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Cambrian: Better together

After 22 years in business, Cambrian Alliance counts one in four independent pharmacies as customers, but it's not resting on its laurels

“We’ve found people’s increased willingness to embrace digital communications and interactions during the pandemic has definitely challenged us to work differently and smarter,” says Nathan Wiltshire, chief executive of Cambrian Alliance. “This is certainly something we plan to build on.”

Established by a group of Welsh independent contractors 21 years ago, the Cardiff-based independent pharmacy buying group now has 30 staff and supports more than 1,200 members across the UK – that’s one in four of the nation’s independent community pharmacies. 

“Because we do not own pharmacies and are not part of a multinational or tied to our own wholesaler, we are truly independent, just like our customers,” says Mr Wiltshire (right). “This enables us to leverage a collective buying power of more than £600 million annually to negotiate the best purchasing margins for generics, PIs and all other product categories from more than 50 suppliers, including AAH and Alliance Healthcare, as confirmed by a leading independent industry report.”

The engine room of Cambrian’s operation is its e-CASS price comparison stock ordering tool and associated add-on capabilites. Mr Wiltshire says the platform is “the most widely used buying system across the independent sector in the UK”. More than 25,000 products are put out to tender every day; users can track their profit by supplier as well as by product, with monthly reports – and the recently added option of daily order summaries – enabling them to identify loss-making lines.

“Our message has always been that you stand a far better chance of securing competitively priced medicines when you spread your spend across a number of suppliers,” adds Mr Wiltshire, “and at its core that’s what e-CASS does. Plus, with the way clawback is calculated set to change in England from this month, it can be difficult to know exactly what these changes may mean for margins.

With some contractors suggesting there will be significant reductions in margin whilst others expect to see gains, it is really useful for our members to have access to a detailed monthly profit report that can apply different levels of clawback percentages based on the revised fixed value for each product category group."

Pandemic outcomes

With a standard price plan starting from £30 a month, Mr Wiltshire says the e-CASS platform “helps our customers save more than they pay as the monthly fee”, but this utility has not stopped the Group further developing the tool.

It’s not enough for us to innovate our own processes if we don’t also support our customers to navigate the challenges they tell us they are facing

“We’ve had an interesting past five years, as have most companies,” he says, “especially during the pandemic when we overcame the challenges of remote working and have still seen growth and success. 

“We know how much pressure pharmacy has been under, so we worked tirelessly to continue to support pharmacies and dispensing doctors by developing new solutions such as e-CASS Warehouse and our latest addition, e-CASS Market, which lets independent pharmacies and dispensing doctors buy and sell stock from each other. Contractors have sought to trade stock between themselves for many years where there’s a patient need, but we decided to exploit technology to make that easier and more efficient.”

As well as an opportunity to tweak the kit, the pandemic also gave the group the chance to address working practices, most of which they have continued to use. 

“We saw that collaborative and remote working was definitely possible to keep the day-to-day operations going,” says Mr Wiltshire, “which has led to us exploring other ways in which we can make use of digital interactivity. For example, we added a live chat functionality to our system during the pandemic, which has proved really useful because of the nature of how busy contractors are. 

“We have also added head count to our account services team based in Cardiff – all experienced account managers who understand pharmacy, on hand to help our customers with any queries about medicines purchasing. Every one of our members also has their own personal Cambrian Alliance Group business manager to help grow their business and profits. They work in conjunction with the account services team as an additional support to them, dealing with service-related challenges such as opening accounts right through to giving general advice and making sure our customers are accessing the best deals.”

Future strategy

Looking ahead, Mr Wiltshire says Cambrian’s plan is to continue with further digitalisation of the customer experience, building on customer feedback from the pandemic, which showed that users really valued the convenience of this kind of user interface.

“We are working on making it as easy as possible for our customers to work with us and, in turn, our wholesaler partners,” he explains. “I am very passionate about trying to get rid of paperwork in pharmacy, so our aim is to make it even easier to sign up with us electronically. Anything we can do to shift all those kinds of processes online will make life easier and quicker for pharmacists. We also want to further develop our reporting capability so we can take the data we have from across our customer base to help better inform buying decisions.”

Hindocha Primary School in Uganda got a new roof, 
courtesy of Cambrian Alliance

But it’s not just its own processes that Cambrian Alliance plans to streamline. “It’s not enough for us to innovate our own processes if we don’t also support our customers to navigate the challenges they tell us they are facing,” Mr Wiltshire says. “Put simply, the two key challenges for pharmacists at the moment come down to price and securing supply. There’s a huge amount of volatility in the marketplace at the moment, plus we’ve also seen a major shortliner go into administration this year, which hasn’t helped and has put existing wholesalers under more pressure.”

In another move to help pharmacy contractors, Cambrian Alliance recently announced a new arrangement giving the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC) automated weekly reports from e-CASS of any generic purchases made by its members above Drug Tariff prices across a range of suppliers, in a bid to save contractors from having to submit their own individual reports to PSNC each month. 

PSNC says these weekly reports will “support [its] work in securing price concessions each month”, with Mr Wiltshire adding that Cambrian’s reasoning behind the tie up is that “since community pharmacy continues to be placed under huge financial strain, anything we can do to support fairer and more accurate reimbursement to avoid contractors dispensing at a loss is a key priority for us.”

Although Cambrian Alliance counts many long-standing customers on its list, Mr Wiltshire says some of its members may still be unaware that it is one of the few buying groups to be MHRA-accredited as a medicines broker – something that is mentioned, albeit modestly, on the group’s website.

Staff achievements

The group also keeps a low profile when it comes to the achievements of its staff. For example, like many budding authors, marketing executive Tom Griffiths used the restrictions of the pandemic to spur him on to write his first novel – Tales of Splendania: A Golden Wish – a children’s fantasy fiction book that is the first part of a series available from all good bookshops.

The Cambrian Alliance team also come together to support a range of charities nationally and locally, with the group sponsoring Radyr Cricket Club in Cardiff, and donating money further afield to build a replacement school roof for Hindocha Primary School in Uganda.

“Our aim as a business is to be recognised as the most successful buying and support group of independent pharmacies at improving the financial and operational performance of our members,” says Mr Wiltshire. “But our values don’t stop there. Honesty, integrity, consideration for others and adherence to the highest ethical and business standards are the key values set by the group, and we apply them to everything we do.” 

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