There's a point every pharmacy group hits where the maths stops working.
You've squeezed what you can from each branch. You've optimised rotas. You've negotiated better buying terms. And yet, you're still throwing bodies at the problem. More items means more staff. More branches means more pharmacists. Growth feels like it comes with a proportional headcount bill attached.
It doesn't have to.
We recently sat down with seven pharmacy operators running everything from 12 to 74+ sites to hear how they're scaling volume, improving accuracy, and freeing up their teams. Not with robots. Not with massive capital investment. With smarter workflows.
Here's what they told us.
1. Centralising Dispensing Without Automation
Yusuf and Ronak from BMP Healthcare operate 12 pharmacies. They've recently launched hub and spoke using Titan's peer-to-peer functionality, and the early results are striking.
"Two dispensers, 18,000 items, three weeks. That's in its infancy. As we bring more spokes on, that efficiency will drive to be a better number." — Yusuf, BMP Healthcare
The decision to go manual rather than invest in automation was deliberate. Having tried robots at branch level, BMP found that automation has a ceiling: limited shoots, limited stations, limited stock holding. Manual hub dispensing doesn't have those constraints.
"For anyone looking to start a hub and spoke, I think manual is the way to go. You start off basic, get the benefits of buying and workload efficiency, and then you consider whether you need automation or not." — Yusuf, BMP Healthcare
The spokes benefit too. With dispensing centralised, branch teams are freed up to focus on services and patient experience. The patient doesn't even know the hub exists, and that's the point.
2. Freeing the Pharmacist From the Bench
Glen, who rolled out Titan across 74 Avicenna sites and now manages 26 Knights pharmacies, put it bluntly:
"Only 14–15% of your items actually need a pharmacist check. Traditional pharmacies have a pharmacist sat at the end of the process for 100% of items. That's just a waste of resource." — Glen, Knights Pharmacy Group
That single stat reframes the entire conversation about pharmacist utilisation. If you're paying a pharmacist to check everything, you're paying them to do work that doesn't require their qualification for 85% of the day.
Glen's approach at Knights has been phased: land the basics, get compliance and behavioural change across the branches, then layer in batch dispensing and advanced features. They've just rolled batch flow into seven trial branches, starting with single-item scripts to take the largest chunk of daily volume off the manual pile.
"It's working brilliantly. We're going to roll it out to the rest over the next few weeks." — Glen, Knights Pharmacy Group
3. Eliminating Double Cover
Sunil, Head of Operations at Hollywood Chemist (15 pharmacies), has seen one of the clearest efficiency gains: branches that previously needed two pharmacists now operate with one, and still deliver services.
"Where we used to have very high-volume branches, you'd naturally put in double cover. We're operating without double cover today, and the pharmacist within those branches still has the opportunity to do services." — Sunil, Hollywood Chemist
But Sunil is careful to frame this as growth, not cuts. When staff leave through natural wastage, the conversation with branch managers shifts from "replace like for like" to "do we need to recruit at the same level?"
"We're doing more items than we used to. Yet we can do that on less staffing. And then you're reinvesting into your staff to upskill them. They're delivering more services, which means it's better for business all around." — Sunil, Hollywood Chemist
The numbers are significant. Across a 15-pharmacy group, the natural rebalancing can free up 1,000 to 2,000 hours. That's capacity reinvested into services and growth rather than disappearing from the payroll.
4. Smarter Stock, Fewer Totes, Calmer Mornings
Jeet manages a hub processing 40,000 items. Before Titan's stock control, the morning order was chaos: hundreds of totes, 100+ lines to unpack, reconcile, and shelve. Staff were anxious. It was taking two hours every morning before dispensing could even start.
With threshold ordering, that picture has changed completely.
"We're not unpacking the same drug five times a week. We're doing it once every two weeks. Two staff members, 45 minutes, and we're on the conveyor belt dispensing. It's about working smarter, not harder." — Jeet
The system tracks stock at the point labels are generated, not when prescriptions download. That means the reorder trigger is based on actual dispensing activity, not assumptions. For expensive lines like Olo inhalers, they've gone from ordering small quantities five times a week to one bulk order every two weeks. One unpack. One reconciliation. Done.
The cash flow benefit compounds too. If it's the 25th of the month and you've already got two weeks of stock, you wait. No unnecessary spend before month-end.
5. CD Compliance in 15 Minutes, Not 60
Stefan has been piloting Titan's integrated electronic CD register, and the time savings are dramatic.
