In today’s retail environment, successful brick-and-mortar stores have become destination experiences with a unique place in omnichannel operations. With customers seeking more engaging and personalized shopping experiences in physical stores, having a team of customer-facing employees who are passionate about doing their best work is a highly prized asset. Hiring the right talent to interact with customers is key to creating the right customer experience. How do you find these customer-facing retail superstars in a highly competitive environment?
When fast-growing Mexico-based pharmacy retail chain San Pablo Farmacia faced the same challenge, it found the solution through adopting employee experience management technology. San Pablo Farmacia was established in 1936 and built on traditional customer service values, providing customers throughout Mexico City and beyond with a full-service pharmacy. The company offers over-the-counter medications, natural health products, and home delivery and call center services. With significant e-commerce operations, it offers a delivery service throughout the country, even in locations where it does not have a physical store.
Equitable Learning Boosts Employee Performance, Talent, and Engagement
An important part of the company’s business model is to employ people with no previous experience and allow them to acquire skills, become certified, develop, and grow. Committed to being an employer of choice and wanting to be seen as one of the best companies to work for in Mexico, the company developed an employee experience strategy. It mapped out what it means to be an employer of choice in terms of offering and delivering opportunities for meaningful work and personal growth in a positive work environment.
To realize this strategy, San Pablo Farmacia would need to put employees at the center of every step of the employment journey. First, attracting and engaging quality talent and expertly managing its large volume of new hires each year called for improvements in its recruitment process. Then, enhancing onboarding and training experiences for new hires while giving everyone access to the relevant systems and data for optimal efficiency required transforming and connecting in a range of talent management processes.
As the cornerstone of its inclusive and modern approach to talent management, San Pablo Farmacia adopted an integrated, cloud-based HR and talent management solution, which included learning management. To move from traditional, in-person training to online delivery, San Pablo Farmacia created an intuitive and engaging training experience that employees can consume at their convenience. By integrating the learning solution with other talent management applications, it can design personal training and development plans in line with its growth strategies and the individual needs of the entire workforce. With the introduction of its first online learning program, the company delivered certified training to 1,800 employees without the need to transport its people to a training location and take them away from their pharmacy stores.
Optimizing HR Operations and Payroll
Elsewhere, automated payroll processes reduce the risk of human error while giving managers access to modern tools to simplify employee management and shorten approval cycles. With a single source of truth for employee data, managers are empowered with the information they need to set and track performance objectives. And for customer-facing employees, mobile access to self-service HR tools provides an intuitive experience that has increased employee engagement and satisfaction.
With the solutions in place, San Pablo Farmacia has enhanced organizational agility, attracted quality talent, upskilled employees, and shaped a positive workplace culture.
More engaged employees are seen as brand ambassadors, directly impacting customer satisfaction, achieving an average delivery time of just 42 minutes to service customers at home. And according to Forbes, San Pablo Farmacia ranks among the top-rated customer service pharmacies in Mexico as of July 14, 2022, and it has aligned with the standards of a great place to work in Mexico every year since 2018.
Future-Proofing the Workforce Through Technology
In terms of next steps, San Pablo Farmacia is working toward transforming commissions so they’re nonlinear. With the right tools, the company can better determine which products to promote and give its people real-time access to sales data and the benefits they will receive from selling the merchandise.
SAP SuccessFactors Human Experience Management (HXM) Suite helps provide the technology foundation behind San Pablo Farmacia’s top-ranking reputation. The company uses a suite of SAP SuccessFactors solutions for core HR, payroll, recruiting, onboarding, performance, compensation, learning, succession, and development.
To learn more about these solutions, visit us online.
Maryann Abbajay is chief revenue officer at SAP SuccessFactors.