Keeping Pharmacies Up and Running When It MattersÂ
Cegedim RX is a leading provider of pharmacy software and infrastructure solutions. Their customers range from independent pharmacies to large corporate groups, who all depend on Cegedim’s systems to manage dispensing, patient records, and daily operations.
In pharmacy environments, even short periods of downtime can disrupt dispensing, delay access to medication, and damage customer trust.
Over the past five years, CDW has been Cegedim’s primary hardware break-fix and managed operations partner, providing on-site engineering, parts logistics, and technical support that helps pharmacies remain operational when downtime directly impacts patient care.Â
In this time, the relationship has evolved from a support contract into a true operational partnership, with shared accountability for resolving customer challenges quickly and flexibly.
"We don’t refer to CDW as a third party – we refer to them as a partner."
Kieran Daire
Head Of Service, Cegedim RX
The Challenge for Pharmacies
Pharmacy environments are unforgiving. Teams use tightly integrated systems that must function continuously to support the work of dispensing prescriptions and supporting customers. If this breaks down, the consequences are immediate:
• Inability to dispense prescriptions
• Automated dispensing robots go down
• Loss of access to patient records and histories
In short, pharmacies are unable to operate effectively – impacting revenue, workflow, and patient experience.
Pharmacies also work across a broad supported hardware estate. Cegedim’s customer-facing operations depend on servers, PCs, workstations, printers, and a range of peripherals, and components. With operations spanning hundreds of sites, Cegedim needs to respond fast if performance is under threat.
Generally, this entails a mix of on and off-site support. Approximately 85% of incidents are resolved remotely by Cegedim’s service desk, with the remaining 15% needing an engineer on site – delivered by CDW. These on-site incidents tend to be the most operationally disruptive – and those where a rapid response is most vital.
For Cegedim, rapid response is critical because pharmacy teams experience IT failures in real time, while continuing to serve patients at the counter.
What Makes CDW Different?
Shared ownership of customer issues Flexible response beyond standard process boundaries Proactive service improvement and operational visibility Delivering Operational Support Beyond the SLA Cegedim requires a partner with field engineering capability and the scale to act decisively across locations.
CDW offers a nationwide field engineering network, an ecosystem of forward stock locations for rapid hardware deployment, and owned logistics infrastructure to quickly source and dispatch components.
According to Cegedim’s Head of Services, CDW also consistently demonstrates a commitment to customer outcomes, regardless of whether a situation sits neatly in the scope of a service agreement.
CDW looks for the workable solution every time, adapting the approach to the needs of Cegedim and its pharmacy customers – helping more pharmacies stay open, dispense prescriptions, and support patient care.
Transparency in the relationship is so important – it supports the partnership more than any KPI.
Michelle FenwickService Delivery Manager, CDW
Orchestrating an End-To-End Response
Resolving just one critical on-site issue may involve up to 15 people across CDW.
These include:
• Service desk teams that receive and log the incident
• Technical vetting specialists that triage and prioritise the fault
• Call control teams that coordinate deployment
• Parts logistics and warehouse operations that find and dispatch components
• Forward stock teams that support access to hardware near the customer site
• Field engineers who attend the site and carry out repairs
• Reporting and systems teams that maintain estate visibility
Rather than dispatching parts from a central warehouse, CDW’s network of forward stock locations and pre-positioned inventory allows engineers to deploy with replacement hardware in hand to resolve problems first time.
This scale and coordination help CDW respond quickly when it matters.
While this coordination happens behind the scenes, the outcome for pharmacies is simple: faster resolution and reduced operational disruption.
CDW’s willingness to work flexibly around operational constraints
has been phenomenal.Kieran DaireHead Of Service, Cegedim RX
Staying Ahead of Every Customer Need
The biggest test of a partnership is how it performs under pressure. In one incident, a major pharmacy customer experienced a failure in the server supporting an automated dispensing robot. During review, it was identified that the asset was not formally listed under the existing support contract. However, Cegedim has appropriate commercial cover in place with CDW for this type of scenario – an improvement introduced to ensure service continuity. Under this agreed framework, CDW sourced compatible replacement hardware, deployed a field engineer, and resolved the incident quickly to prevent costly downtime for the pharmacy.
With a proven willingness to adapt, CDW has regularly performed beyond SLA expectations, with engineers attending some critical sites within one to two hours of an incident being raised. Consistent hardware support outcomes feature prominently in service reviews with pharmacy groups – and directly influence customer retention for Cegedim.
