Click on the Newsletter Reader's Forum link to access a forum from which you can express your comment or viewpoint on this article.
The author values your input, so please take the time to register your details, and participate in the only free debate on the future of Australian pharmacy.
Registration is free, and required once only, for permanent access.
You do not need to register if you only wish to view comments.

B2b. Are we really serious about b2b-e.commerce?
Do we have a compelling sense of why change is needed, sooner than later? Who cares?
Who can make change happen?
If you still spend a lot of Sunday afternoons on paper work - wouldn't it be nice to get back the time?
One of the difficulties faced by individuals and organisations committed to pioneering change is to find the right people, in the right place, at the right time with the right attitude.
The general Australian view is to see the 'guvinment' as the cash cow and driver - yet governments, both the elected and employed representatives, by the very nature of their experience, tend to take a one dimension, thin veneer approach. Rather than drive change, they sit in the back seat with one hand on the handbrake.
Usually their contribution rests with commissioning reports or funding trials and pilots that are all doomed to fail, mainly due to the lack of true commitment by those most effected.
The other likely sponsor comes from within the corporate model.
The trouble is, they have to cope with a trick.
Which is, how to develop income and market share without using proprietary solutions. The question they face is "why should we invest, build, demonstrate and then allow others to eat our lunch"?
As there is nowhere to hide proprietary systems on the Internet they have a problem maintaining the respectability of, lock-in, proprietary systems.
Even the most sensible and adventurous corporate identities still have to struggle with policy, usually wrapped up in the small print of - 'feesandconditionsapply'.
Then we have the association folk.
We have professional bodies, industry bodies, advisory bodies, accounting service bodies and service body bodies.
Their trouble is that the elected members are part time and are also usually those people with the time to give to an organisation that delivers no direct income benefit to their place of investment and employment.
Noble folk, but they tend to have negligible impact.
Either being too busy to really contribute, or not capable of making change happen - or both.
While the employed staffs in associations are no more or any less, effective than the government departmental officers are. In other words, they have no skin invested in the outcome.
If it works, they are leaders and heroes.
If it flops, they were merely the neutral public servants - no responsibility, no sacrifice required - next please!

Then there are two sorts of visionaries.
The insiders and the intruders.
Both are most likely to be a true impediment to real change than proponents of sensible policies. The first, the insiders, are the ground floor, day-to-day, practitioners - the struggling self-appointed genius who is in the wrong job and wants to make a noise and push a barrow.
Overall, in the longer term, they are usually harmless as they eventually run out of funding and puff.
The other, the intruder, is the 'inventor' from outside the industry sector.
With little true knowledge of the industry sector, but a lot of ego, and sometimes money. They dream up whizbang 'solutions' that they convince a few people to purchase.
Usually, these purchasers are really the unpaid, quality assurance inspectors, and soon discover all the bugs, design faults and blue-sky failures.
And usually find enough to bury the 'product' and add another chapter to the eternal cruel experience of 'buyer beware'.

Finally there are the majority of industry members, all of whom collectively have all the answers, all the knowledge, and all the smarts. What these folk do not have is the awareness that if they 'know it', nor do they do have the time to 'do it'. Busy, efficient, normal people - doing their job, doing it well and trusting that others will do their jobs to everyone's benefit.
We all hope that this is what will happen.
Often, mostly, it does not.
A rude and crude way to sum this up is if these folk have the answers - what was the question!
There are examples of successful b2b-e.commerce change management processes underway in this country.
Their experience would indicate that the following elements are mandatory -
* collaboration - by all of the individuals and organisations mentioned above, to come together, work together, contributing different resources, skills and knowledge for the common good
* critical mass - achieving a platform that will sustain a maximum number of participants
* convenience - there is no point in adopting new systems if it is less useful, harder to use and less convenient than the old methods
* common sense based - the new way is 'better', a natural improvement - a 'why did we not do this years ago' sort of thing
* common standards - in the age of the on-line world there is no way to make b2b work than to accept that machines are dumb - people can fix, make and re-key mistakes - machines can not.
* common data - just like standards, if the data is not up to date, aligned and mistake free, then the dumb machine will screech to a halt or process garbage
* an understanding - that the only way to benefit from true information management is the ability to share all information, with all partners
* facilitation - by people who are not afraid to fail - rather than cautious consultants being paid to write a report - or to deliver the plan from some report - with an negative, 'built-in', incentive to decide that what is actually needed is a new report
* maturity - of cooperation, a very unusual Australian strength - the ability to demonstrate change management activity that delivers mutual benefits with mutual risks and contributions, and
* money - all sorts of money matters - the basic driver of change is 'what is in it for me' being answered by 'money' - more of the stuff, more reliable cash flows, more dependable accounting outcomes, the simple age old driver of change is proving that benefits can be seen, felt, banked and spent.

