We hear a version of this conversation regularly when talking to independent pharmacy owners. "I'd be open to trying it, but how do I know the prices are real?" Or: "What happens if a distributor accepts my order on your platform and then says they don't have the product?" Or simply: "I've been working with my current distributors for years. Why would I change?"
These are not unreasonable questions. They are the right questions. Pharmaceutical procurement is not a category where you experiment casually. If an order fails or the product you receive is not what was promised, the consequences reach your patients, not just your balance sheet. Caution is appropriate.
This article is about the specific concerns we hear most often, why they are legitimate, and what actually changes pharmacy owners' minds about trying a digital procurement platform.
The Core Concern: Is This Platform Real?
The first and most basic question is whether the platform is actually connected to real distributors who will actually fill orders. This sounds obvious, but it is not a trivial concern. There are platforms in B2B commerce that aggregate information without having actual supply relationships behind it: price comparison tools that show what products theoretically cost without actually being able to facilitate a transaction. Pharmacy owners who have been burned by that kind of experience before are understandably skeptical.
What changes this concern is evidence of actual transactions. The most effective trust signal for a new platform is testimonials from operators who used it for a real order and received what they ordered. Not a free trial without financial stakes, but an actual procurement order where real money changed hands and real product arrived. When pharmacy owners talk to other pharmacy owners who have done that, it changes the conversation faster than any product demonstration.
This is one reason we focus heavily on pilot pharmacies and encourage them to share their experiences directly with other independent operators in their networks. Word of mouth from a peer in the same business context carries more weight than anything we can say about ourselves.
Distributor Verification: Can You Trust the Source?
The second category of concern is about distributor legitimacy. ANVISA requires that every entity in the pharmaceutical supply chain hold a valid authorization. A pharmacy that buys from an unauthorized distributor is not just making a bad commercial decision; it is taking on regulatory liability. The pharmacy is responsible for ensuring that its suppliers are authorized, and that responsibility does not transfer to the platform.
Any platform operating in pharmaceutical B2B procurement has to take this seriously. On Covalenty, every distributor is required to provide their ANVISA AFE (Autorizacao de Funcionamento de Empresa) as part of onboarding. We verify this against ANVISA's public records before a distributor can list products on the platform. We do not guarantee against the theoretical possibility that an authorization lapses after verification, but we re-check on a regular cycle and remove distributors whose status changes.
For pharmacy operators evaluating any procurement platform, the right question to ask is: "What is your process for verifying distributor ANVISA authorization?" A platform that cannot answer that question concretely should not be trusted for pharmaceutical procurement, regardless of how attractive the prices look.
What Happens When an Order Goes Wrong?
The third concern is practical: what is the recourse when something does not go as expected? A distributor accepts an order on the platform, then three days later says the product is out of stock. Or the product arrives and the batch number does not match what was confirmed in the order documentation. These scenarios happen in traditional procurement too, but when something goes wrong with a phone order, you at least know whose phone number to call.
On a digital platform, the pharmacy needs clarity on the dispute resolution process before something goes wrong, not after. Who is liable when an order is confirmed and then cannot be fulfilled? Does the platform take any role in mediating disputes between buyers and distributors, or does it simply connect them and step back?
We do not claim to have a perfect answer to every dispute scenario. We are a small team and we do not have an army of account managers. What we have is a clear written policy on what happens when an order is confirmed and not fulfilled, direct access to the platform team for pharmacy operators who have an issue, and a commitment to not disappearing when something goes wrong. That matters more than we initially expected it would. Pharmacy owners are not just evaluating the technology; they are evaluating whether there is a real team behind it that will be reachable when needed.
What About My Existing Distributor Relationships?
The fourth concern is relational, and it is perhaps the most underrated. Independent pharmacy owners in Brazil have often built distributor relationships over years, sometimes over a decade or more. Those relationships carry real practical value: informal credit flexibility, priority during supply shortages, familiarity with your order patterns, and in some cases genuine personal goodwill between the pharmacy owner and the sales rep.
A digital platform that implicitly positions itself as a replacement for those relationships is going to face justified resistance. And honestly, that resistance is right. A platform that tells you to abandon your distributor relationships in favor of its algorithm is not giving you good advice.
The framing that actually resonates with pharmacy owners is different: the platform is a tool for price discovery and order placement, and it is compatible with continuing your existing distributor relationships. Your trusted distributor can be on the platform too. You might use the platform to check whether there is a better price available on a specific product this week while still placing the bulk of your orders with your preferred distributor. The platform does not require exclusivity and does not benefit from you cutting off distributors you have built relationships with.
The Regulatory Trust Signal
One trust signal that matters more to pharmacy operators than we initially expected is ANVISA alignment. Not just that the platform operates within the regulatory framework, but that it makes it easier to maintain the documentation that ANVISA requires pharmacies to keep about their procurement sources.
Independent pharmacies in Brazil are required to maintain records of every product they receive: supplier information, batch numbers, ANVISA registration of the product, delivery notes. A platform that generates these records automatically and makes them accessible and well-organized for potential audit purposes is reducing a real compliance burden. When we described this to pharmacy owners in our pilot conversations, several of them said it was the first feature we mentioned that they found immediately compelling, more so than the price comparison itself.
What Actually Changes People's Minds
Summarizing what we have observed: the things that move cautious pharmacy owners from skeptical to willing to try are, in rough order of importance, direct testimonials from peers they trust, a verifiable answer to "are the distributors on your platform ANVISA-authorized," visible evidence that the platform facilitates real completed orders rather than just displaying prices, and clarity about what happens when something goes wrong.
Price comparison, the core value proposition, is table stakes. If the prices shown are clearly better than what a pharmacy is getting through phone calls, that gets attention. But attention is not adoption. Adoption happens when the trust questions are answered well enough that the pharmacy owner feels comfortable placing a real order, with real products, through the platform. That process takes time, and shortcutting it by pressuring pharmacies to commit before they are ready would be counterproductive.
We are not saying caution is irrational. It is rational and appropriate. Our job is to earn trust through behavior over time, not to argue pharmacy owners out of being careful.
