Walgreens’ drop ship program gains transparency, cost savings and efficiency from Logicbroker implementation.

Challenges to overcome

Walgreens, one of the United State’s largest pharmacy chains, offers online customers an assortment of wellness products and health information. As more consumers have begun relying  on online shopping, Walgreens has expanded its assortment of products.

Walgreens launched its initial drop ship program to help provide automation for its teams, but as technology continued to evolve, it was clear its provider’s approach was no longer agile enough to meet customer demand. Ongoing struggles with vendor onboarding contracts and rising variable costs significantly delayed or prevented new vendors from launching. Walgreens also struggled with a lack of visibility into its vendors’ inventory and performance-caused errors. All this, coupled with a lack of comprehensive reporting, prevented Walgreens from scaling their drop ship program in a meaningful way.

The Walgreens executive team knew they needed to upgrade to a modern technology stack with more flexibility, better visibility, and a better solution for their vendor community. They also questioned their existing provider’s high price tag and legacy on-premise technology. Walgreens began exploring solutions that would allow them to easily add new vendors, expand their assortment, and increase revenue.

Finding the right solution

The Walgreens team decided that in order to meet their goals, they needed to upgrade to a more powerful cloud-based drop shop program as quickly as possible. As they explored more robust options, Walgreens learned about Logicbroker’s “no-code” approach to implementation. With a “go-live-now” mindset, Walgreens was able to dramatically reduce its own IT involvement by utilizing the Logicbroker team. After signing with Logicbroker, Walgreens migrated both their platform and drop ship vendors within just six weeks.

To make their vendors’ lives easier, Walgreen’s new partnership with Logicbroker allowed their vendors to either keep existing data transmission protocols or modernize them to take advantage of Logicbroker’s automation and easy-to-use portal. Vendors can now easily reference specific compliance documentation through a Walgreens-specific knowledgebase. Invoices, inventory updates, and vendor onboarding now easily flow through the system to drive revenue for all parties.

Walgreen’s vendors are also no longer bound by third-party contracts, nor do they pay fees to connect or participate in the Walgreens drop ship program, resulting in immediate technical and financial benefits.

With their new cloud-based platform in place, Walgreens has better inventory visibility and a better understanding of vendor performance. AI sourcing tools match Walgreens product SKU identifiers with the SKU identifiers vendors use for that same product, eliminating previous inefficiencies. As orders come in, this same logic automatically identifies potential inventory issues and can route orders to an alternate vendor’s stock for fulfillment.

Unparalleled Results