PET PARTNERS CASE STUDY
Control Costs but Maintain Efficiency and Managing Growth
The Challenge
The principals at Pet Partners had to decide how to maximize cost savings and efficiently manage the veterinary hospitals they were acquiring and managing. Pet Partners management wanted to insure they could effectively apply their finely-tuned Veterinary hospital management efficiency formulas across multiple operations, while limiting overhead costs. They needed to juggle all of these requirements while concurrently delivering consistent improvements at each of their hospital locations. Meanwhile, growth was accelerating as the Partners took on their fifth, sixth, seventh and eight hospitals, all within a 10-month period.
The Goal
The overriding goal was to Provide Pet Partners with the ability to keep personnel costs down and overhead low while continuing to provide consistent improvements and profitability at each practice. Further, they needed to have the ability to rapidly deliver services to their Veterinary hospitals as they were acquired.
SourceOne’s Response
SourceOne began by addressing Pet Partner’s most critical needs first. Managing payroll for multiple hospitals was rapidly becoming a major burden. SourceOne Network’s administrative services group quickly stepped in and had several hospitals up and running on our PayTech payroll solution within a week, immediately creating an additional five plus hours for operations weekly. Providing support for insurance and HR needs was the next issue that SourceOne was able to rapidly and effectively address by providing the necessary insurance coverage and implementing a 401K program that met all Pet Partners hospital staff needs.
"With the core requirements in hand," says Rich Michaud, VP Administrative Services, "we were able to identify the areas that were the most time consuming and those that could be readily outsourced.”
From there SourceOne met with the Pet Partners to analyze the way operational managers spent their time on a daily basis. After reviewing the pertinent data, we were able to provide an overall analysis of they way they worked and how we could apply our service offerings most effectively to relive their most immediate administrative burdens and begin planning for the future delivery of more complex solutions.
The Results
“The result is that SourceOne has had a very strategic impact on our culture," says Partner Lance Sprinkle. There has been a dramatic decrease in the number of hours spent on time consuming administrative activities allowing me the ability to spend more time on applying our revenue enhancement strategies to each practice. "It used to take me hours to process payroll, calculate bonuses and handle benefits administration”, says Lance, "now I am able to be more effective in driving efficiency and analyzing new acquisition opportunities"
In addition to the reduction of administrative burdens, there has been a substantial impact on the process side where SourceOne Web Services is implementing a program that will allow Pet Partners to aggregate all weekly sales data from each hospital using Web-based technology. "As a result of this system we’re able to get online, and with a click of the mouse get the sales results from each hospital formatted as a spreadsheet or PDF, then deliver it to the practice manager in a matter of minutes. What used to take up to an hour for each facility is now handled in real-time and on-demand.”
Why Pet Partners Chose SourceOne Network
Sprinkle points to three factors that made SourceOne stand out as a provider that could deliver meaningful results that would be responsive to Pet Partner’s needs.
"First," says Sprinkle, "we knew that the SourceOne model of providing comprehensive administrative and business management solutions in conjunction with technology was very appealing to us and matched our need to deliver efficiency to our hospitals.”
"Second, they took a consultative approach and worked with us to understand our needs and address our most critical concerns first. Afterwards they reviewed all our processes and structured a strategic plan to automate our key business processes. That is precisely what we needed at the time to make sure we could continue to make acquisitions without dramatically increasing staff and expenses. As we looked down the road to understand future needs and identify appropriate solutions, SourceOne Network is partnering with our organization and delivering real time and cost saving solutions.”
“Finally, says Sprinkle, we are pleased with the technology capabilities and the direction SourceOne is growing, continuously updating their offerings, adding services and enhancing technology to continually optimize and streamline their customers’ business operations.” SourceOne never pushes anything on us. They do not offer the shrink-wrapped course. They are needs and results oriented, they've gained a lot of credibility with us because of the tangible solutions that have been able to provide."
“SourceOne has been able to provide all the services Pet Partners required quickly and efficiently, and has provided excellent customer support throughout every engagement and development project.”
