Everybody who lives in Dar es Salaam knows JD Pharmacy, the well-known pharmacy chain that has several branches spread across the city. In 1990 the company opened their first shop in Kariakoo and now they are about to open their seventh shop at Diamond Plaza. What not everyone knows is that JD Pharmacy stores are run on Exact Software. For daily operations, JD Pharmacy uses Exact Point of Sales (POS) and Inventory Management. We had a talk with the owner, Sanjay Patadia.
Yes, it is. We started using Exact Software more than 10 years ago, in 2003. Before that, we were using another software in our stores but it could not handle a large number of items that were in our database. After crashing for three times I decided to look for a better option.
They were. Since I do a little programming (of the cash register) myself and we tried already several vendors, I knew exactly what I wanted – and what I didn’t want. Exact provided the robustness and stability we were searching for, even when handling large amounts of items and transactions that JD Pharmacy deals with.
JD Pharmacy has more than 18,000 items on sale and all the branches together process more than 1000 transactions per day. Additionally, we are always expanding and adding new items to our stock and Exact is able to accommodate this.
The Software is flexible and very broad oriented. We are in distribution, retail and wholesale and the software is flexible enough to support us across all disciplines.
Yes, I know and in fact, we want it. First, we need to solve some internal issues before we implement it. It will be a huge leap forward in terms of control.
I am very satisfied about that. The problem with implementing these systems is that there are a lot of components such as hardware, software, network, internet, etc. For every component, there is a different supplier and it’s a hard task to bring them all together and once issues arise everybody pushes the problem to someone else. Exact is unique in the sense that they take ownership and come to your site if necessary. They even coordinate with other vendors to get a solution!
Yes so far we have won 4 different awards; One for having the best-operated pharmacy in Tanzania, 2 times for being the best distributor and one for having the best distributor database. Additionally, in 2011 we were ranked number 49th of the top 100 SME’s in Tanzania. We are very proud of that because it is recognition by others that our efforts pay off.
Is it safe to say that Exact Software played a part in achieving those awards?
Without a doubt Exact was a major contributor for us achieving these awards.
Meet Henrik Nielsen, Resident Manager of Merry Water. Merry Water is the leading provider for water treatment, pumps and generators in Tanzania since 1989. It has 3 different product lines namely water treatment & purification, power generators and solar equipment. For handling their 7000+ items they use Exact Inventory Management.
We have been using it since 2006 now. Before that, it was rather chaos over here regarding inventory management. We did everything mostly by papers and decided it was time for a change. Through word of mouth we found out about Exact and we called them for a demo.
We already heard about the reputation of the company and knew some companies that were using Exact. Additionally the interface looked simple and easy to use, so we decided to go for Exact.
We use it for managing our stock. That means adding items to stock through purchase orders and issuing stock when we sell something, either through a job card, invoice or cash sale. We print our issue documents from the system on different color paper so it is very clear to whom it belongs. Currently about 10-12 people (out of 70) in the organization are using the software so you can say it is quite an essential system.
We have so much more control about our inventory. It gives us real time info about what we have in stock or not via a powerful search functionality. Since an item can have multiple article codes (for example the code our supplier uses and our own code) it is easy to get confused but with Exact you can search with any code you wish.
There are a few actually. One is the option to calculate the cost price of an item by adding the freight and clearing costs to the actual purchasing price which gives a more realistic picture than just the price of the supplier. Another one is the option to allocate serial numbers to individual items (e.g. generators) so we can easily track and trace machines if a customer has a complaint. Finally one feature that saves us a lot of time is the automatic ordering algorithm that suggests quantities of items to order based on actual stock levels and desired stock levels. The only thing I need to do is check and confirm the suggestion by the system!
Vodacom Tanzania is using Exact Salaries for their payroll and HR processes since 2002. Frank Bomani, Payroll Manager at Vodacom: “before, we were outsourcing our payroll processing to a third party but now we do it ourselves using Exact software. It gives us more control and we have all the information at our hands.”
Frank was using Exact software at his previous employer as well and the main reason he likes to work with Exact Salaries is that the interface is very user friendly and the support is excellent. “When there is an issue, a technician is ready to assist you immediately and try to solve the issue with TeamViewer. Moreover, if they cannot fix it remotely they will come to your site.”
Also the software is very flexible, he says. “With Exact you can’t go wrong with the government regulations on PAYE. It is very flexible and easy to change any changes in regulations”
Vodacom uses Exact for all their employee records in Tanzania, in total more than 500. Only 3 people are using the system and are responsible for all the salaries in Vodacom Tanzania. This year Exact build a linking module for synchronizing the employee data to the head office in South Africa. Frank: “Previously when the folks in South Africa wanted to know things about the status ofthe Tanzanian staff we had to create and send reports manually, very time consuming. Now they have direct access to our records, saving time and less errors. It even sends a notification when we a new member is added to our staff.”
This brings us to another benefit of working with Exact, as they build their own software they can very easily accommodate new features in the software as per your request. Another example is the option for employees to pay by M-Pesa in Vodacom’s canteen without credit in their account (using an Electronic Funds Transfer). “Exact made a link to their employee record so instead it will be deducted from their next salary. Very useful if you do not carry money at that time. It’s not a standard feature but it has been specifically build for Vodacom by Exact.”
