Once we have identified and prioritised our plans, we can start to produce the targets we expect to achieve with these plans. We should set two types of target: performance targets and implementation targets.

Performance targets

Performance targets are the hard financial or activity targets that you expect to achieve through your plans. Typically, these will be prescription numbers, services delivered, sales and profit. Turnover is not necessarily a good target in pharmacy, especially if dispensing is a high proportion of total turnover because changes to Category M can have dramatic influences on turnover without necessarily having a long-term effect on profit.

Breaking down these performance targets further will be useful to provide focus and identify whether the plans are having the desired effect. Prescriptions, services and sales can be categorised as described earlier.

Implementation targets

Implementation targets could be described as the enablers to achieve the performance targets we have set. These should be clearly linked to the plans identified in the TOWS analysis. This might be in terms of:

• Staffing – developing skills and knowledge, numbers, roles and skills mix and performance management
• Premises – changing the current fit-out, dispensary layout, consulting room, equipment and retail space
• Marketing – in-store, external, local press and social media
• IT – EPOS implementation and use, using PMR more effectively.

Delivering against these targets builds the capability to deliver performance results.