Assortment Planning for Pharmacy retail, with the root cause attached.
Ward monitors assortment across your Pharmacy estate and tells you what changed, why it changed, and what to do about it.
Why assortment matters
in pharmacy retail.
The assortment decisions that pay are the ones that put OTC companions for high-volume prescriptions in stock and in the right place. Trendy wellness gets the attention; the companion aisle earns the money. Ward maps Rx-to-OTC companion patterns and recommends front-of-store assortment based on each store's actual prescription mix, not national averages.
Benchmarks. Pharmacy front-of-store cluster variance: high-Rx-volume stores typically need 2-4x the OTC depth of low-Rx stores in matching condition categories. Cluster-aware assortment usually lifts front-end revenue per Rx customer by 8-15%.
Rx-OTC companion analysis, diabetes category
Stores with the highest metformin prescription volume are significantly under-assorted in diabetes management OTC, glucose monitors, test strips, diabetic-friendly snacks, foot care. They share the same planogram as stores with half the Rx volume. Ward recommends expanding diabetes OTC in high-volume stores by reallocating space from underperforming seasonal items.
Three pitfalls Ward catches
in pharmacy assortment.
- 01 Front-of-store planograms are set chain-wide while Rx mix varies dramatically by store demographics; diabetes-heavy and oncology-heavy stores need fundamentally different OTC depth.
- 02 New wellness/supplement items get added to chase trend without displacing slow tail SKUs, so net assortment productivity goes negative.
- 03 OTC shelves that face the pharmacy counter outperform OTC shelves at the front-of-store entrance, but the planogram math doesn't account for this layout effect.
How Ward runs assortment
for pharmacy retailers.
-
01
Cluster stores by Rx mix
Ward groups stores by dominant prescription categories (cardiovascular, diabetes, mental health, oncology), producing 4-8 actionable clusters.
-
02
Map Rx-to-OTC companion demand per cluster
Cards expose under-served companion categories (diabetes test strips in metformin-heavy stores) where front-end depth is too shallow.
-
03
Reallocate space from tail to anchor
Ward identifies slow-moving seasonal and tail SKUs to displace, and recommends the cluster-specific OTC depth changes with productivity projections.
What a Ward card looks like.
Chat
Ask anything. Ward routes to the right agent and returns cited answers.
I pulled cough and cold against the illness curve for the 38 Northeast pharmacies. Front of store is running two weeks behind the demand signal.
| Signal | Finding |
|---|---|
otc_sales_daily | Cough/cold units +31% WoW, on-shelf availability down to 88% |
replenishment | Vendor lead time 6 days, reorder points still on the summer baseline |
front_store.attach | Wellness attach on flu-season fills 19% vs. 34% chain best |
Recommend: raise cough/cold reorder points at all 38 stores now, pull the wellness endcap forward two weeks, and add the attach prompt at the counter.
otc_sales_daily…
Dashboards
Pinned views built from saved data-lake queries.
Sources
Connect external systems to the data lake.
| Name | Type | Last sync |
|---|---|---|
mckesson_wholesale_orders | import | 2m ago |
cardinal_lot_expiry | import | 2m ago |
sap_pos_transactions | import | 14m ago |
sap_inventory_snapshot | import | 1h ago |
retail_otc_sales_daily | import | 1h ago |
retail_front_store_margin | import | 1h ago |
retail_planogram_audit | import | 1h ago |
Policies
Browse and manage Cedar access policies for your tenant.
| Policy ID | Effect | Resources |
|---|---|---|
merch-read-front-store | permit | Model::"front_store_margin" |
ops-read-default | permit | Model::* |
phi-forbid-all | forbid | Model::"patient_*" |
supply-read-expiry | permit | Model::"lot_expiry" |
Pharmacy assortment:
the shift.
- ×Seasonal illness demand
- ×Rx-to-OTC conversion
- ×Expiry management
- ✓Store cluster segmentation
- ✓SKU rationalization recommendations
- ✓Whitespace opportunity detection
Questions about pharmacy assortment.
The assortment decisions that pay are the ones that put OTC companions for high-volume prescriptions in stock and in the right place. Trendy wellness gets the attention; the companion aisle earns the money.
Stores with the highest metformin prescription volume are significantly under-assorted in diabetes management OTC, glucose monitors, test strips, diabetic-friendly snacks, foot care. They share the same planogram as stores with half the Rx volume.
Ward tracks Rx-to-OTC companion purchase rates, category productivity per square foot, health condition clustering by store, and new-item triage, whether a wellness SKU can earn its space against a proven companion item.
First assortment insight cards arrive within 48 hours. Stable pharmacy baselines form within two weeks.
Pharmacy assortment
by data source.
More Pharmacy insight cards.
Pharmacy retailers: see what assortment problems Ward catches.
Root causes, not just alerts. See it on your data.
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Find out what your data has been hiding.
Tell us about your operation. We’ll show you the problems Ward catches, and the ones your current tools miss.