Astute Veterinary Solutions is a veterinary consulting business created to help bridge the gap between technology, business operations and employees.
I’m endlessly curious about people and why they do what they do. So when a company joins the Vetanswers Community, I’m always interested to find out about who started the business, what their vision is, and most importantly, how they can help those who work within the veterinary industry.
I asked the founder of Astute Veterinary Solutions, Janelle Beavan, a few questions about how and why she started her consulting business…
What’s your background?… What led you to start Astute Veterinary Solutions?
My background in the veterinary industry has been extensive. I started in my younger days as a young animal attendant who wanted to further my skills to become a Veterinary Nurse.
2 years later I graduated as a registered Veterinary Nurse and after many years of nursing moved into Practice Management. I continued studying, attaining a Business Management Certificate and later a Degree in Training and Education.
I was honoured to be one of the first-ever Nurses to be classified as a Practice Manager in my local area and think I was probably the ‘guinea pig’ within the industry as more practices moved into hiring Practice Managers.
The struggles I faced as one of the first Practice Managers, contributed to the strength I display now and my passion for mentoring other Practice Managers and business owners today.
During my practice management years, I became IT and business savvy, and moulding software to better suit the needs of my practice was a pleasurable challenge. The more I moulded the software, the more I realised this also opened doors to monitoring all facets of business processes including inventory, services, financials and key goals for team members.
As the business grew, I started creating custom training programs to ensure every new employee learned the different tasks required for their specific role, according to the standards set by the practice owners.
These training programs were designed to guide inexperienced animal attendant / untrained Veterinary Nurse through a structured program to help them become experienced/trained nurses and was run alongside their TAFE courses.
As more and more stories came to light of new Practice Managers facing similar struggles, in 2011 I made a very bold move and founded JLB Consultancy (later rebranded as Astute Veterinary Solutions) with the goal to help other Practice Managers close the gaps between veterinary software, standards of care given to clients and patients, and training needs.
What’re Astute Veterinary Solutions all about?
Astute Veterinary Solutions is a veterinary consulting business created to help bridge the gap between technology, business operations and employees.
Client demands for technology and real-time results continue to grow and more practices are struggling to move their current software to match these trends.
We can help you to bridge that gap by helping you to: –
- Improve and navigate your veterinary software to better suit your needs
- Develop efficient training programs for new employees
- Understand your inventory & how you can streamline your processes to improve your profit.
What’s your vision for the business – what do you want to achieve?
I’m passionate about helping practices to feel more comfortable in using and improving their software so they can not only streamline their business processes but importantly also move with future technology and training trends.
I want to provide clients with staff training programs or the tools to develop training programs, so their staff deliver consistent, quality standards of care.
I also want to show practices how easy it is to monitor their inventory, services, and financials to deliver consistently, quality standards of care and improved profits.
What are your views on the current state of the veterinary industry? How/where does Astute Veterinary Solutions fit into the picture?
The veterinary industry has a positive future with projected employment growth. Technology is equipping veterinarians with real-time information; however, the biggest challenge is staying on top of constantly evolving standards of care, emerging trends, new drugs, therapies, and treatments in the field.
As the industry moves towards utilising technology to help with everyday tasks and clients are wanting faster, more efficient services with higher standards of care for their fur babies, it is even more important for practices to be able to deliver this through their software and standards of care.
Astute Veterinary Solution’s goal is to assist as many practices as possible who may be struggling to provide consistently high-quality care by linking their software, business operations and staff training and helping them to master their technology.
What does the future hold for Astute Veterinary Solutions?
Astute Veterinary Solutions has a brilliant future helping clients and practices improve their software functions to move with ever-changing trends.
We look forward to providing practices with quality training programs that will fit the business model standards of care initially in Australia and then worldwide.
