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PHILADELPHIA — Rite Aid and Google Cloud are entering a multi-year technology partnership to help Rite Aid realize its vision of a modern pharmacy, the companies said on Tuesday.
Google Cloud technologies will provide Rite Aid with better insights, increased agility and improved customer experiences, the companies added. Modernized applications for personalized digital experiences will enable pharmacists to spend more time directly engaging customers.
As part of the new partnership, Rite Aid said it will be migrating key applications to Google Cloud’s Anthos, a managed platform for application deployment. Applications include Rite Aid’s vaccine scheduling tool, customer messaging infrastructure and digital engagement platform. With Anthos, Rite Aid’s approximately 2,350 pharmacies will have cloud computing capabilities on-site. Strategic business continuity enables the company to continue to provide elevated care during natural disasters through robust patient information, advanced prescription management, and offering recommendations without needing to be connected to centralized, legacy mainframe technology.
Justin Mennen
“The power of pharmacies, and the important role pharmacists play in the health of their communities, greatly expanded during COVID. Realizing that potential means making strategic investments in technology that can truly help our customers and maximize the capabilities of our pharmacists,” said Justin Mennen, executive vice president and chief digital and technology officer at Rite Aid. “Google Cloud’s solutions are uniquely positioned to run at each pharmacy location to allow our store teams to help our customers to achieve whole health for life.”
In addition to modernizing the technologies powering its pharmacies, Rite Aid has also tapped Google Cloud for digital transformations across other areas of its business, including:
- Complete enterprise data migration: Rite Aid said it will migrate its enterprise data to Google Cloud using BigQuery. This move will allow the pharmacy to have better insights into its finances, supply chain inventory and customer information, powering data-driven decisions for its business operations.
- Enhanced search capabilities: Rite Aid said it has selected Google Cloud’s Retail Search solution to provide customers with more precise search results when shopping on Rite Aid’s e-commerce site and mobile app. Retail Search will provide Rite Aid customers with an improved search experience that uses Google-quality search models to understand customer intent and takes into account Rite Aid’s first-party data (such as promotions, available inventory, and price) for product ranking results.
- Updated pharmacy benefits management application suite: Elixir, Rite Aid’s pharmacy benefits and services company, will update its current pharmacy benefits management application suite to a cloud-first experience with artificial intelligence and machine learning-infused business logic capabilities. New Google Cloud data analytics and processing capabilities will help the pharmacy benefits manager better manage prescription benefits on behalf of health insurers.
“As a health care company with a retail footprint, Rite Aid is at the intersection of two quickly evolving industries and making strategic technology investments to meet rising customer expectations,” said Carrie Tharp, vice president of Retail and Consumer Solutions for Google Cloud. “Through these innovations, Rite Aid is defining the modern pharmacy.”
