Author: Luis Arimany

Evolufarma: Multichannel Marketing for retails

A unique platform that allows to perfectly know the client and to do communicate with him when is not in the shop to increase business turnover through customer knowledge, engagement and direct marketing.

Treats the client as unique person, regardless how he interacts with the business. It Integrates automatically with pharmacy ERP (or any retail software), Ecommerce, provides additional CRM capabilities and with mobile application.

With the combined integration it provides in the shop a profiling of the client and allows doing customer segmentation mixing any information of the different databases, for example mixing on life style from the CRM and consumer behaviour in the shop.

Finally it provides a Multichannel Marketing a Communication tool allowing to get to the client through emailing, sms, post, website, mobile application and Social Media.

Where did you get the idea?

Luis Arimany, our CEO have been in the Pharmacy industry for over 8 years and he detected there was a lack in the community pharmacy Industry of tools for marketing and they had not yet embraced the digital world. The reason is because pharmacies had a profitable business model of just dispensing drugs and therefore there was no need to take care of the customer.

He detected that there industry was having a structural change sifting from a business model of just dispensing drugs to selling products and services. And it was not technologically prepared.

He then contacted Daniel Garzón (CTO), a former friend from IE specialized in the digital world with his own company and together they created the product.

How long have you been working on the idea?

We started working in the idea in Summer 2012 and founded Evolufarma in December 2012.

We came to market without a final product in March 2013 in order not to lose the opportunity of the annual Pharmacy fair.

Who are your current or potential competitors?

We have competitors in our different modules but so far there is nobody offering a technical solution as complete as ours and integrated with existing pharmacy systems.

Some companies are offering solutions but not integrated in a unique platform and they are overcoming some technical deficiencies though consultancy.

What features would provide further differentiation?

We are working in a whole solution, joining IT sysmetms (SQL, Oracle, Access), with Marketing tools (emailing, sms, post) with ecommerce and with mobile application. We have many specific solutions that integrate all digital channels that provides added value for customer and for the pharmacies. Our main competitive advantages are the complexity of the solution and the speed of development and added value features we have.

What is your business model?

So far our client is the pharmacy and we charge a setup/consultancy fee and later a SaaS monthly fee

Shareholders

The company is own by 4 professionals that left their “C-level” positions to work full time to the project and put 320.000€ social capital

Luis Arimany, CEO.

• Experience: General Manager at ARX-Rowa, Country manager at Hepco Slide Systems, Strategic Consultant and Teacher
• Education. Industrial Engineer, Executive MBA at IE, MSc

Daniel Garzón. COO

• Experience: General Manager at Onaline and Teacher at UC3
• Education: Technology Engineer, Executive MBA at IE

Rafael de Federico. CCO

• Experience. Sales and Marketing Director at ARX
• Education: Enginer, Master in Production and Quality

Iván Rivera

• Experience: Project Manager at Telefonica and IBM and Teacher at UC3
• Education: Technology Engineer, Master at Telefonica for high performance people

Do you have a prototype? How many iterations took it from the initial idea to the current product?

The product is 100% functional with customers working with it.

It took us around 3 months to get to the idea as it is and the concept of the product has not changed but we are iterating technologies, different ways of doing the something, etc.

What are the most difficult of the experience as entrepreneur?

Main one is the lack of resources (human, time, money). There are many things to be done and very few resources. You have to learn to leave with the frustration of not being able to deliver what you want and to make decisions that involve balance between many variables like cash flow, product, urgency, client, strategy, long term, short term.

The other one was formal direction. Initially the 4 shareholders worked very efficiency in their own areas without a formal direction and making decisions in their own. As time passed, the complexity of the product and of the company grew and the initial management structure was no longer efficient and turned out to work against us. We realised that despite we all are shareholders we needed someone to have a higher rank in order to coordinate and managed us. Also we realised we needed a more structured Board Directors Meeting.

In your opinion, what are the most important personality traits to be a successful entrepreneur?

In the team the following skills are needed, but they can be provided by different team members:

• Flexibility
• Vision, strategy (long term work)
• Being Practical (Short term work)
• Communication
• Humanity
• Cope with frustration
• Leadership
• Focus

Is there anything you would go back and do differently if you had the chance?

Being more structured since the beginning.

What advice would you like to give to potential entrepreneurs?

Entrepreneurship It is a beautiful world but it is also very hard. You have to be able to give time, money and be able to leave at least 2 years without income.

What is your experience with Area 31 and IE?

The two founders of Evolufarma are former Executive MBA of IE Business School. We have experience in our bones the entrepreneurship culture of IE, first as students and later being at Area 31.

Area 31 gave us space, free services of top companies, mentoring, being part of the entrepreneurial network of Spain and access to very interesting people.

Being part of IE-Area 31 it is also a very good business plan.