Which brings me to a central plank of this article - GST, BAS and pharmacy.
Let's get back Sunday afternoons.
As you re-read the list of possible change agents above, which have come close to solving the problems that pharmacy has with the GST?
Which politician, government representative, professional spokesperson, industry executive, accountant, software and hardware, telecommunications vendor or visionary identity, actual convinced you they had the answer?
Not many eh?
Why is that?
Because no one has yet put together all of the bullet points elements above, into a package, implemented the package, refined the package and whoosh - deliver and share the benefits of a successful package of outcomes.
Simple in many ways.
In fact so simple that intelligent people often miss the point.
Furthermore while it maybe simple it is also hard work, involving a lot of tedious effort to change micro and macro matters, that have to be synchronised and not kept separated by self-interest.
While not wanting to debate the pros and cons of the why the GST/BAS mess (in pharmacy) exists - it is not too difficult to see that the GST is a natural application function for the on-line economy.
Rather than being a separate application, it should be the by function of other tasks. The GST/BAS process should be automatically calculated, processed and submitted as a sub-set of other electronic transactions, with the reward being better overall business disciplines that controls the GST money exchanges.
That is, move it electronically, better, faster, to be more reliable, dependable and with less effort to move money in and out of your bank account.
Sad to say the disparate nature of the divided forces cannot see the common sense in looking at the issue with new, electronic eyes; not the old paper based view.
Mostly because these forces do not see the big, collaborative, overlapping picture that holds all the answers.
As each participant concentrates solely on their narrow view they are too busy, too distracted and too distant to see the forest.
The GST is all pervasive, right?
Seen by most as a big black hole - however it should be seen as the big, black highway to better management destinations. An electronic superhighway that carries all other applications interconnected and interoperable so that all transactions are completed with minimised re-working and re-keying.
Eliminating anything that is needlessly repetitive, being maintained as unnecessary chores in an on-line environment.
A Sunday too far away?
A few articles ago I wrote about "If it runs past" outlining the benefit of broadband connectivity, now, soon and in the future.
What the article did not detail was the interaction that is possible, between applications, given that the collaboration team is in place and who are working together for mutual benefit.
An application that is common to, and ties together, many applications is the discipline of the GST. The GST/BAS requirement is unavoidable, so lets turn a pain into a pleasure.
A quick look at what the world of on-line trading will look like, is to consider all of the interaction, correspondence and other information reticulation that is now done 'manually', repetitively, slowly and inefficiently.
Then imagine where the improvements will come from.
Alphabetically application, that can or will be done on-line, in real time, as quick as a wink, are:
* Accountant services Links to all record keeping and reports, including GST/BAS and HIC (Ah Sundays)
* ATO Lodgement of returns, of GST/BAS and the receipt of all returns and payments.

Banks are motherless, but they become more acceptable and usable tools when 'it' is all electronically traceable and manageable.
Turn the tables.
Banks are hell bent on forcing change, based on e.commerce to minimise their costs.
What should happen is that they should, in return, deliver back benefit to on-line customers.
* BMMS and whatever else emerges as the new world of patient history policy (Last gap).
* Borrowings: get online to your pharmacy mates to locate any urgent out of stock item, faster and better that phoning around - all traceable as well.
* Clinical relationship with peers, with doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, other clinicians (scripts, records, etc).
* Data alignment and catalogue management Whether it is product file maintenance coming from the wholesaler, system vendor, EANnet, MCCA, BMMS, MIMS or whoever, it will all be there, on-line, error free and requiring no re-keying by your staff.

