It seems like AI can handle everything right now from pharmacy operations to marketing, to inventory. While it may seem like a good idea to solely rely on AI to manage your inventory, it’s not the best solution. Why? Because AI lacks human context and business intuition. It can’t replace what you know about your patients, business and community.
The fundamental reasons you cannot solely rely on AI for inventory management include:
- It Ignores Unforeseen External Factors: AI relies heavily on historical data. It will struggle to predict local disease outbreaks, extreme weather events, or unexpected supply chain disruption can impact your patients’ medication.
- Lack of Contextual Judgement: AI may tell you to stock up on a medication that shows a sudden spike in sales, not knowing if it’s a legitimate spike, or an anomaly from a one-time patient order. This could lead to overstock of medication you don’t need long term.
- Supply Chain Disruptions: AI can alert you to potential supply risks, but navigating actual backorders requires human interaction with your wholesalers.
- Inflexibility to Strategic Business Pivots: AI operates inside established parameters. It cannot autonomously adapt to your new strategic goals (for example, launching a new specialty pharmacy service) unless manually programmed to shift priorities.
So, what is the best way to effectively manage your pharmacy’s inventory without manual counts and walking the shelves? A software that supports your team and gives you the power to make critical decisions for your business, while doing the heavy lifting of analyzing data and routine ordering.
When looking for a pharmacy inventory management partner, it’s important to look beyond the software, especially with the explosion of AI. Now anyone can offer this service without really understanding the industry and your day-to-day challenges. At Datarithm, we pair our software with daily insights, hands-on training and personalized guidance you need to find cash flow to maximize your pharmacy’s potential.
Other key criteria:
- Integration: If it doesn’t fully integrate with your pharmacy dispensing system (PMS), it’s only going to create more work for your team, thus leading to low adoption and frustration. Datarithm currently integrates with the top PMS platforms, including Pioneer, Liberty, DRX and more.
- Training: It doesn’t matter how great the software is, if you and your team don’t understand how to use it, or can’t customize the settings to adapt to your workflow, it’s useless. Datarithm provides a thorough onboarding process, has an extensive knowledge library, and a team available when you have a question. For the past 20 years, Datarithm has developed and fine-tuned their algorithm to work in tandem with independent pharmacy owners’ dispensing systems.
- Industry Knowledge: While there are several options available, many companies don’t understand the independent pharmacy industry, and it’s not something AI can “learn”. Because one of our founders is a pharmacist, we have a deep understanding of your challenges, and we know what works and what doesn’t make your pharmacy successful.
The Bottom Line:
AI can help ease the burden of managing your pharmacy’s inventory, but it must work in tangent with your workflow and staff, not separately. Reach out to Datarithm today to see how we can be your partner in inventory management.
