. Establishment of this new venture would be beneficial where the investors will be paid with high return on their investment. The profitability and sales volume are also expected to increase over the period of time, through e-commerce facilities and online medicine delivery services. The organisational website is important to manage the clients and making their payments to provide the prescribed medicine immediately.

Reference List

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