Billington Pharmaceuticals

Background

Billington is a large pharmaceutical supply company that fills a considerable number of prescriptions in North America. The company operates more than 1,000 stores in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Southeast, and Midwest as well as several hundred stores throughout Canada. Recently, Billington has expanded through the acquisition of GetBetterSoon.com, a Web storefront that sells prescription medicines as well as other non-prescription and over-the-counter drugs. In acquiring GetBetterSoon.com, the company has also acquired a large fulfillment center in Detroit that services international clientele.

Billington already has its own line of products, which it now plans to offer in addition to the existing GetBetterSoon.com products. Additionally, Billington would like to offer a number of new services as a result of the merger:

• 24/7 access to licensed pharmacists via the Internet or by toll-free telephone

• A centralized patient database system to service the clientele in the United States

• A separate database service covering Canadian clients (who live under different government regulations)

• A Web interface available to doctors to perform patient queries and patient condition updates

Billington and GetBetterSoon.com combined sell more than 2,000 prescription drugs, 3,500 over-the-counter health and personal care products, and more than 800 of Billington's own private-label products. Billington offers free delivery services to any city that currently has a store or warehouse.

Problem Statement

One goal of any proposed solution is that Billington be able to integrate its new online store capability with its already stable walk-in store operation. Another challenge is that the amount of traffic through the system is forecasted to triple over the next year.

The main challenge, however, is that each company has its own "classic" Active Server Pages (ASP) Web applications. Billington IT management would like to merge the two into a single, full-service site reflecting the new corporate identity.

Current System

The current system is actually two systems. Billington has a non-commerce ASP application that uses VBScript, talking to an IBM mainframe, with some VC++ components in between. The data is stored in DB2. All the current business logic is on the mainframe, in a PL/1 program running on Customer Information Control System (CICS).

GetBetterSoon.com also has an ASP application, but it is standardized on JavaScript, talking to a Java-based application/business tier that stores all its data on an Oracle server.

Each Billington store operation maintains its own inventory and places orders to a centralized distribution center. Although the inventory database is centralized, the physical stores currently have no software ties to the online business. GetBetterSoon.com also maintains its own distribution center and a separate inventory database.

A new human resources system has just been deployed that gave every employee a unique ID. In addition, last year Billington performed an extensive audit and discovered that more than 10% of its user base does not support cookies.

Billington's CEO

"We want to unite the two companies under a single identity. We want 'Billington' to stand for high quality, competitive price, and full service. Basically, we want to take full advantage of the merger and become the single largest supplier of prescription and non-prescription products in North America."

Billington's Chief Technology Officer

"This is a challenge. We have two separate IT groups that we need to merge. We have selected .NET and SQL Server as the strategic technology platform of the future. Billington has been a mainframe shop in the past, and GetBetterSoon.com is using Java and ASP. We did a thorough study and agreed to move forward with C# and ASP.NET as our technology. This is a bigger problem for us than for GetBetterSoon, but we feel it will speed the transition."

Application Team Leader

"I have 15 developers at my disposal. Seven of them have ASP experience and some VB knowledge. I have two senior architects with strong backgrounds in solution design who are also up to speed on .NET. The rest are mainframe programmers. We hope to migrate all our data off the mainframe and Oracle servers and onto application servers and SQL Server databases, but we know it will take time.

Our first step is to agree on standards, and then we will begin to plan the integration of these two disparate systems. Fortunately for us, when we are done, all the old software will be retired."

Envisioned System

The new system must be able to transmit e-mails for refill reminders and even contact physicians (at the patient's request) should the refill count reach zero. Instructions on medication usage are already used in the physical Billington stores and they would like to add this service to their Web solution.

Billington accepts most insurance plans offered in the United States and Canada. Direct billing to the insurer or health maintenance organization must be built into the system. Two of the major health insurance providers, Red Crusader and Hometown Health, which cover more than 70% of all prescription claims, have asked for XML Web Service support because of their commitment to this technology. This feature may or may not make it into the first release.

It has been determined, from an independent study, that more than 75% of doctors have online capabilities from their offices. The remaining 25%, however, must be able to use the system through telephone processes to a help desk that will operate with the accessible pharmacists.

