Apple Healthcare run a 17-strong chain of Pharmacy's throughout Central Scotland, including branches in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Falkirk and Dundee. One of the big challenges they faced was to manage the financial data coming in from the various shops. The branches were each sending information by fax or email to head office, where head office staff then re-entered the data.

A system was needed that recorded the information as entered by the pharmacy manager, and could then be read by head office staff without any re-entry. The data was therefore required to be in a format suitable for head office use, including a display of weekly and monthly sales, various outgoings and incomings on a daily basis, and the banked amounts on the respective dates.

Axial I.T. were asked to develop a system that overcame the shortcomings of the existing practices. We recommended a solution using web-based interface that could be used to capture the relevant data, and write it to a database. The information could then be extracted by a separate head-office web interface and present it in the formats required.

Data Security and confidentiality is also of paramount importance. The system makes use of SSL layer encryption, and a fully configurable user-based password-controlled access so that the individual sites and users can only access or change their data.

Since the system has been in use, there has been a clear improvement in the information flow. Harminder Shergill, A Managing Partner of Apple Healthcare commented

"The financial reporting system developed by Axial was exactly what we were waiting for. They understood our requirements and then transformed those to a tool that our pharmacies are now using on a daily basis. Our head office staff now have all the data in front of them, promptly and presented exactly like they need."