June 10, 2025 • 29 mins
Lurking within the balance sheets of even the most successful veterinary practices is a silent profit drain that few owners fully recognize. Inventory management, as Emmitt Nantz expertly illuminates in this eye-opening conversation, represents not just a necessary evil but a tremendous opportunity to reclaim lost profits and redirect precious clinical time toward patient care.
The numbers are staggering. The average veterinary practice carries 30-40% more inventory than needed – translating to $20,000-$50,000 in excess capital sitting idle on shelves. Beyond this immediate cash drain, practices typically spend eight hours weekly managing inventory, time that highly trained clinical staff could spend generating revenue through patient care. Combined with waste from expired products, these inefficiencies inflate Cost of Goods Sold by 2-4 percentage points annually.
Nantz draws from his two decades of veterinary operations experience to explain why this happens: the fear of running out creates a reactive cycle where "it's better to have too much than not enough." While understandable, this approach creates substantial financial drag that compounds over time. Through powerful examples, including a practice that reduced inventory management from two full-time positions to just two hours weekly while simultaneously dropping their COGS from over 40% to the mid-30s, Nance demonstrates the transformative potential of addressing this often-overlooked operational area.
The conversation extends beyond inventory to explore broader operational principles, including the critical relationship between technology and process improvement. As Nantz aptly notes, technology itself isn't the solution: "It's like buying a better wrench to fix a car. It's leverage, an amplifier to what you're trying to achieve, but not the solution." The discussion also examines how thinking about veterinary practice through the lens of supply (staff availability) versus demand (when clients want appointments) can unlock significant capacity.
Ready to reclaim the $30,000-$60,000 that inefficient inventory management might be costing your practice annually? This episode offers practical insights to transform not just your balance sheet but also team satisfaction and patient care quality.
Host Information
Bill Butler – Contact Information
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https://butlervetinsurance.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/billbutler-cic/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
Well, as everybody knows, inventory is the second
largest expense on the P&L, soit's a huge contributor and when
you break it down P&L isprimarily going to be revenue
minus labor, minus COGS, you geteverything else.
Revenue most of our hospitalsare running into a bit of a
ceiling right.
Not a lot of elasticity left inpricing associated with
customers starting to push.
You've got to add capacity andvolume to be able to try to grow
(00:21):
that.
Top line Pricing is tough Labor.
Volume to be able to try togrow that top line Pricing's
tough Labor.
The first largest expense ishighly competitive.
You have to compete and sobeing able to constrain labor.
The only real way to do that onthe P&L and expense side is to
add efficiencies to theorganization, get more out of
the input.
But honestly, vet medicineinventory management is just
wrought with wasteinefficiencies.
(00:41):
So wasted time, wasted money,wasted product.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Welcome to the Veterinary Blueprint Podcast
brought to you by Butler VetInsurance.
Hosted by Bill Butler, theVeterinary Blueprint Podcast is
for veterinarians and practicemanagers who are looking to
learn about working on theirpractice instead of in their
practice.
Each episode we will bring yousuccessful, proven blueprints
from others, both inside andoutside the veterinary industry.
(01:06):
Welcome to today's episode.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Welcome to this episode of the Veterinary
Blueprints Podcast.
Today we're diving into whatevery successful veterinary
hospital should have in mind,and that is operations.
And we're grateful to haveEmmett Nance.
He's a co-founder of InventoryAlly and a huge advocate for
streamlining veterinary practiceprocesses to improve client and
patient care.
He's got a strong foundation ofinventory management and
(01:31):
operational efficiency, and hehelps simplify the chaos behind
the scenes so that teams canfocus on what they do best,
which is delivering excellentcare.
So if you're a practice manageror owner, you're definitely
going to want to listen to thispodcast.
Welcome, emmett.
Thank you, bill, great to behere.
Appreciate it.
So why don't you give us alittle background on you and
your career in animal health andhow you wound up co-founding
(01:54):
Inventory Ally?
Golly, how much time do we?
Speaker 2 (01:58):
have.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
We've got two minutes .
I've been in the industry for awhile.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Two minutes.
I Two minutes.
I've been in vet med operationsfor 20 years.
I started while I was doing myexecutive MBA course.
I started by managing a coupleof different locations at
Banfield.
That led me to over a decade ofdoing large scale process
improvement projects, for thatnetwork so large Was, fortunate
enough, very large, over athousand hospitals.
One of those projects wasinventory management.
(02:21):
Another one was just changingprobably 80 to 85% of the flow
in the hospital.
That happened in the course ofa day really pivoted the whole
organization's plan of attack toimprove capacity, average
transaction, customersatisfaction, employee
satisfaction.
So it was all focused on LeanSix Sigma type of design.
When I left Banfield I joined acompany called SmartFlow which a
(02:42):
lot of listeners should befamiliar with.
It's digital patient flowmanagement.
With Dr Ivan Zak we were ableto join that to IDEX's software
suite of services and I spentthree and a half years there
managing software, onboarding,customer success for all of
their products like Cornerstone,yo, db Max, a variety of other
things.
So I've always been anoperational improvement I
(03:03):
believe.
I believe very strongly in thepeople of veterinary medicine
and I like to be able to helpthem out.
I often say I'm passionateabout people who are passionate
about pets.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Cool.
Well, that's our focus as well.
Butler Vet Insurance Before wehopped on, I'm sure we'll chat
about this.
You're a big traction guy, ginoWickman, if you're in that
world.
One of our prior podcast guestshad a practice in Tennessee and
they are a big EOS traction andI think, from an operational
(03:34):
perspective, you know, I've gotmy just to grab it, I've got my
vision organizer right here forButler Vet Insurance and our
operations and it really givesyou some of that operational
guidance at a 30,000-foot leveland then you get into some of
that granular stuff.
