According to industry experts, McKesson’s reported acquisition of Rexall may have great implications in Canadian healthcare reform.

“The healthcare system is shifting from institutional care to primary, community-based care, which involves a combination of in-community facilities and at-home services,” says Jim Danahy, managing principal and CEO of consultancy firm CustomerLAB. “We are shifting out emphasis from the hospital.”

Danahy suggests that the “space race” that this deal has struck between the possible McKesson-Rexall partnership and the Loblaws-Shoppers Drug Mart camp will be instrumental in the incitement of this change—the “healthy competition” generated between the two parties will help to speed up the switch to primary care.

“Having two large companies in a race to ‘do it better’ will be able to do what a fragmented industry wasn’t able to do previously,” he notes.

The key problem that the move toward primary care will address, explains Danahy, is medication non-adherence. “This issue kills thousands of people per year and causes untold suffering while also creating a burden on the healthcare system,” he says. “It can be resolved simply by helping patients to take the medication that has already been prescribed to them.”

“There are few times that patient care needs and the biggest business opportunities are perfectly aligned,” concludes Danahy. “But this is one of them.”

Canadian and U.S. natural food distributor United Natural Foods is set to acquire Haddon House Food Products, a distributor of speciality, natural, organic, ethnic, and kosher foods.

“Haddon House has a unique product and service offering that we expect to play an important role in our ongoing strategy to build out UNFI’s gourmet and ethnic product categories across the country,” stated Steven Spinner, UNFI’s President and Chief Executive Officer.

Spinner adds that Haddon House founders, David Anderson, Sr. and David Anderson, Jr., will remain with the company in leadership positions. The plan, according to Spinner, is to move “this exciting service offering and product category across our companies and throughout the United States.”

Do you keep customers first in your day-to-day operations? A recent report from strategic consulting firm O Alliance reveals that nearly 70 per cent of retailers struggle to keep the customer at the centre of their business.

The report, “Retail Transformation Underway: Achieving Customer-Centric Commerce,” revealed that retailers in multiple industries, such as health and beauty, struggle to move from an omni-channel to a customer-centric model. Omni-channel promises the customer a seamless shopping experience on multiple platforms, such as online and from a mobile device. Customer centricity places the customer at the centre of the business.

“Customer-facing tools such as smartphones, tablets, and in-store kiosks have become mission critical to the shopping experience, yet most retailers still have not integrated these tools into a cohesive system that creates circular commerce,” says Andrea Weiss, Founder of The O Alliance.

According to Weiss, the omni-channel gives customers one view of a brand across multiple touch-points while the customer-centric model gives the brand a single view of the customer. Who is the customer? What does the customer want? How does the customer behave?

In order to achieve their findings, O Alliance researchers categorized 150 respondents (senior retail executives from multiple industries) into three groups.
– Leaders: Respondents who have moved forward with trying to gain a better understanding of consumer data and investing in customer insights
– Followers: Respondents who have big plans and have already made strides in changing operations into a customer-centric business
– Bystanders: Respondents who showed a lack of meaningful plans or progress

Where do you fit in this model? If you want a customer-centric business, the report has five key strategies that you can use to become industry leaders.

1 | TRACK CUSTOMER BEHAVIOUR
For many businesses, tracking behaviour for individual customers across a brand’s entire platform has become increasingly difficult as technology continues to enable customers to engage across multiple channels. The report recommends that retailers should connect their customer’s activities in the store, online, on social media and on mobile apps to create a universal customer profile.

2 | MEASURE SUCCESS OF CROSS-CHANNEL MARKETING
Many retailers use email campaigns and other cross-channel promotional tools to drive in-store purchases; however, there are some who lack the necessary applications to measure the success of their campaigns. The study recommends to start using tools that provide a strategic view into each promotional campaign. Retailers can gain valuable insight that can be used to gauge the effectiveness of previously launched campaigns as well as make business decisions on future marketing campaigns.

3| CENTRALIZE DATA
A large number of retailers do not have proper integration solutions in place to manage a cross-channel shopping experience effectively. These retailers do not have e-commerce and in-store transaction data in one central database. The report recommends that retailers centralize all product and customer information into one place utilizing cloud-based solutions.

4| CREATE STRUCTURE
A customer-centric organization involves structure. The study recommends that retailers should integrate their business functions across multiple channels. In the report, 97 per cent of the respondents in the Leaders category have integrated at least one team to date. Additionally, respondents in this category are addressing talent and leadership challenges associated with this change.

5| REMOVE OBSTACLES
What stands in your way to customer centricity? Inadequate talent, cash restraints, and doubts in the benefits of technology are legit concerns—and there is no quick fix—however, according to the report, retailers can only achieve seamless circular commerce by making directional shifts in all areas of their company, such as human resources and finance.