"I did my first balance check with Titan Mobile. Sat in front of the cabinet, did the whole lot in about 10 to 15 minutes. Previously it was taking 45 minutes to an hour. That's time I can now spend on patient care." — Stefan
The old process was familiar to every pharmacy: print a stock list, walk to the cabinet, tick items off on paper, walk back to the computer, transpose everything into the register. Multiple steps, multiple opportunities for error.
Now, barcode scanning handles the data capture. Receiving a delivery means scanning the barcodes and entering the supplier name. The running balance updates automatically. Supplying a CD to a patient triggers a signature capture on the handout device. No tokens, no paper, no separate login.
"Everything you'd expect from a CD log is there. But then you've got the Titan version of it, which makes it so much more efficient, accurate, and just easier to use." — Stefan
6. Onboarding a 16-Pharmacy Group
Riddhesh and Amit from the Medicine Clinic Group (16 pharmacies) are in the middle of their Titan rollout. Even at this early stage, two features stand out.
For Riddhesh, it's Power Search:
"I can scan a pack of stock and instantly know who it's for, what the last patient I dispensed it for was, what my daily usage is. Previous PMRs, you'd have to go through multiple steps to get that data. This is like a Google search. Much more efficient." — Riddhesh, Medicine Clinic Group
For Amit, it's the Titan Mobile quick check, the ability for a pharmacist or ACT to scan a basket label from a handheld device and check items without being tied to a bench:
"A pharmacist doesn't have to stay in the same place. They can go wherever the dispensed packets are and check through the handheld device. It improves efficiency. You don't need a PC to approve it. It's in your hand and it's done." — Amit, Medicine Clinic Group
The team also noted that staff adoption has been smooth. Titan's workflow is intuitive enough that teams aren't fighting a steep learning curve alongside the operational change.
"Titan is easy to learn, easy to understand. Straightforward. Not much complication." — Amit, Medicine Clinic Group
7. Migrating 3,000 ERDs Without Losing a Patient
Tanzil at Greenway Pharmacy faced a challenge that would make most pharmacy owners pause before switching systems: one of the highest ERD percentages in England. Around 70% of all scripts are electronic repeat dispensing. Thousands of patients on managed repeats, all sitting on the old system.
The weekend migration moved 3,000 items back onto the spine and re-downloaded them onto Titan. It wasn't a small job, but the result is a clean starting position with full control over how repeats are managed going forward.
"Short to medium term, we release the prescription off the ERD queue, push it into inboxing, and follow the process. Medium to long term, Titan gives us the option of finding a way that patients take the onus on themselves to release it." — Tanzil, Greenway Pharmacy
The flexibility matters. Titan's ERD settings allow auto-release based on either the prescription issue date or the patient collection date, giving the pharmacy control over timing without manual intervention for every script.
8. The Bigger Picture: What Efficiency Actually Unlocks
Dervis from Healthy You pharmacy sees all of this operational efficiency through a different lens. For him, it's about what it means for the patient relationship.
"Being able to unlock that true, real relationship between your patients and you as their healthcare provider is a key issue that not anyone else has tapped into yet." — Dervis, Healthy You
His vision is practical, not abstract. When your system holds dispensing data for every patient, you can run a report on everyone using Metformin, generate a fact sheet on managing type 2 diabetes through diet, and send it out. That's not a marketing exercise. It's population health management at community level.
"If I was to ask you: if you have a healthcare concern, I want patients to think Healthy You. I don't want them thinking any other provider. And in order to create that trust, you need to utilise the data you have and communicate with them." — Dervis, Healthy You
Hub and spoke, stock control, batch dispensing, accuracy checking: none of it matters if the freed-up time disappears into nothing. The pharmacies getting the most from Titan are the ones reinvesting that time into services, patient relationships, and growth.
The Pattern
Seven operators. Different sizes, different stages, different priorities. But the same underlying approach:
Stop throwing staff at dispensing volume. Let the system handle the workload. Reinvest the freed-up time into what actually grows the business: services, patient care, and clinical delivery.
That's not a vision statement. That's what's happening right now, across pharmacies doing 3,000 items and pharmacies doing 80,000.
The only question is whether you're building for it, or still doing it the old way.
See how Titan PMR could work for your pharmacy group: titanpmr.com/demo
Features covered in this article: Titan PMR, Titan AI, Titan Mobile, Titan Batch, Titan Repeat, Peer-to-Peer Hub & Spoke, Stock Control, Electronic CD Register, PDS Sync, Campaigns, Power Search, Power BI, ERD Management, Accuracy Checking
Share with your community!