So we'll dive into that as well.
But I want to start withinventory, because that's, you
know, that's your current gig isinventory ally and from a
(03:58):
practice perspective, you knowcost of goods and inventory they
have stuff.
Where do you see the hiddenpower of inventory within a
practice?
I think that's something thatthey struggle with.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Well, as everybody knows, inventory is the second
largest expense on the P&L.
Okay, and so it's a hugecontributor.
And when you break it down likethe P&L is primarily going to
be revenue minus labor, minuscogs, you get everything else
Revenue.
Most of our hospitals arerunning into a bit of a ceiling
right.
Not a lot of elasticity left inpricing associated with
customers starting to push backon the you just have to keep
(04:29):
adding dvms and exam rooms ifyou want to expand.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
That's all you can do , right?
Speaker 2 (04:33):
you've got to add capacity and volume to be able
to try to grow that top linepricing stuff.
Labor the second largest or thefirst largest expense is highly
competitive.
You have to compete, competeand so being able to constrain
labor.
The only real way to do that onthe P&L and expense side is to
add efficiencies to theorganization, get more out of
the input.
But honestly, vet medicineinventory management is just
(04:57):
wrought with wasteinefficiencies.
So wasted time, wasted money,wasted product.
And that's why I chose to focusthere, because hospitals to be
able to succeed and grow,there's a lot of opportunity
there.
The two things that reallydrive that opportunity is you
have technicians or CSRs most ofthe time doing inventory
instead of seeing patients.
So there's an opportunity.
Cost of that time spent.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Now you're putting labor costs into inventory costs
and and you're the two largest.
Two largest expenses on the P&Lare competing with each other
instead of working with eachother, that's right.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
And if and you've got team that's working on
inventory and not seeingpatients, then you're you're not
only spending the money here,but you're not making the money
there, you're degrading therevenue number.
That's right.
That's right.
And then we also recognize that.
What's really important is thatwe recognize that veterinary
medicine is a service business.
Right.
The power of the long-termsuccess of the business is
customers come back and refertheir friends.
(05:52):
They only do that if they havea good experience.
That's where we need to focusour attention.
When it comes to inventorymanagement, though, most
hospitals are trying to use acombination of PIMs and pull
tags and Excel, streets and avariety of things.
That really treats inventorylike this is a retail
environment.
We're trying to figure out howdid I buy it, sell it, replace
it?
But it's so complex because thevariables associated with
(06:13):
inventory consumption is I usesome in hospital.
I use a variation withinservice packages.
We break it down into smallerpoints than just bottles.
So a lot of complexity.
You put those two thingstogether the training and the
diversion of labor and thecomplexity of it.
There's a lot of opportunity toget better.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
And I just went to school to be a vet tech.
I didn't go to school to manageinventory, that's exactly right
, exactly right.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Now we've got a lot of inventory managers in the
industry who are really good,generally a type A personality.
They built a very specificsystem to enable it and they're
really good at it, butoftentimes that means that
they're stuck in that role, sure.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
Well, what happens when they leave?
You're in big trouble.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Big trouble.
Even taking vacation, they getemails and texts and phone calls
about we're out of this, we'reout of that.
So, yeah, we can.
We really work hard to simplifythat and make it predictable.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
So inventory is a big you know second cost of goods
or second line item on the P&L,and so you know from an
operational perspective, youknow reactive versus proactive.
I'm sure that's some of thetraction stuff about.
You know, looking at what youneed to be working on versus,
you know your parking lot andthe rocks if you're going to
(07:28):
speak in traction terms, rocksif you're going to speak in
traction terms, um and and beinguh, reactive versus proactive,
I'm sorry, proactive versusreactive, um, how you know?
What do you see in yourexperience?
And then, what is inventoryally doing to and and other?
You know there's a lot of otherservices out there, but you
know from your experience andwhat you've built where do you
(07:49):
see some of that proactiveapproach coming into play?
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Yeah, I'll talk about it on two fronts.
One, I'll just start with kindof operational flow in the
hospitals.
It's one of the large projectsI did before.
But one thing that stood out tome is that it can be difficult
to see sometimes when you're inthe thick of it, but oftentimes
teams will accumulatebottlenecks.
So they'll put bottlenecks inplace almost intentionally to
try to buffer what might happen.
(08:18):
Sure, so that's from a reactiveversus proactive right.
So to me, to move to aproactive state, you have to
have predictability and you haveto have confidence in that
predictability.
Then you can actually lean intoit.
But most teams are going to bereactive and from a reactive
state you put buffer or barriersin place to protect yourself
against what might happen.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
We have two left.
Let's order 10 more versuswe're not going to need 10 more
because it's November and wewon't need these until May.
Right and I'm not clinical, soI have no idea, but I'm just
saying like I can see thathappening based on cyclical
ordering and what's going on.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Well, on the inventory side, what you'll just
overgeneralize.
But the main drivers don't runout, because when we run out
somebody gets mad, patientdoesn't get care right, things
don't work.
So it's better to have too muchthan not enough, so you create
a lot of excess.
To have too much than notenough, so you create a lot of
excess.
At Inventory Ally we find thatthey're carrying 30 to 40% more
inventory than they need andthat's actually inflating cost
(09:18):
of goods sold on average two tofour points of revenue.
So a ton of waste associatedwith and it's a result of that
buffer that you've created rightVersus having predictable.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
We need it here, so I got to have it, and then you've
just got something sitting onthe shelf that you paid for,
that you're not selling.
That's right.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Another example is even scheduling.
