Today's Veterinary Practice

NOV-DEC 2017

Today's Veterinary Practice provides comprehensive information to keep every small animal practitioner up to date on companion animal medicine and surgery as well as practice building and management.

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What is your vision for the new Boehringer Ingelheim pet business? Our vision is to be the company of choice for veterinarians, technicians and practice managers. We've made a start toward realizing that vision with offerings including innovative products, couponing and direct-to-consumer advertising, which drives pet owners to the veterinarian. As a leader in the pet healthcare space, we are now starting to focus on better understanding how we can support clinics to make the experience of pet healthcare as engaging and enjoyable as possible. Looking at our interactions with veterinarians and veterinary practices, we want to make sure we are engaging at the right times, in the right way and with the right people. Our goal is to be the fi rst company a practice calls for products, scientifi c questions and business support. What's an example of how understanding the customer experience will benefi t veterinarians and veterinary practices? One example is managing our pet owner coupon programs; a lot of what we do today is still very much a manual process and quite labor-intensive. If a client signs up for one of our programs at a veterinary practice, the front offi ce staff has to administer those programs and it's all manual. How do we improve that and make it easier for the staff so they don't have to enter and track manually? How do we continue to make the experience smoother and easier for the clinic staff and the pet owner? We are also looking at initiatives that help bring clients into the practice more often. If the veterinarian gets to see a patient twice a year for a prescription for one of our products, that supports compliance. The biggest obstacle with any preventive is compliance. For example, heartworm preventives have been available for decades and, to this day, roughly 70 percent of clients leave the clinic without a heartworm preventive for their dogs. As you think about where the company is going, are you more focused on helping solve a veterinarian's problem, or bringing them something they didn't know they needed? If we focus only on solving problems, we've failed already, because we're not bringing veterinarians anything new. That's where we need to have a nice mix of products, technology, and automation that can really help practices. If we can walk into a vet clinic and demonstrate to the owner or practice manager that the clinic may be able to generate more income through using tools we offer, we can make a difference in that practice. If our representative comes in and says, "Here's a tool we have to help drive profi tability," and the practice owners and managers experience increased sales and pet owner compliance, then we have something that can really help. It doesn't even have to come from us. We can be the third or fourth party. But if it's something we bring because of the scope we have, and we can bring offerings we weren't able to bring before, that adds value. Are there other examples where you are managing change or areas where you see the need for change moving forward? We want to lead the way with strategies on how practices generate revenue in the future that will be positive and sustaining. Different types of customers want to buy things very differently. We're looking at ways to connect with those people, both practices and pet owners, to offer options. That should be our No. 1 focus. We want to provide the No. 1 brands in all our chosen product categories, and we want to be on the forefront to support veterinarians and pet owners as we make positive changes today and for years to come. Following is an interview with Tim Bettington, North American region head of commercial operations at Boehringer Ingelheim "IF WE FOCUS ONLY ON SOLVING CUSTOMERS' PROBLEMS, WE'VE FAILED ALREADY, BECAUSE WE'RE NOT BRINGING THEM ANYTHING NEW." - Tim Bettington, North American region head of commercial operations Visit boehringer-ingelheim.com/animal-health Vision and Value: Leading the Way to Support Practices Part Two in a Series THE NEW BOEHRINGER INGELHEIM

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