From a Manual Process to a Digital Employee Counter in Just 5 Weeks

Kern Pharma (Grupo Indukern): Digitalization of an Internal Service for Over 1,000 Employees

Grupo Indukern, comprised of the pharmaceutical laboratory Kern Pharma and the animal health laboratory Calier, has over 1,000 employees in Spain who had access to an internal service for purchasing discounted medicines and pharmacy products for employees.

Despite its potential, this service had very low adoption. The issue was not in the value proposition but in the way it was managed: a completely manual process, supported by Excel and emails, with little visibility, scarce traceability, and a confusing experience for both employees and the business itself. The real challenge was to transform this service into a genuine value lever for employees and product prescription, without taking unnecessary risks or making large initial investments.

Digitalizing an Internal Pharmaceutical Service with Low Adoption

The project began with several overlapping challenges. On one hand, there were unverified business beliefs pointing towards a large e-commerce oriented towards catalog prescription, even without showing prices, without clear evidence that this model was truly relevant to employees. At the same time, the historically low adoption of the service made it difficult to justify an ambitious investment without first validating real usage.

Added to this was a chaotic operation, with unstandardized orders, little clarity on timings, collection, payment, or prescription management, and an especially demanding context: five weeks to discover, design, and develop an MVP from scratch.

All within an environment with technical and security complexity —passwordless login, corporate domain control, and management of medical and sensitive data— and with a team and context completely new to Runroom.

An Internal E-commerce MVP Focused on Impact and Rapid Validation

From the start, we approached the project with a clear impact-oriented focus. The goal was not to build the “ideal” product from a theoretical standpoint, but to decide what to build and in what order based on real value for employees and the business.

Objectives: Improve Employee Experience and Validate the Digital Purchase Model

• Digitalize the internal service for purchasing pharmaceutical products.
• Improve employee experience and service adoption.
• Gain traceability, efficiency, and control without oversizing the solution.
• Quickly validate product hypotheses through an MVP.

From Discovery Express to a Functional B2E E-commerce in Five Weeks

The first week was dedicated to an intensive Discovery Express. Interviews with employees, real users of the service, were conducted to understand how they purchased, what barriers they encountered, and what expectations they had. In parallel, an impact session with the business was held to align objectives and define what behavior change was desired.

To accelerate learning, an interactive prototype supported by AI was built, allowing early hypothesis validation in a focus group with employees. The insights obtained were synthesized using a Notebook LLM and transferred to an executive report that served as a basis for decision-making.

This process enabled a key change in approach: the idea of a “catalog for product prescription” was abandoned in favor of a truly useful internal e-commerce for employees, where price, savings, and ease of purchase became the determining factors.

Impact Metrics and Headless Architecture with Payload CMS

Before starting development, the definition of metrics was specifically addressed. In an impact workshop, a main metric representing product success was established, along with leading and lagging metrics to understand both adoption and behavior. Additionally, the necessary events were designed to measure from day one.

In parallel, Sprint 0 laid the product foundations, defining the technical setup with Payload, the functional and content architecture, the prioritization of the backlog based on expected impact, and the planning of sprints, with user stories aligned with business and experience objectives.

Development of a Digital Employee Counter with Secure Login and Prescription Management

During the following three weeks, the MVP of the internal digital counter for employees was developed. The product included a passwordless login system via Magic Link, a modular home, a catalog with visible prices and discounts, an advanced search engine, and the management of both out-of-catalog products and public, private, and veterinary prescriptions.

The MVP was completed with a structured email system for employees and pharmacy, a complete backoffice in Payload for catalog, content, and pickup point management, and analytics integration via GTM. Continuous alignment with the business allowed for priority adjustments after each validation, always keeping the focus on impact and adoption.

Transformation from a Manual Process to a Scalable Digital Platform

The main value provided in this project was the approach. Every product decision was made with real adoption and employee experience in mind, not the accumulation of features. This allowed questioning key business hypotheses and changing the initial mindset, understanding that prescription starts by offering a truly useful service.

Additionally, the project tackled product and service design together. Not only was an interface designed, but the entire surrounding service: timings, communication, discounts, relationship with the pharmacy, and order management.

Technologically, the choice of a modern and scalable architecture allowed for rapid validation without sacrificing a solid foundation for growth. All of this resulted in the standardization of a previously chaotic process, unifying orders, communication, and prescription management into a single clear and traceable flow.

Impact: From a Manual Process to an Internal E-commerce Ready to Scale

In just one month, Grupo Indukern employees went from placing orders with Excel and emails to having a functional internal e-commerce MVP.

The service was completely clarified, defining steps, timings, collection, and payroll payment, aligning for the first time the business needs with those of the users.

The impact was immediate: in just one month, employee purchases multiplied, surpassing the order volume of the last four years. The architecture, metrics, and learnings obtained have created a solid foundation to scale the service, integrate new systems, and continue evolving the experience.

Currently, the MVP is in its early stages of internal use, with active adoption and behavior metrics guiding the next product evolution.

Do you want to validate an internal digital product without oversizing the initial investment?

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