Oftentimes you'll see hospitalsthat will schedule or stop
taking appointments at a certaintime to create some buffer at
the end of the day to get thingsdone they couldn't do
throughout the day, but from aprocess or a technology
improvement that keeps thatgoing throughout the day, you
actually add capacity becauseyou have predictability.
That's another example of it.
(09:59):
So really, I tried to work withhospitals to to start there,
what does proactive meanrelative to your current
reactive and where do you wantto start?
Then you start to exercisethings.
Like you know, what do we wantto?
What do we want to improve?
Where's our bottleneck now?
Let's, why is it a bottleneck?
So, like the five wise typeapplication, figure out what's
actually at the root of thatthat we're trying to solve, for
then, how do we want to improve?
Where's our bottleneck Now?
Why is it a bottleneck?
So, like the five whys typeapplication, figure out what's
actually at the root of thatthat we're trying to solve for
Then how do we want to solve it?
Speaker 3 (10:20):
So what was the number you gave?
Again, 30% overstocked oninventory.
Yep, so for an average, two tothree or four vet practice
independently owned, who is outthere on their own trying to
manage their inventory onwhatever process they're doing?
What is a $1.8 million practicewhen you're saying they're 30%
(10:44):
over-inventoried?
Speaker 2 (10:57):
What does that mean to them from a revenue
perspective that you're seeingat inventory ally, or just you
know your experience going backto banfield?
Well, not even, not so much arevenue side, it's going to be a
cost side and expense portionof it.
So there's two pieces thatwe'll look at.
There's a balance sheet, whichis total value of inventory on
hand, and so there's carryingthat excess.
So just think of all thatinventory on the shelf as dollar
bills, right and on average solike a 1.8 those books are
vaccines and medicines.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
They're just sitting here.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
If I'm not selling them, it's dollar bills sitting
there, that's right because youput the money into putting them
there, but now you're notgenerating revenue by taking
them back off if they sit theretoo long and what what?
So there's opportunity cost ofthat cash to be bet to better
use.
But there's also wasteassociated with having that
excess.
So you spent it and then itexpires or it breaks or it's
(11:35):
taken off the shelf becausethere's so much abundance there.
So an average hospital is goingto be see somewhere around 20
to $50,000 in excess sitting onthe shelf.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Over the course of a year In inventory.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
At any given time At any given time At any given time
.
That costs the money that'ssitting.
The excess money sitting on theshelf is $20,000 to $50,000.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
I mean, that's another Excess sitting there.
That's a technician.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
It's a technician, that's a new piece of equipment,
that's right.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
But the second part of that is people are off.
I mean that's technicallyowner's money, that's money out
of your pocket as a, as apractice owner.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Yeah, I'll often I'll start that conversation with is
there any?
Is there any equipment that youwish you could buy that you
can't?
Or is there any facilityupgrades or improvements that
you wish you could do that youcan't like you start to unlock
that type of potential as well.
But but the secondary metricout of that is when you have all
that excess, that two to fourpoints of revenue inflation in
(12:32):
COGS.
That's perpetual.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
That doesn't.
You can't, it's, it's uh.
You can't get it off becauseyou just keep doing it.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Yeah, it's it's all, it's all waste.
Right, there's other thingswith COGS that we can start to
decrease cost of goods sold withpartner alignment and cost
structure and pricing structureand a variety of other things
there.
But just waste.
Adding two to four points toyour COGS is pretty significant.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
The third one we look at too, that was labor, Labor
okay.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
On average, hospitals are spending up to eight hours
a week managing inventory.
We try to bring that down toabout a 30-minute process one
day a week.
And so you add that up, notonly the cost of it but the
opportunity cost of it.
If they're not seeing patients,it really starts to hit.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
So that's $8,000 to $10,000 a year.
If you're just doing eighthours a week at $15 an hour or
$20 an hour, you're talkingabout $8,000 to $10,000 a year.
And that's just pure laborcosts.
You're not talking aboutbenefits, taxes, anything else.
So if you're saying $, you'resaying 20 to 50,000, plus
another 10,000 in labor.
You're 30 to $60,000 in laborand waste, waste.
(13:40):
Well, there's your cold therapylaser, a brand new ultrasound
that you don't even have tofinance.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
That's right.
That's right.
You gain, you gain.
You add efficiency andpredictability to the inventory
and then you can start to unlockit, the potential we have.
One of our early adopters is amixed animal practice in
kentucky.
They had two full-timeinventory managers.
They were running over 40 costof goods sold.
Working with the university fortwo years to try to reduce
(14:08):
those cogs could not move theneedle.
They adopted inventory ally intwo days.
In the first month they droppedto mid-30s and they're building
a second facility and they wentfrom two full-time inventory
managers down to two hours aweek managing multiple locations
.
So it's an example of what youcan start to unlock.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
So that's some of the jumping ahead in my list here.
So you're talking abouttechnology and process, right,
so you build the process first,you build the technology first
and you know what happens withthat.
You know we just changed theclient management system.
So in the insurance world wecall it an AMS, which is agency
management system, but it's aPIMS and so our commission
(14:46):
tracking.
In our old system, when my dadwas still here working at the
agency, it would take him abouteight hours to 10 hours a month
to to reconcile our commissions.
That we would get in, cause wedon't have cost of goods, we
sell insurance and the insurancecompanies pay us a commission,
and so it would take eight to 10hours a month to reconcile
commissions.
And now with our new systemit's maybe that half hour a
(15:09):
month, yeah, and so you know youjust shut the and it's not even
I think it's quality of worklife for your team members doing
that, because that 10 hours ofmanaging inventory or eight
hours a week of managinginventory to a half an hour,
they're just not miserable.
Going into work Like I'm surethere are people who love to do
(15:31):
inventory management Like that'stheir that's.
