A Message to our Pharmacies and Pharmacists

 11th June 2020

Dear Colleagues,

Nigeria
Happy Democracy Day Nigeria

Our brief this week features COVID-19 situation update, and information  from the Operations team on Tracking Your Stock Balance, Collect & Redistribute Exercise, and Working Capital Finance

As at June 10th, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control recorded 409 new confirmed cases from 16 states - Lagos (201), FCT (85), Rivers (9) respectively. No new cases reported in the last 24 hours. A period where 145 cases were discharged in 14 states. Please continue to visit NCDC Coronavirus COVID-19 Microsite to keep up to date with the latest information and guidelines.

Tracking Stock Balance
We have introduced a change to our process for handling new subscriptions. Soon, when you subscribe to a new product, we will no longer automatically credit you for any existing stock you may have. Instead, we will count and keep track of your stock alongside Shelf Life-owned stock, until all of your old stock has been sold.  This will help us get better insights about your sales patterns so that we can more accurately plan your weekly deliveries. You will notice that during stock counting, our Fulfillment Partners will count any existing stock you may have for the newly subscribed product in addition to Shelf Life products, if available. And, the inventory Statement will have a detailed breakdown of the stock counts between your and Shelf Life’s products. If you have any questions or issues during this process, please contact our Customer Experience Associate, Khadijah

Collect & Redistribute Exercise
Ongoing across operating territories in the FCT, kindly support fulfilment partners and remember to sign off on indemnity letter, transferring ownership of products requested for collection if you desire to exercise that option.

Working Capital Finance
If interested, please reach out to the Shelf Life team in your location to assist with the process.
Please note: eligibility criteria include at least 4 months on the Shelf Life service, and a year of pharmacy being operational.

Kenya
In the past couple of days, Kenya hit a milestone of three thousand (3000) positive Covid-19 cases. Below is a summary of the situation report as at yesterday 10th June 2020:
Total number of diagnostic tests done so far nationwide is one hundred and two thousand nine hundred and fifty-six (102,956) with three thousand and ninety-four (3094) of these confirmed to be positive  as at the last reporting cycle.
Recoveries are at one thousand and forty-eight (1048) persons, eighty-nine (89) have succumbed to the disease and one thousand nine hundred and fifty-seven (1957) cases are still active.

The following directives were announced by the national Government over the weekend at the end of the third wave of twenty-one (21) day restrictions on 6th June 2020:
The cessation of movement into and out of East Leigh in Nairobi and Old Town in Mombasa that was put in place until 6th of June was lifted.
The timelines for the dusk to dawn curfew that was imposed a couple of months ago was changed from 7PM-5AM to 9PM-4AM.
An extension of the nation wide lockdown restrictions for another Thirty (30) days- this includes, inter-county movement, the dusk to dawn curfew and restrictions on public gatherings.

 Please continue to  visit http://www.health.go.ke/covid-19/ to keep up to date with the latest information and guidelines.

In Shelf Life service offer related news:
Collect & Distribute Exercise: This week we will be doing our monthly routine collect & distribute exercise for some clients. We kindly request for the usual cooperation from the affected clients.As already mentioned, because we supply to you on consignment basis, we kindly ask that you maintain the integrity of the products we supply. Products with defects will not be collected but rather counted as sold and invoiced.
Partner Balance Tracking. We will be piloting starting next week at selected sites in Nairobi, partner (client pharmacy) balance tracking for pre-owned stock on FieldSupply. This feature automates and enables Shelf Life planners to track and monitor separate ledgers for partner (pharmacy-owned) and Shelf Life stock on consignment  during the onboarding phase, or for newly subscribed products to enable quick understanding of consumption patterns that allows us to plan allocations more effectively for you. This will also eventually  eliminate the need for stock credit notes and delays in mobilisation to the service caused by pharmacies trying to wind down owned stock before joining the service.

Keeping with our reputation for innovation and agility in responding to the needs of our clients (and  prospects) we continue to improve the service with feature releases that reflect the reality of our operating environment

Shelf Life Lower Eastern Region Launch: We are still in the process of launching Shelf Life in the lower Eastern Region i.e Machakos, Kitui and their environs. Today some members of the Shelf Life team made a trip to the region to follow-up on some leads and in an effort bring this to fruitition. Remember to please reach out if you have a Pharmacy in those regions or refer someone you know who may be interested. Remember that you will get one week service charge free when they join the family. You can do this by giving them the number of our Sales Associates Jack Onyango (0720121358) and Claire Ajema (0728792499).

Payments Instructions: Two months ago we sent out a request that for Mpesa payments you indicate the INVOICE NUMBER in the blank text field for Account name. We realised that some clients are still not following this directive. We kindly ask that you comply with this to enable us to reconcile your payments.

In General News please see below updates this week: 
The Pharmaceutical Society of Kenya (PSK) in collaboration with  Ryculture Health and Social Innovation will like to get your feedback on the impact of COVID-19 in the retail Pharmacy sector and interventions to mitigate. To participate please complete the survey below:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdGLVzmze-WDl7FxixisqAY56Lf5p6VnBm6-i-NJxZUtOqsfw/viewform

Helping other retail pharmacies
If you know any other retail pharmacy we could be helping get through this difficult time, please refer them to Shelf Life and get one week service charge free when they join the family. Simply give them the number of the Sales Associate who introduced you to Shelf Life and we will take it from there once they call. 

Stay Safe.
Your friends at Shelf Life