How Aversi Pharmacy Increased Sales 11% by Automating Inventory Management

LEAFIO Inventory Optimization helped Aversi, a 332-store pharmacy chain in Georgia, increase like-for-like sales by 11%, improve inventory turnover by 16%, and reach 98% SKU availability. Previously, each pharmacy ordered stock manually and held extra "just-in-case" reserves, tying up capital in overstock and creating uneven availability across locations. By centralizing replenishment through automated order generation, Aversi eliminated store-by-store guesswork across its entire network and freed several million in excess inventory.

Metric	Result
Like-for-like sales increase	+11%
Inventory turnover improvement	+16%
Product availability improvement	+6%
SKU availability	98%
Overstock / excess inventory	Reduced by several million
Order management	Centralized to an 8-person central-office team (previously manual, per store)

Before LEAFIO, inventory management at Aversi was fully decentralized. In each of its 332 pharmacies, a manager built the assortment matrix and calculated order quantities by hand, relying largely on personal experience and judgment. As the chain scaled and its assortment expanded across both medicines and non-medicine products, the weaknesses of this setup became increasingly costly.

Two patterns hurt the business most. Managers sometimes missed important items or ordered too little, leaving shelves empty. More often, they over-ordered — holding large "just-in-case" reserves to keep shelves full. These reserves piled up into significant overstock, which froze working capital and strained the business financially. Aversi decided to move ordering decisions out of individual stores and base them on data, so chain-wide profitability would rest on numbers rather than personal judgment.

Aversi first considered building an in-house replenishment system and even began development. The team soon concluded that rebuilding what the market already offered would waste time and resources. They then evaluated and compared multiple inventory systems on both algorithm quality and vendor support.

They selected LEAFIO Inventory Optimization for three reasons: it runs fully in the cloud and stays easy to operate, it updates continuously so the business always has the latest capabilities, and its replenishment algorithms proved stronger than every alternative Aversi tested — including their own earlier in-house build.

Aversi was the first pharmacy chain for which LEAFIO implemented an inventory management system. The project worked through significant regulatory requirements and pharmacy-specific supply-chain complexity. Pharmacies came online gradually, and over time ordering became automated and centralized. A six-person team on the Aversi side — a project manager, a department head, purchasing managers, and IT — partnered with the vendor through regular calls and a clear action plan, even while the two teams worked from different countries.

Once automated, ordering moved from every individual pharmacy to a small central-office team of eight, which dramatically simplified and accelerated supply across the chain. Stores now receive automatically calculated quantities sized to actual demand, instead of carrying defensive reserves — letting capital work far more efficiently.

The measurable impact:

• +11% like-for-like sales
• +16% inventory turnover
• +6% product availability, reaching 98% SKU availability
• Excess inventory reduced by several million

The system also standardized promotion planning. Previously, promo timing and quantities depended on individual managers, so campaigns often launched late. Now promotions are announced up to two weeks in advance, and managers set an expected sales uplift coefficient in the system before each event. Aversi also gained chain-wide visibility into turnover and lost sales — figures that previously took enormous manual effort to produce and are now available in a single click. Confident in the results, Aversi later extended the system to its central warehouse.

"The first thing I'd highlight is that our excess stock dropped by several million — a phenomenal result for the business. The whole approach to ordering has changed: before, every pharmacy ordered manually and kept reserves 'just in case'; now ordering is centralized and automated, so each store carries only what it actually needs to sell." Otar Gvaramia, Chief Programmer, Aversi

Aversi is one of the largest pharmacy chains in Georgia and part of a family-owned healthcare group founded in 1994. Beyond its retail pharmacy network of 332 stores, the group operates the Aversi Clinic medical network and Aversi-Rational, one of the largest pharmaceutical manufacturers in the Caucasus. The company focuses on affordable, high-quality medicine and personalized service across its store footprint.