You know they like to sit inthe office or do that.
But you know, for the employeewho maybe isn't, that's their
number one thing.
My dad hated doing it and I didit reluctantly but you know
needed to.
I'm sure from a quality of lifeperspective, in an employee job
satisfaction, you seeimprovements with the practices
(15:51):
who implement technology,whether it's inventory, ally or
anything developing some of thatinventory.
So could you talk abouttechnology and process?
We knew our process andtechnology was terrible.
What do you recommend or how doyou see that from an
operational perspective?
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Yeah, it's almost one of those chicken and egg
conversations, because you cankind of start from both sides
and it depends on what you'relooking at.
But what I often find the way Itend to lean and this is really
coming from an inventory allyperspective.
If you start with your processand then you look for technology
to improve your process, that'sassuming you have identified
the best process.
But if you look for an area ofsolution and you go find
(16:35):
different technologies, it'sactually better for you to adopt
a technology and modify yourprocess to maximize the
potential of that, and that'sreally what's going to work best
because, you think about it,they have brought a technology
to you and that's been theirsole focus, which is going to
enable a component of your jobthat you might not be expert at.
(16:56):
So ideally you're going toleverage the expertise of what
you choose to use, but youshould absolutely adopt your or
modify your process to maximizethe potential of that technology
.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
So to jump in some traction conversation for a
second, um that, do you feelthat?
That's why, having you know avision, organizer rocks and
parking lot and all these things, so you know what the problems
are, so then you can find apiece of technology to salute,
solve that problem.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Yeah, the thing I love most about traction is that
you set out with some goals andthen you focus on those goals
and you break them down right.
So you have your rocks and thenyou have your tasks and you're
able to stay focused on it, makesure that you're progressing.
So it forces you to focus onsomething that you want to
improve and it forces you tofocus on improving it without
getting distracted fromeverything.
Our, our natural behavior tendsto be this the flavor of the
(17:49):
week, yeah, what's importantthis week, what's important next
week, and we don't actually getthings complete.
So I'm a huge fan of what areour goals and how are we gonna
stay focused and are we gonna,how are we gonna work together
on achieving those goals?
it's not just me yeah, cuz thenI'm right, then I have a
headwind which makes it morecomplicated.
So I've used traction and Ithink four businesses now where
(18:13):
I've helped implement it andleverage it, and we have our
level 10s every week and we stayvery focused and that allows us
to be very successful.
I'd mentioned earlier in theconversation the five whys.
It tends to be one of theoverlays I do why do we want to
fix this and what's the barrier?
And let's dig into that to makesure that when we go out for
find a technology or modify aprocess or hire a person, it's
(18:34):
solving the root cause of whatwe're trying to actually achieve
here.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Otherwise you're going to spend a thousand, uh,
you know, say, uh, you know,even if it's just a hundred, but
you know, oh, it's a hundreddollars a month per seat.
We're going to do one seat.
Well, that's $1,200.
And then the technology onlydid 40% of what you actually
needed to do.
And then you're like well, this, this, this didn't solve the
problem because you didn'treally understand the root cause
of what you're trying, the goalof the root cause.
(18:57):
That's right.
So then when you go to vmx orwvc and you're walking the floor
, you can talk to it like I needthis piece of technology to do
these eight things, and if youcan only do seven, you're not
the right vendor for me and havethose things identified before
you know.
You walk into the booth andthey say, oh, we can fix all
these problems, but you don't.
I think that's we get the shinyobject syndrome, especially in
(19:20):
the insurance industry, becausewe are integrating a lot of
technology, just like everyother industry with AI, and so
it's easy to get sucked in onthat monthly fee.
And then you go, oh, thisdidn't solve anything.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Yeah, and a really important differentiator
actually, if I, if I saidthere's one key takeaway from
this, from this conversation,it's when you go to have those
conversations, go in knowingwhat the issues are, the root
cause problems that you want tosolve.
Don't go to the conversationswith a predetermined solution.
When you go in looking for asolution and they don't have it
and you write it off, it mayactually be a great solution to
(19:53):
what you're trying to solve.
Sure, but you weren't open toit.
Sure Important.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
So how does this help with patient outcomes?
I mean, you know we're talkingabout inventory and back off,
back end stuff and back officetasks.
How does this impact?
And you know some of theseconversations revolving around,
you know, workflow and aninventory process how does that
help with patient outcomes?
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Yeah, I'll go through a little series you touched on
a little bit ago a lot offrustration.
There's still a lot ofconversations around burnout and
frustration and turnover in thespace.
So when I back it up to a30,000-foot level, I already
said earlier but the long-termsuccess of a business is
customers come back and refertheir friends.
They'll only do that if theyhave a good experience and the
(20:39):
only way they're going to have agood experience is if the team
is highly engaged in thatexperience.
They're delivering right, andso you come one more removed
from that.
What's causing the team to befrustrated or distracted or
overworked.
They're not going to deliver agood experience, so you're not
going to get that long-termresult.
So you have to start with thatin mind and say, okay, how do we
actually start to improve theirexperience?
(21:01):
And technology and process, ai avariety of different things
will help enable them to focuson what they got into vet med
for, which is going to reinforcethat experience that they
deliver, which will generatemore revenue, generate more
recurring patients, generatemore referrals.
So that's really where I comeat it from.
(21:23):
So inventory is one of thosethings.
If you have a lot of stockoutsor you're spending a lot of time
or you're causing a lot offrustration around it, it's
distracting from that desiredoutcome.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
It's interesting because that's it's one of the
things that I'm a big JimCollins fan I talk, you know,
getting into some books on theuh, on this podcast.
Um, I'm a big Jim Collins fanand one of the things that he
talks about in his series of ofbooks is that, um, you know,
technology isn't actually the.
