Ukrainian pharmacies should work like a clock, as they are a place for many people to measure their blood pressure or blood sugar, to urgently buy anti-allergic drugs or insulin, to replenish personal stock of vital pills etc. It is especially crucial in critical situations the Ukrainian citizens find themselves on a daily basis. And cloud could keep up such an important work.
Express-Med is a chain of pharmacies that has been operating since 1997, and during this time opened 30 pharmacies in the city of Odesa, its region, and Mykolaiv, and also attracted over 23 thousand loyal customers. The company has more than 200 employees, whose stable work depends on the availability of the ERP system. This is what is hosted in the GigaCloud cloud.
A sudden failure is the best motivation
Previously, the company had been using its own server, and only started considering cloud services after a two-day failure of its own infrastructure, during which it lost some data.
«Until the server was fixed, there was a literal shutdown of business. When the program does not work, we cannot sell goods or issue checks to customers», explains Oleksiy Pasynkov, Express-Med system administrator.
There were problems before: in case of a power outage, which happens in Ukraine often since the start of a full-scale invasion, the server’s batteries usually lasted for 8 hours — and the system administrator had to urgently go to work in order to have time to recharge them with the help of generators. There was not always enough time for a full charge, and the server quickly “worn out”.
It is impossible to completely disassemble the server and understand what is wrong with it — it would cause a lengthy downtime. It was necessary to quickly restore the processes, without going into details. To avoid aggravating the situation, the company began to consider cloud services.
«Now I don’t have to worry about the electricity going off and having to run up to work and replace the batteries, so the cloud solution is convenient. Currently, this is the best way to maintain the system operation and access to it even in remote villages with bad connection, everything depends only on the internet», says Oleksiy Pasynkov, Express-Med system administrator.
Priorities in cloud selection
During the transition to the cloud, Express-Med looked at more than 10 different operators. They focused on the following parameters:
- Security, and not just in terms of technical features, but also from the point of view of the counterparty’s reliability. It is important that the legal entity with a good reputation provides the services.
- Stability and speed of data exchange between company computers and the cloud.
- Professional technical support, ready to quickly respond to any problematic issues.
According to Express-Med, GigaCloud meets these requirements. Data migration to the cloud was carried out at night so as not to disrupt business operations. And at 8 a.m., at the start of a new workday, pharmacies opened and started working in the cloud — now everything stabilized and works without failure.
The pharmacy business is full of stressful situations, and fortunately, now the company at least does not have unnecessary worries about the function of the server. It has become more resilient and ready to help clients with necessary medication even during force majeure circumstances such as sudden power outages following russian strikes against Ukrainian infrastructure.
The company indicates the high level of GigaCloud’s communication with customers: «We can call technical support even at night — and they will provide explanations, or connect to our system and configure it themselves», says Oleksiy Pasinkov, Express-Med system administrator.
Oleksandr Lubyannikov, Express-Med LLC Executive Director, also emphasizes the importance of communication: «In other companies, we have not noticed such a level of communication and expertise. As a manager, I am focused specifically on partnership relations, on communication — in this regard, GigaCloud responded quickly to our request from the start, and we agreed on a test period literally after the first call. No question left unanswered, everything was explained to us. We were able to order and configure even more capacity within our budget than we originally expected and planned».
