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A case study on the successful integration of a cloud-based PMS in an established veterinary clinic to achieve smoother workflows, ultimate convenience and 12 extra hours every week.
Narangba Veterinary Surgery is one of two locally owned veterinary clinics with over 30 combined years of experience serving the surrounding areas in Queensland, Australia. The Narangba team is passionate about offering the highest standards of veterinary care across its team of 13 staff members.
The best possible care for their customers is achieved through excellent customer service, continuity of care and a wealth of experience.
A 360° modern solution supporting customer excellence
As a provider of excellent customer care, it is no surprise that Narangba wanted to have a work environment conducive to providing such a service. That meant receiving excellent customer service themselves from their technology providers. This was one of the key drivers in Narangba seeking out not only a modern practice management solution (PMS,) but one that is a cloud-based 360° end-to-end solution, with higher-quality support services to help veterinary staff continuously.
Having been server-based pre-2019, they switched to their previous cloud-based PMS provider to modernise their practice, yet experienced poor-quality service. Olivia Willmot, Head Veterinary Nurse, says
“On our previous PMS, we were kept in the dark the entire time, there was no communication and no updates. If there were any emergencies, it was incredibly difficult to get hold of them. Nothing ever really happened. It really tainted our first experience with a cloud-based PMS and we knew we needed a better system.”
Covetrus Ascend – a natural choice
In seeking out a more secure, holistic, cloud-based solution, the clinic landed on Covetrus Ascend. With Ascend’s intuitive interface and easy user experience, its flexibility to accommodate numerous staff, and a changeover every day, it was the perfect choice for the Narangba veterinary team. The practice has also been experiencing steady growth, and its system needs to support this into the future. Other key considerations that attracted them to Ascend were:
Stronger client reminder functionality
More robust integrations
Competitive price point without compromising on quality
Smooth onboarding and training
Proactive technical support
A “well-handled” system and supportive tech team
Transitioning data from the previous provider was difficult due to lack of communication from their team, Olivia explained that once they passed that hurdle, everything else was a breeze with the Covetrus team. Being prepared with the reminder structure, attachments and templates and the subsequent training for Ascend was smooth and frictionless. It gave them an opportunity to have all their “I’s dotted and their T’s crossed,” but the realisation that having the right end-to-end PMS is critical to help pull things through.
“The training was awesome, I loved the fact that myself and the other Head Nurse, Kelly were able to get to grips with it quickly and then dive into training the rest of the team with ease. The tech support team were also amazing. We had Amanda and Alastair immersed in live training which was one of the best options for our practice specifically. Any questions we had were answered instantly, it was very helpful. But even the demo access before the ‘Go Live’ date and downtime to have a play around with it helped us get a proper feel for it.”
Smoother workflows and ultimate convenience
A veterinary clinic can often have incredibly busy periods, even when emergencies are not accounted for, so having a streamlined workflow and system that can handle multiple clients and patients at a time was important for the Narangba team.
“I really like its step-by-step nature. It’s built with such intuitive and logical steps in place that it makes our jobs and lives much easier. Things like the SMS confirmation at the time of booking and the reminders are stitched in, instead of having to go back and do it later. And it’s automated too, so this time-saving aspect is a huge deal.”
With an intuitive and smooth workflow, Ascend naturally provides strong integrations to prevent staff from having to go to different tabs, windows or devices in order to access or process something. It also reduces the time spent on tasks by minimising the steps needed.
One of Narangba’s favourite integrations is IDEXX for bloodwork, as “there’s no running back and forth between the machines, and everything is immediately accessible on Ascend.”
Being able to deal with billing and bundles at the right time on the system and for the customer enhances the whole experience and ties into their ethos of providing excellent customer service. Using Ascend, the team are saving up to 3 minutes per consult with faster billing workflows. This equates to approximately 12 hours saved per week for the team.
For their online bookings, the Paws App integration communicates seamlessly with Ascend. “Ascend talks really well with Paws App.” This helps the team reduce no-shows, fill appointment whitespace, and ultimately give their clients more flexibility around booking appointments on their terms.
Time-saving is one thing, ease and convenience are an added bonus for the team and their customers. In a potentially high-stress environment and industry, this is a critical factor. Simply reducing stress, preventing complications and making actions simple through integrations is a win-win.
Optimised data reporting = better marketing
“You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” Peter Drucker, Austrian-American Consultant and Educator
This quote couldn’t ring more true with Olivia’s team. On their previous cloud-based PMS, they had no reporting capabilities. With Ascend’s built-in reporting capabilities and intuitive task management, they are able to do everything in bulk.
“Having real control and visibility over client data, where I can pull certain groups of customers with proper segmentation, means we are able to communicate with them in the right ways. Getting the right message to the right customer is important. Upgrading our way of communicating and doing it en-masse with ease is what I’m most excited about.”
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Final thoughts
Overall, the team at Narangba Veterinary Surgery were more than happy with the choice of their new PMS. Opting into Ascend’s product, environment and customer service helped them transform their clinic.
“Ascend is so much better than what we had before. The conversion was very smooth; everyone was happy with the workflow and questions were answered very quickly. The team were trained in no time and Ascend is very user-friendly. The experience was telling in that it set a benchmark and standard, where we realised ‘this is what it should have been all along!’”
Josh Littler is the Asia Pacific Marketing Manager at Covetrus Technology Solutions. He has been in the veterinary industry for nearly four years and is driven by providing value to the industry in the form of podcasts, articles, webinars, videos and industry reports. He has a deep empathy for the challenges that the industry is facing and aims to support veterinary professionals through education. Feel free to get in touch with Josh if you’d like to contribute to Covetrus’ articles.
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