You can't use technology to bethe catalyst for something.
(21:53):
What it can do is actuallyfacilitate, and so it's having
that process in mind.
And then what piece oftechnology can help us improve
patient care and patientoutcomes?
How can it help improve theteam?
But technology by itself isn'tthe solution to the problem.
It's like buying a betterwrench to fix a car.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
That's right.
It's leverage, it's anamplifier to what you're trying
to achieve, but it's not thesolution.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
Agreed.
So if I was a practice today,given your experience dealing
with operations, working with athousand practices as you opened
up with efficiencies, workingwith a thousand practices as you
opened up with um efficiencies,what are some some of the
quickest wins or things that yousee or have seen practices
(22:42):
implement or integrate that arejust some easy, quick wins for
them to streamline process,procedure or, you know, specific
to inventory yeah, no, just ingeneral I like to.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
I like to encourage hospitals to think about what
I'd say is your simple economics, which is supply and demand.
In our business, supply is thelabor service and the demand is
the customer's needs.
And oftentimes we actuallystart with the supply in mind
when we start scheduling ourstaff and then try to force
customers into that availability, which actually creates a
(23:14):
bottleneck that you don'tnecessarily see.
If you can turn that around andsay when do customers want to
come through, how can I staff orenable that visibility, You'll
actually unlock quite a bit ofpotential.
It's one that I like to speakto because it's generally an
offset, but put in those termsof supply and demand.
Everybody's been through Econ101 most of the time, so kind of
think of it that way.
(23:35):
And Everybody's been throughEcon 101 most of the time, so
kind of think of it that way.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
And that starts to unlock a bunch of other things
when you start to think abouthow do I unlock more potential,
supply and demand?
We're seeing practices do laterhours of you know, like I can't
bring my cat in at 5 becauseI'm here and you know I've got
the for those listening.
You can't see the mug For thoselistening.
You can't see the mug I'mdrinking out of, a coffee mug
that says the cat loves me best.
That my wife gave me becauseshe knows that Louie, my little
(23:59):
buddy at home, is my favorite.
I'm his favorite guy.
But I can't bring Louie into thevet because I'm here at the
office until 5 o'clock and ifyou only have hours till 6, that
gives me one hour a day that Ican maybe get in there.
And we're seeing more extendedhours, more Saturday hours,
hours till eight o'clock and youknow if you're returning to
(24:20):
work, a single parent or parentout there you might want to be
there for the kids to get homefrom school and then go to work
from four, three to eight.
And so it's it's.
It's a different mindset ofsaying when, when is the supply?
(24:42):
And for the practices who aredoing those extended hours say,
okay, well, we're going to havelimited scheduling from 11 to 3.
We're going to staff, but we'reactually going to staff more
from 4 to 8 than we are from 11to 3, because there just isn't
the demand during the day.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
That's right, exactly right, because that's good for
the customers, it's good for thepatients and it's also good for
the staff, because you don'toverload them at the end of the
day because you've beenunderstaffed on this high demand
.
Those types of things areimportant.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
So what's on the horizon for Inventory Ally, what
do you see coming in?
So we didn't chat about this.
This is kind of a pop quizquestion at the end here for you
, Emmett.
But what do you see for thefuture of inventory and
practices and what is InventoryAlly doing to address some of
those?
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Yeah, thanks, bill.
Well, inventory Ally is a veryunique solution because we
actually start with orderhistory data and we monitor and
manage consumption patternsversus transactional patterns in
the PIMS, which gives usvisibility to everything and we
can simplify it all so we get ina very specific replenishment
pattern that's guided to meetthe specific needs of every
individual hospital.
(25:39):
Where we're moving towards ismore automated counts and
replenishment so we can savemore time and effort Defaulting
to preferred suppliers throughGPO relationships and others.
One of the big things forInventory Allies we want to
optimize your relationships.
You are a service business andto be a successful service
(26:01):
business you need successfulpartners to enable you.
So one of the things I talkabout that is if a patient comes
through or an owner comesthrough the door and says how
much is this going to cost?
They've undermined everythingabout what you have to offer
them as a partner.
Sure Right, what you really wantto do is be their partner for
the lifetime of that pet andeverything you do and and you're
(26:21):
going to charge for thatsimilar concept when you're
building partners with yourbusiness, you need those that
are going to look out for youand you're going to invest in
them because they're going toinvest in you.
So we enable that relationshipsignificantly.
Uh, we're releasing a newmobile app soon and some other
defaults and automations andvisibility towards margins and
shrink and stuff that's going toreally help hospitals out.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
Wow, awesome.
So we'll have information inthe show notes.
If somebody is listening rightnow and they don't have access
to everything, where can theyfind Inventory Ally?
You guys do a lot of the boothstuff at the big national
conventions, but where can theyfind you on the internet?
A lot of the booth stuff at thebig national conventions, but
where can they find you on theinternet?
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Yeah, go to inventoryallycom A-L-L-Y.
Sometimes we call it InventoryAlley, but it doesn't quite work
.
It doesn't quite work, butyou're Inventory Ally, check us
out, book a demo, happy to chatwith you and show you what we
have.
Two-week free trial.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
So no barriers to getting it figured out, no
barriers to take a.
Take a test drive to see how itworks for you.
Well, emmett, I reallyappreciate our conversation
today.
Um, you know, interesting diveinto some of the the the more
you know boring aspects.
But I say boring, but when youlook at boring it can get real
exciting.
When you look at the P and Land go, oh man, that was a lot
(27:40):
of money I got sitting on theshelf over here for products and
so you know, I think it'ssomething that a lot of
practices struggle with.
