Pharmacy Catalyst Conference 2017

It has been a little over a month since our annual Pharmacy Catalyst Conference. This year, we had the pleasure of hosting our clients at Pier One, Sydney.

First of all, we would like to take the opportunity to congratulate the winners of this year’s Catalyst Awards:

Catalyst Award	Winner
Customer Engagement Store of the Year	Parkes Pharmacy
Professional Services Store of the Year	Great Lakes Pharmacy
Pharmacy Catalyst Store of the Year	Inverell Pharmacy
Apotex Store of the Year	Cessnock Plaza Pharmacy
Retail Manager of the Year	Cheryl, Great Lakes Pharmacy

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Secondly, here’s a recap of some of the key messages from the conference:

• Focussing on your ‘Why’: By defining the central purpose of your business, it enables you to connect with your customers and patients and create a deeper level of engagement. To truly differentiate your business, it is essential to articulate your purpose and the focus you are bringing to changing the lives of your patients – it has been fantastic to see some of the initiatives from stores in the weeks since the conference. For a quick refresher, here is the link to the TED talk by Simon Sinek: www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action
• Providing solutions (“If X… then Y”): This should be driven by all Owners/RMs and PICs, and all staff should understand and be able to deliver solutions.
• Execution: Do you look like you do what you say you do?
• Changes to the pain category: With the upcoming changes to pain medication, start thinking about the plan for your store – What will you do with the space? How will you make up the sales? How will you approach customers about the codeine changes?

But the Conference wasn’t all about hard work; there was also time for fun and team building:

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And last but not least, we’d like to thank our participants for their contribution to the Catalyst Group fundraising initiative:

We were all excited to see the donations to Global School Partners, to fund education and health initiatives in Africa, roll in over the conference! Well done everyone on raising over $10,627! Our contribution will be used to build new toilets for Mwamba Academy in Kenya, which has over 380 students and only three toilet cubicles, and to build two new brick classrooms for Surgeon Primary in Kenya, whose mud and stick classrooms have collapsed in heavy rains.

Global School Partners guarantees that 100% of donated funds go to the project they are donated for as they are a totally voluntary organisation. For more information, go to: www.globalschoolpartners.org.au

Thanks to all for your efforts and participation, and we look forward to another successful event next year!