Secure cloud systems for Norway’s leading online pharmacy

EY Skye has helped the online pharmacy Farmaciet achieve a modern and flexible cloud solution for logistics, financials and e-commerce.

How does Norway’s largest online pharmacy make sure customers get their medications delivered to their door quickly and securely? Farmasiet AS turned to EY Skye for assistance in implementing and developing cloud-based solutions for secure sales of medicines 24/7.

Selling medicines across Norway

Farmasiet is Norway’s leading online pharmacy and delivers medicines nationwide. Patients with a prescription from their   doctor can go online to Farmasiet.no, order the medicines they need, and have them delivered to their front door. Farmasiet also sells non-prescription medicines and other products that can be found in all pharmacies. Suncare products, pain killers, and prescription medicines: All products must be included in an easy-to-follow inventory, with a secure payment facility and no outside parties should be able to see who is ordering what. The medicines also have to be delivered to customer’s homes quickly and securely. Many issues need to be addressed when setting up new IT systems for a large online pharmacy.

When EY Skye began working with Farmasiet, development of the solution was already well underway. Farmasiet had decided to build their system based on three products in Microsoft’s ERP system: Dynamics 365 Finance, Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management and Dynamics D365 Commerce.

-  These are three products that integrate seamlessly.  Victoria Skants, technical solutions architect for EY Skye explains that Farmasiet also wanted a cloud solution that allowed regular updates.

Up until June 2020, Farmasiet had been working with another provider and initially just needed some minor assistance from EY Skye in the period leading up to implementation. Shortly before the solution was ready to be put into operation, EY Skye was asked to take over the implementation of Dynamics 365. There wasn’t much time - only a few weeks to September 2020, when the systems were intended to be operational for Farmasiet and a lot of work remained to be done.

Significant undertaking in a short time

As a solutions architect, her job was to find the best possible solution for the customer’s needs. She was also responsible for making sure that other developers follow best practice in their work. With fifteen years of experience in the IT industry, Victoria was familiar with Microsoft’s solutions for business management, known as ERP systems. She knew the products well, although there was one that was completely new for Victoria Skants and her colleagues:

-  I have implemented many ERP projects, but this was the first time ever I had worked with Dynamics 365 Commerce. And there was a lot that could go wrong,” she says.

The team had to make sure the solution was stable, that response time was fast and that security was maintained. “Because this is an online pharmacy, they need to be particularly attentive to sensitive customer data: This data must be seen by a few eyes as possible - access needs to be restricted to employees only,” she explains.

-  “Commerce in itself is a product that the team had  limited experience with. We had experience with other products, but it took a bit to understand how the e-commerce architecture was configured,” she adds.

Was she ever in doubt that the team at EY Skye could handle   the job.

-  “No, never. I thought it was challenging, but I was never in doubt. I trust my colleagues. I trust what they’re capable of and that if there is something we don’t already know how to manage, we can always figure it out,” she says.

Solved problems together

This turned out to be true: Everyone on the team already knew  one another, and even if they did not have much experience  with e-commerce, they were experts in a number of other fields, such as financial, inventory management, logistics, and  implementation.

- “Most of us know exactly what the client needs and how to address the problem,” Victoria says.

After an intensive period when EY Skye took over, the solution has been operating and has worked well, just as she and her colleagues had intended.