You know cost of goods andinventory and relationships and
who's going to give me the bestdeal, and if you just manage
some of your inventory you canincrease your bottom line quite
significantly, as we chattedabout.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Right.
Increase your bottom line.
Put some money in your pocketand save time in the staff.
Lots of opportunities there.
We'd love to help you out.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
Perfect.
Well, thanks so much, emmett,for joining us and we appreciate
your insights.
Thanks, bill, great to be here.
All right, listeners, as always, make sure to like, subscribe
and share the podcast with yourfriends so we can help share our
message of entrepreneurship andbusiness insights to practice
managers and veterinarianseverywhere out there in the
(28:19):
world.
Thanks so much for listeningand everyone have a great day.
Well, as everybody knows, inventory is the second
largest expense on the P&L, soit's a huge contributor and when
you break it down P&L isprimarily going to be revenue
minus labor, minus COGS, you geteverything else.
Revenue most of our hospitalsare running into a bit of a
ceiling right.
Not a lot of elasticity left inpricing associated with
customers starting to push.
You've got to add capacity andvolume to be able to try to grow
(00:21):
that.
Top line Pricing is tough Labor.
Volume to be able to try togrow that top line Pricing's
tough Labor.
The first largest expense ishighly competitive.
You have to compete and sobeing able to constrain labor.
The only real way to do that onthe P&L and expense side is to
add efficiencies to theorganization, get more out of
the input.
But honestly, vet medicineinventory management is just
wrought with wasteinefficiencies.
(00:41):
So wasted time, wasted money,wasted product.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Welcome to the Veterinary Blueprint Podcast
brought to you by Butler VetInsurance.
Hosted by Bill Butler, theVeterinary Blueprint Podcast is
for veterinarians and practicemanagers who are looking to
learn about working on theirpractice instead of in their
practice.
Each episode we will bring yousuccessful, proven blueprints
from others, both inside andoutside the veterinary industry.
(01:06):
Welcome to today's episode.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Welcome to this episode of the Veterinary
Blueprints Podcast.
Today we're diving into whatevery successful veterinary
hospital should have in mind,and that is operations.
And we're grateful to haveEmmett Nance.
He's a co-founder of InventoryAlly and a huge advocate for
streamlining veterinary practiceprocesses to improve client and
patient care.
He's got a strong foundation ofinventory management and
(01:31):
operational efficiency, and hehelps simplify the chaos behind
the scenes so that teams canfocus on what they do best,
which is delivering excellentcare.
So if you're a practice manageror owner, you're definitely
going to want to listen to thispodcast.
Welcome, emmett.
Thank you, bill, great to behere.
Appreciate it.
So why don't you give us alittle background on you and
your career in animal health andhow you wound up co-founding
(01:54):
Inventory Ally?
Golly, how much time do we?
Speaker 2 (01:58):
have.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
We've got two minutes .
I've been in the industry for awhile.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Two minutes.
I Two minutes.
I've been in vet med operationsfor 20 years.
I started while I was doing myexecutive MBA course.
I started by managing a coupleof different locations at
Banfield.
That led me to over a decade ofdoing large scale process
improvement projects, for thatnetwork so large Was, fortunate
enough, very large, over athousand hospitals.
One of those projects wasinventory management.
(02:21):
Another one was just changingprobably 80 to 85% of the flow
in the hospital.
That happened in the course ofa day really pivoted the whole
organization's plan of attack toimprove capacity, average
transaction, customersatisfaction, employee
satisfaction.
So it was all focused on LeanSix Sigma type of design.
When I left Banfield I joined acompany called SmartFlow which a
(02:42):
lot of listeners should befamiliar with.
It's digital patient flowmanagement.
With Dr Ivan Zak we were ableto join that to IDEX's software
suite of services and I spentthree and a half years there
managing software, onboarding,customer success for all of
their products like Cornerstone,yo, db Max, a variety of other
things.
So I've always been anoperational improvement I
(03:03):
believe.
I believe very strongly in thepeople of veterinary medicine
and I like to be able to helpthem out.
I often say I'm passionateabout people who are passionate
about pets.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Cool.
Well, that's our focus as well.
Butler Vet Insurance Before wehopped on, I'm sure we'll chat
about this.
You're a big traction guy, ginoWickman, if you're in that
world.
One of our prior podcast guestshad a practice in Tennessee and
they are a big EOS traction andI think, from an operational
(03:34):
perspective, you know, I've gotmy just to grab it, I've got my
vision organizer right here forButler Vet Insurance and our
operations and it really givesyou some of that operational
guidance at a 30,000-foot leveland then you get into some of
that granular stuff.
So we'll dive into that as well.
But I want to start withinventory, because that's, you
know, that's your current gig isinventory ally and from a
(03:58):
practice perspective, you knowcost of goods and inventory they
have stuff.
Where do you see the hiddenpower of inventory within a
practice?
I think that's something thatthey struggle with.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Well, as everybody knows, inventory is the second
largest expense on the P&L.
Okay, and so it's a hugecontributor.
And when you break it down likethe P&L is primarily going to
be revenue minus labor, minuscogs, you get everything else
Revenue.
Most of our hospitals arerunning into a bit of a ceiling
right.
Not a lot of elasticity left inpricing associated with
customers starting to push backon the you just have to keep
(04:29):
adding dvms and exam rooms ifyou want to expand.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
That's all you can do , right?
Speaker 2 (04:33):
you've got to add capacity and volume to be able
to try to grow that top linepricing stuff.
Labor the second largest or thefirst largest expense is highly
competitive.
You have to compete, competeand so being able to constrain
labor.
The only real way to do that onthe P&L and expense side is to
add efficiencies to theorganization, get more out of
the input.
