Walgreens Boots Alliance Adopts Microsoft Cloud Tools to Transform Health Care Delivery
A New Approach to Health Care Delivery
Across all aspects of retail, the customer is now in charge -- and it’s up to the retailers to figure out how best to engage with them, and keep them happy. This challenge becomes even greater, in the light of prevailing trends such as the need for “any time, anywhere” commerce, enhanced customer experiences, the desire to equip store associates with technology, and the demand for sustainable practices in retail.
One of the largest retail pharmacies across the United States and Europe, Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) currently operates more than 18,500 stores in 11 countries. Over the years, WBA has built and fostered relationships with hundreds of brand partners, to offer unique benefits and incentives for improving the customer experience, and strengthening ties with the brand.
In an increasingly competitive retail landscape, WBA has relied on programmes like the Boots Advantage Card to forge relationships with consumers. In the over two decades since its launch, this loyalty rewards and promotions scheme has attracted a membership base of nearly 18 million active customers.
Customer behaviour and purchasing data from the programme have provided WBA with information that can be used to build propensity models for better understanding customer preferences. This has given Walgreens Boots Alliance the potential for creating new approaches to retail and health care delivery. But the sheer volume of data involved has also created a challenge in how best to handle and utilise it.
Walgreens Boots Alliance Finds a Partner in Microsoft
WBA’s existing automated machine learning solution was resource-intensive, and lacked the compute power necessary to efficiently produce the number of propensity models the company wanted to successfully target its Advantage Card promotions.
For a proof of concept, Boots chose the Microsoft Azure Machine Learning service to model its Advantage Card data. IT and data science teams at Boots used Azure Machine Learning Compute to build automated machine learning propensity models, opting for Azure SQL Database for handling the downstream analysis, and Azure Machine Learning pipelines to pull it all together.
With Microsoft Azure, Boots substantially increased the speed and scalability of its existing machine learning platform. The WBA IT and data science teams are now better equipped to scale out modelling for corporate campaigns, in addition to those of its participating brand partners.
This success story was one result of a formal partnership sealed in 2019, under which Microsoft becomes Walgreens Boots Alliance’s strategic cloud provider, with a focus on developing digital and virtual health care models. The deal will see Office 365 and Microsoft Azure infrastructure rolled-out to Walgreens Boots Alliance pharmacies across the UK and the United States, in a seven-year agreement making Microsoft the IT system provider for Boots pharmacies.
Stefano Pessina, executive vice chair and chief executive officer of WBA, said of the agreement that the “strategic partnership with Microsoft demonstrates our strong commitment to creating integrated, next-generation, digitally enabled health care delivery solutions for our customers, transforming our stores into modern neighbourhood health destinations and expanding customer offerings”.
WBA expects the partnership will foster the development of “new health care delivery models”, such as “virtual care” on patients’ digital devices. The deal announced on 15 January 2019, aims to “engage [Boots’s] patients to improve medication adherence, reduce emergency room visits and decrease hospital readmissions”.
(Image source: Microsoft)
Speaking for Microsoft, CEO Satya Nadella said, “Improving health outcomes while lowering the cost of care is a complex challenge that requires broad collaboration and strong partnership between the health care and tech industries. Together with Walgreens Boots Alliance, we aim to deliver on this promise by putting people at the centre of their health and wellness, combining the power of the Azure cloud and AI technology and Microsoft 365 with Walgreens Boots Alliance’s deep expertise and commitment to helping communities around the world lead healthier and happier lives.”
The companies will combine the power of Azure, Microsoft’s cloud and AI platform, health care investments, and new retail solutions, with Wallgreens Boots Alliance’s customer reach, convenient locations, outpatient health care services, and industry expertise, to make health care delivery more personal, affordable, and accessible for people around the world.
Looking to a Healthier Future
Recent and anticipated improvements in Microsoft’s cloud platform will make a range of new tools and possibilities available to their partners at Walgreens Boots Alliance.
For example, Microsoft recently released Dynamics 365 Commerce, a ”commerce anywhere” or “aCommerce” tool that merges the old Dynamics 365 Retail with a true multi-channel solution that transforms the customer experience by unifying retailers’ back-office, in-store, call centre, and eCommerce experiences.
In the first quarter of 2020, retailers will be able to enable SMS sign-in to Microsoft 365 and custom applications for retail workers, and empower their store managers with delegated user management capabilities. This will make it easier to reset passwords and manage workers’ identities, without placing additional demands on IT staff. And the technology giant will be bringing new capabilities for front-line employees to Microsoft Teams later this year.
Based on its success with Boots, Wallgreens Boots Alliance is working to expand the use of Microsoft Azure tools to support other areas of its business, such as logistics for warehouse systems that support Boots.com, customer survey data, and customer support centres.
Data-driven insight, cloud technology, and new approaches to retail and health care delivery will be hot topics at Retail CIO Connect EU 2020, which takes place from 02 - 03 June, 2020, at Sopwell House, St. Albans, UK.
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