Three Questions with Kronans Apotek’s IT Director, Karin Mineur.

When the pharmacy industry in Sweden was deregulated, years of work to adapt to the new playfield followed. Just when the pharmacy industry thought they were through the deregulation process, the whole digital wave hit them and with that new customer expectations, new business logic and a new requirement for online presence.

Karin Mineur, Technology Chief at Kronans Apotek will at today’s conference, D-Congress, in Gothenburg, address how they, a highly regulated and traditional pharmacy company, quickly changed direction in order to become a more modern fast-paced online player.

We asked Karin three questions about Kronans Apotek’s digital transformation journey:

1. Who is leading the digital transformation in your organization?

I’m happy to say that all our stakeholders are on-board and fully convinced of our need to go digital. Perhaps we were a bit slow to get here, and I believe, because of our legacy, the whole pharmacy industry was slow to put a clear focus on digital. However, we’re in the middle of it now, and a key success factor is to have all of our senior leaders not only on-board but also outward-facing – that is, always looking at what our customers and our market really want, as well as taking the time to look outside our immediate space to see how other organizations are adapting to new technologies.

2. How and where did you start your digital transformation initiative?

It might sound simple but we really had a “get things done approach”. We felt that no three-year strategic plan would be worth it because what seemed like a good idea today will change tomorrow. So, we decided to get things done and improving our online business was where we put our initial focus, simply because we believed this was where we also could deliver fast results. We were right, we grew our online sales by close to 70% last year and we now have a solid base to scale from.

3. What are the major challenges?

As a pharmacy, we still have a huge legacy and while we need to relate to this, we also need to re-think how we can derive revenue from the value that we create for our customers. We need to constantly test and learn how a digital strategy can offer more scale, revenue and profit than the legacy approach, but it takes experimentation, an assumption of risk, and – to be blunt – some failure along the way. This, together with a clear vision for a digital customer journey is the gauntlet we must run in order to achieve digital success.