But honestly, vet medicineinventory management is just
(04:57):
wrought with wasteinefficiencies.
So wasted time, wasted money,wasted product.
And that's why I chose to focusthere, because hospitals to be
able to succeed and grow,there's a lot of opportunity
there.
The two things that reallydrive that opportunity is you
have technicians or CSRs most ofthe time doing inventory
instead of seeing patients.
So there's an opportunity.
Cost of that time spent.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Now you're putting labor costs into inventory costs
and and you're the two largest.
Two largest expenses on the P&Lare competing with each other
instead of working with eachother, that's right.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
And if and you've got team that's working on
inventory and not seeingpatients, then you're you're not
only spending the money here,but you're not making the money
there, you're degrading therevenue number.
That's right.
That's right.
And then we also recognize that.
What's really important is thatwe recognize that veterinary
medicine is a service business.
Right.
The power of the long-termsuccess of the business is
customers come back and refertheir friends.
(05:52):
They only do that if they havea good experience.
That's where we need to focusour attention.
When it comes to inventorymanagement, though, most
hospitals are trying to use acombination of PIMs and pull
tags and Excel, streets and avariety of things.
That really treats inventorylike this is a retail
environment.
We're trying to figure out howdid I buy it, sell it, replace
it?
But it's so complex because thevariables associated with
(06:13):
inventory consumption is I usesome in hospital.
I use a variation withinservice packages.
We break it down into smallerpoints than just bottles.
So a lot of complexity.
You put those two thingstogether the training and the
diversion of labor and thecomplexity of it.
There's a lot of opportunity toget better.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
And I just went to school to be a vet tech.
I didn't go to school to manageinventory, that's exactly right
, exactly right.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Now we've got a lot of inventory managers in the
industry who are really good,generally a type A personality.
They built a very specificsystem to enable it and they're
really good at it, butoftentimes that means that
they're stuck in that role, sure.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
Well, what happens when they leave?
You're in big trouble.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Big trouble.
Even taking vacation, they getemails and texts and phone calls
about we're out of this, we'reout of that.
So, yeah, we can.
We really work hard to simplifythat and make it predictable.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
So inventory is a big you know second cost of goods
or second line item on the P&L,and so you know from an
operational perspective, youknow reactive versus proactive.
I'm sure that's some of thetraction stuff about.
You know, looking at what youneed to be working on versus,
you know your parking lot andthe rocks if you're going to
(07:28):
speak in traction terms, rocksif you're going to speak in
traction terms, um and and beinguh, reactive versus proactive,
I'm sorry, proactive versusreactive, um, how you know?
What do you see in yourexperience?
And then, what is inventoryally doing to and and other?
You know there's a lot of otherservices out there, but you
know from your experience andwhat you've built where do you
(07:49):
see some of that proactiveapproach coming into play?
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Yeah, I'll talk about it on two fronts.
One, I'll just start with kindof operational flow in the
hospitals.
It's one of the large projectsI did before.
But one thing that stood out tome is that it can be difficult
to see sometimes when you're inthe thick of it, but oftentimes
teams will accumulatebottlenecks.
So they'll put bottlenecks inplace almost intentionally to
try to buffer what might happen.
(08:18):
Sure, so that's from a reactiveversus proactive right.
So to me, to move to aproactive state, you have to
have predictability and you haveto have confidence in that
predictability.
Then you can actually lean intoit.
But most teams are going to bereactive and from a reactive
state you put buffer or barriersin place to protect yourself
against what might happen.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
We have two left.
Let's order 10 more versuswe're not going to need 10 more
because it's November and wewon't need these until May.
Right and I'm not clinical, soI have no idea, but I'm just
saying like I can see thathappening based on cyclical
ordering and what's going on.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Well, on the inventory side, what you'll just
overgeneralize.
But the main drivers don't runout, because when we run out
somebody gets mad, patientdoesn't get care right, things
don't work.
So it's better to have too muchthan not enough, so you create
a lot of excess.
To have too much than notenough, so you create a lot of
excess.
At Inventory Ally we find thatthey're carrying 30 to 40% more
inventory than they need andthat's actually inflating cost
(09:18):
of goods sold on average two tofour points of revenue.
So a ton of waste associatedwith and it's a result of that
buffer that you've created rightVersus having predictable.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
We need it here, so I got to have it, and then you've
just got something sitting onthe shelf that you paid for,
that you're not selling.
That's right.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Another example is even scheduling.
Oftentimes you'll see hospitalsthat will schedule or stop
taking appointments at a certaintime to create some buffer at
the end of the day to get thingsdone they couldn't do
throughout the day, but from aprocess or a technology
improvement that keeps thatgoing throughout the day, you
actually add capacity becauseyou have predictability.
That's another example of it.
(09:59):
So really, I tried to work withhospitals to to start there,
what does proactive meanrelative to your current
reactive and where do you wantto start?
Then you start to exercisethings.
Like you know, what do we wantto?
What do we want to improve?
Where's our bottleneck now?
Let's, why is it a bottleneck?
So, like the five wise typeapplication, figure out what's
actually at the root of thatthat we're trying to solve, for
then, how do we want to improve?
Where's our bottleneck Now?
Why is it a bottleneck?
So, like the five whys typeapplication, figure out what's
actually at the root of thatthat we're trying to solve for
Then how do we want to solve it?
Speaker 3 (10:20):
So what was the number you gave?
Again, 30% overstocked oninventory.
Yep, so for an average, two tothree or four vet practice
independently owned, who is outthere on their own trying to
manage their inventory onwhatever process they're doing?
What is a $1.8 million practicewhen you're saying they're 30%
(10:44):
over-inventoried?
