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Merck-Medco is a division of Merck & Co. It is the largest pharmacy-benefit manager (PBM) in the United States. It provides prescription drug services for all types of group health plans. Their services include prescription filling by mail and via its Website through its network. They fill or reimburse for about 80% of all prescription drug sales in United State. The company has 1,100 clients with over 52 million beneficiaries. Their clients include one-forth of the Fortune 500 companies, 100 local, state and federal employees and retiree groups, Blue Cross/Blue Shield plans, and many unions and others medical insurance plans. Due to the market growth and competition threats, the company believes that reimbursing customer or filling their prescriptions would no longer stay competitive in the market. Merck-Medco decided to build the Website that would allows their clients and customers to fill or refill their prescription online. Refill prescriptions over the Internet not only allows the customers to order and receive their prescriptions quicker, but also allows the company to reduce its transaction costs. The new Website also allows the company to handle sales more efficiently, to enable the company to respond quickly and inexpensively to customers’ services request as order status information and billing inquiries. To build a Website to handle such a complex business process like Merck-Medco raised several issues such as the complexity of the system itself, to promote the use of it, and who to target with which promotion with a least possible costs.
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