Yippee!
Literally, yippee!
No more POS, dispensing or other file glitches - glitches that all threaten customer satisfaction, via poor sales and service levels.
Market research access to retail statistics and benchmarking.
Online, flexible and powerful tools from whoever is smart enough to offer these services to you.
Reference services.
An example being MIMS (no more out of date books and CD ROMs), but it also opens up here a whole (WWW) world of on-line reference services.
Software online updates and maintenance from the dispensary system (FRED/Amfac) vendor.
No more CD ROMs
Supply chain PDE and PC orders and turnover orders - all on-line with instant stock availability, pricing information, marketing offers, news, promotions, deals - instant access - no re-working and miss nothing.
Transport and logistics.
Hook in and track deliveries, connecting the superhighway to the dirtway - managing the last mile.
Web sites.
Your own pharmacy's site, the banner groups, or any web site - all on-line 24 hours a day.
For the trendy reader, the buzzword description for this is a Virtual Private Network, or a VPN.
Your own network tool.
Engaging all the peers partners regulators and others that you need to work with.
E.enabling the engagement with the online world to be on your terms, with an open, fully interoperable connectivity to any, many points of e.health and e.business communication.
Naturally, with a cost factor that makes the benefit comparison very attractive, if not compelling.

Over the coming months a team of people will be working to demonstrate the impact of VPN, in healthcare, based on a geographical location along the coast somewhere between Sydney and Brisbane.
The commercial project will be looking to enable the staged implementation of interoperable services between all healthcare participants - with community pharmacy in the anchor role.
Fees, cooperation, collaboration and effort will apply.
The invitation.
You are invited to 'volunteer' or seek more information on this initiative via the editor.
At this time the project is in the planning and feasibility phase - it will happen though and if you are a leader and a winner, then this maybe the very thing for you.
Certainly if you spend after hours, Sundays, sweating away on paper work that is best done once, electronically and automatically reticulated as far and as deep into the software systems as possible.
A VPN that allows full time, all the time, on-line service that will delight and amaze, resulting in that wonderful, age old, statement of, "how did we live without this?".
PLEASE COMPLETE OUR SURVEY (WHICH HAS A LIFE OF 10 DAYS ONLY), AND WHICH CAN BE FOUND BY FOLLOWING THIS LINK: http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?9B0V7DDMS0LM6LHD5VQBK6BY

(N.B If the link fails to operate, please copy and paste the link to your browser URL address panel and press return. This will clear any faults.)

Ends
Back to Article Index
Newsletter Reader's Forum

Previous Article

Next Article

The comments and views expressed in the above article are those of the author and no other. The author welcomes any comment and interaction, directly or via the Newsletter Reader's Forum.
The newsletter archives are now fully searchable via the search engine on the left hand side of this page. If you would like to find similar articles to the above material, please enter the appropriate keyword(s). To retain context with multiple keywords or phrases, please enclose in inverted commas.
* Please contact us if you would like further information or would like us to research additional material to publish as future articles.	* Don't forget to advise of any change in your e-mail address so that your subscription may be continued without interruption.	* Letters to the editor are encouraged, or if you have material you would like published, please forward to the editor.	* Any interested persons who would like to receive this free newsletter on their desktop each fortnight, please send a single word e-mail "Subscribe"	* If you have found value in this newsletter, please share it with a friend, or alternatively, encourage a colleague to subscribe
* All Communications to: neilj@computachem.com.au
* You are invited to visit the Computachem web site and check out an organised reference site for medical or other references. Why not try (and bookmark) the Computachem Interweb Directory for an easily accessed range of medical and pharmacy links, plus a host of pharmacy relevant links. The directory also contains a very fast search engine for Internet enquiries. You may also access the Home Page at: http://www.computachem.com.au

Back to Article Index
Article Archive 2000
Article Archive 2001
Home