👉 Background: Wesfarmers is the giant WA-based conglomerate that owns a heap of the biggest companies in Australia including Bunnings, Officeworks, Kmart and Target. In 2022, Wesfarmers saw an opportunity in the Aussie health space, buying up GP, dental and radiology clinics.

👉 What happened: Since then, Wesfarmers been on a buying spree. It has acquired:

• Australian Pharmaceutical Industries for $1 billion in 2022, which owns Priceline
• InstantScripts for $135m in 2023
  
• Clear Skincare and Silk Laser Clinics last year
  

Across the Wesfarmers Health division, it generated more than $5.6 billion in 2023.

👉 What else: Now, it’s expected to top over $6 billion in the upcoming financial year. Wesfarmers has run the numbers on 3 million health checks and found that the number of Aussies getting sick is supposedly increasing. Bad news for our health, but big business for Wesfarmers.

What's the key learning?

💡When you collect a treasure trove of data, you can use it to fine-tune your offerings down to the very last detail.

💡Data is now one of the most valuable assets for businesses, so you could say Wesfarmers is sitting on a goldmine after gathering a massive amount of health data from over 3 million digital health checks.

💡We’ve already seen Wesfarmers deliver tailored offerings through its part-stake in Coles’ FlyBuys program and now we’re seeing them do it across healthcare too. By using data analytics, they can predict the needs and trends in healthcare, which can open opportunities for expanding services, which then result to even healthier profits.