The system must also handle mail-order pharmaceuticals, which currently represent about 10% of the company's market. Some HMOs require members to obtain certain drugs through mail-order pharmacies. To succeed, online drugstores require not only a critical mass of customers, but also a business-to-business solution for suppliers, insurance companies, and pharmacy benefit-management companies.

It is a requirement that the new system unite the operations for order processing and inventory control into a standardized method of order processing and product listings. Because both companies use different suppliers, it seems possible that we can merge the supplier information with very little change. Unique supplier identifiers already exist in the current system and will remain unchanged.

Pharmacy benefit-management (PBM) companies act as intermediaries between payers for health insurance and the pharmacy. They decide on the pharmacy that will serve patients and are responsible for reimbursing drugstores for prescription costs. When customers fill prescriptions at pharmacies covered by their PBM, they typically pay a $5 or $10 co-payment, but if they go outside the PBM/HMO network, they pay much more. So if we lose PBM approval, we instantly lose millions of customers. One of the primary reasons that Billington acquired GetBetterSoon.com was access to its clientele for leading PBM companies.

More than 50 screens will be involved in the new solution. Billington management (and, to some extent, the Food and Drug Administration) wants all screens to meet stringent standards for consistency, user assistance (help), and consumer confidence.

CEO

"Several of our major HMOs have asked us to support Web Services as soon as possible. Although other things are certainly more important, like getting the two companies to look like one to the consumer, we certainly want to work with our major providers as soon as we can."

Billington's Chief Technology Officer

"We have a tremendous job ahead of us. Not only do we have to combine two companies into one, but also we are required to create an entirely new interface that spans two countries, and all that entails, as well as support Internet users who might be disabled."

Staff Pharmacist

"There are 12 pharmacists between the two companies. Our job is to provide content around drug interactions and to staff a Contact Us helpline. Some of our products offer a choice of packaging, which we would like to attractively display on the Web site.

We really need to be working with the same standardized product identifiers, although for an extended period of time both distribution centers will remain open and a decision will be made later about the feasibility of maintaining the two centers. For each product, we need to be tracking the last cost from our supplier and the amount of the product on hand at each distribution center.

Of course, we will have to maintain price information and at least a minimal description of the product. Descriptions of the product will be useful in drawing information for the Web site. Also needed are the brands being offered and the different sizes available for a product. For some of the products, the customer will have a choice of a variety of different packaging.

We don't need much information about the HMOs. For the most part, we simply need a mailing address, phone number, and contact person. We need to update the way we handle our drug information. We have a great deal of information for each drug, including interactions with other drugs and potential side effects. This information has been combined in a text document that is given to our clients.

Each drug comes in a variety of doses and routes (capsule, liquid, and so forth). We also need to know if the drug can be given over the counter without a prescription. The government requires special handling of any narcotics.

Each dated prescription is given out on the physician's own letterhead (which is good, as physicians' signatures are impossible to read). Any number of drugs can be on a single prescription. The prescription also lists the dosage and route for each medication.

We would like to track information about the 24/7 help desk and physicians' service. We want to know whether the same people are repeatedly using the system. Later, we might attach a user fee to the system, but that is not in the current plan. We want to make sure the system is being used only by the physicians we deal with and patients who are actually our customers.

If we are going to maintain doctor information in a database, we would like to know the doctor's specialization, as it might provide additional information as to why this particular medication was prescribed.

We need to be tracking a lot of information about our customers. We would like to ensure that medications won't cause an allergic reaction. We would also like to record any diagnosis information so that tracking the patient's condition is possible. A lot of personal data is needed to ensure proper medications and dosages; information such as age and weight are usually overlooked but can be very important.

The Web site will offer a variety of shipping choices. Of course, the most expedient choices will be the priciest, but we would still like to remain competitive and offer 2448-hour delivery where possible."

WhiteStar HMO Chief Technology Officer

"We've dealt with Billington for many years. In the past, our information transfers have been through the mail or by Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) packets. We are hoping to use the proposed XML Web Service to facilitate all our transactions, with extensibility and security being paramount."