My involvement with this business dates back to 2004. The business operated from 3 sites, had sporadic attendance from clients, terrible cashflow with sadly many clients not paying their bills in a timely manner. This was a business with quite excellent vets and veterinary staff, but after that, very little was on a commercial footing.
The first priority with this business was to organise diaries and rotas so that the right vets were not he right sites on the right day. Diary management and assisting the receptionist team to Chanel appointments to improve efficiencies for the vets made a further significant difference to weekly billing. The reception area at all 3 sites was given a facelift, sensible point of display material was sourced, quality branded pets toys and a highly nutritional pet food deal was done. Back of office systems were upgraded to take credit cards and all customer facing staff mentored so as to allow them to deal with the realities of those people bringing stressed animals a little easier. Drugs, prescriptions, medicines and dressings was a huge chapter, eventually the commercial deal done which dramatically improved the finances of the practice bringing improved margins, greatly improved efficiencies and stocking levels and all importantly harnessing multiple financial incentives periodically offered such that the veterinary practice could qualify and therefore directly benefited the bottom line of the practice.
In Parallel with all of this, I had just sold one of the most successful photo inkjet paper businesses in the UK. I persuaded Fuji at the time one of the top OEM brands that they should sponsor a photo competition for pets. This was heavily promoted in the Suffolk area online and in the practice. The photo paper was made available free of charge at the practices. Many, many pet opens in Suffolk submitted photographs, many of those became clients of the Castle Veterinary Practice. The awareness of the Castle Veterinary Practice jumped up considerably with many of those children who submitted pictures staying in the local area going on to become pet owners in adult life and registering with the Castle Veterinary Practice even today. The improvements to the practice over a 2 year period allowed for a consolidation of costs and sufficiently improved income streams that the business was sold successfully to CVS (UK) Limited.