Speaker 2 (10:57):
What does that mean to them from a revenue
perspective that you're seeingat inventory ally, or just you
know your experience going backto banfield?
Well, not even, not so much arevenue side, it's going to be a
cost side and expense portionof it.
So there's two pieces thatwe'll look at.
There's a balance sheet, whichis total value of inventory on
hand, and so there's carryingthat excess.
So just think of all thatinventory on the shelf as dollar
bills, right and on average solike a 1.8 those books are
vaccines and medicines.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
They're just sitting here.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
If I'm not selling them, it's dollar bills sitting
there, that's right because youput the money into putting them
there, but now you're notgenerating revenue by taking
them back off if they sit theretoo long and what what?
So there's opportunity cost ofthat cash to be bet to better
use.
But there's also wasteassociated with having that
excess.
So you spent it and then itexpires or it breaks or it's
(11:35):
taken off the shelf becausethere's so much abundance there.
So an average hospital is goingto be see somewhere around 20
to $50,000 in excess sitting onthe shelf.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Over the course of a year In inventory.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
At any given time At any given time At any given time
.
That costs the money that'ssitting.
The excess money sitting on theshelf is $20,000 to $50,000.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
I mean, that's another Excess sitting there.
That's a technician.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
It's a technician, that's a new piece of equipment,
that's right.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
But the second part of that is people are off.
I mean that's technicallyowner's money, that's money out
of your pocket as a, as apractice owner.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Yeah, I'll often I'll start that conversation with is
there any?
Is there any equipment that youwish you could buy that you
can't?
Or is there any facilityupgrades or improvements that
you wish you could do that youcan't like you start to unlock
that type of potential as well.
But but the secondary metricout of that is when you have all
that excess, that two to fourpoints of revenue inflation in
(12:32):
COGS.
That's perpetual.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
That doesn't.
You can't, it's, it's uh.
You can't get it off becauseyou just keep doing it.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Yeah, it's it's all, it's all waste.
Right, there's other thingswith COGS that we can start to
decrease cost of goods sold withpartner alignment and cost
structure and pricing structureand a variety of other things
there.
But just waste.
Adding two to four points toyour COGS is pretty significant.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
The third one we look at too, that was labor, Labor
okay.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
On average, hospitals are spending up to eight hours
a week managing inventory.
We try to bring that down toabout a 30-minute process one
day a week.
And so you add that up, notonly the cost of it but the
opportunity cost of it.
If they're not seeing patients,it really starts to hit.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
So that's $8,000 to $10,000 a year.
If you're just doing eighthours a week at $15 an hour or
$20 an hour, you're talkingabout $8,000 to $10,000 a year.
And that's just pure laborcosts.
You're not talking aboutbenefits, taxes, anything else.
So if you're saying $, you'resaying 20 to 50,000, plus
another 10,000 in labor.
You're 30 to $60,000 in laborand waste, waste.
(13:40):
Well, there's your cold therapylaser, a brand new ultrasound
that you don't even have tofinance.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
That's right.
That's right.
You gain, you gain.
You add efficiency andpredictability to the inventory
and then you can start to unlockit, the potential we have.
One of our early adopters is amixed animal practice in
kentucky.
They had two full-timeinventory managers.
They were running over 40 costof goods sold.
Working with the university fortwo years to try to reduce
(14:08):
those cogs could not move theneedle.
They adopted inventory ally intwo days.
In the first month they droppedto mid-30s and they're building
a second facility and they wentfrom two full-time inventory
managers down to two hours aweek managing multiple locations
.
So it's an example of what youcan start to unlock.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
So that's some of the jumping ahead in my list here.
So you're talking abouttechnology and process, right,
so you build the process first,you build the technology first
and you know what happens withthat.
You know we just changed theclient management system.
So in the insurance world wecall it an AMS, which is agency
management system, but it's aPIMS and so our commission
(14:46):
tracking.
In our old system, when my dadwas still here working at the
agency, it would take him abouteight hours to 10 hours a month
to to reconcile our commissions.
That we would get in, cause wedon't have cost of goods, we
sell insurance and the insurancecompanies pay us a commission,
and so it would take eight to 10hours a month to reconcile
commissions.
And now with our new systemit's maybe that half hour a
(15:09):
month, yeah, and so you know youjust shut the and it's not even
I think it's quality of worklife for your team members doing
that, because that 10 hours ofmanaging inventory or eight
hours a week of managinginventory to a half an hour,
they're just not miserable.
Going into work Like I'm surethere are people who love to do
(15:31):
inventory management Like that'stheir that's.
You know they like to sit inthe office or do that.
But you know, for the employeewho maybe isn't, that's their
number one thing.
My dad hated doing it and I didit reluctantly but you know
needed to.
I'm sure from a quality of lifeperspective, in an employee job
satisfaction, you seeimprovements with the practices
(15:51):
who implement technology,whether it's inventory, ally or
anything developing some of thatinventory.
So could you talk abouttechnology and process?
We knew our process andtechnology was terrible.
What do you recommend or how doyou see that from an
operational perspective?
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Yeah, it's almost one of those chicken and egg
conversations, because you cankind of start from both sides
and it depends on what you'relooking at.
But what I often find the way Itend to lean and this is really
coming from an inventory allyperspective.
If you start with your processand then you look for technology
to improve your process, that'sassuming you have identified
the best process.
But if you look for an area ofsolution and you go find
(16:35):
different technologies, it'sactually better for you to adopt
a technology and modify yourprocess to maximize the
potential of that, and that'sreally what's going to work best
because, you think about it,they have brought a technology
to you and that's been theirsole focus, which is going to
enable a component of your jobthat you might not be expert at.
(16:56):
So ideally you're going toleverage the expertise of what
you choose to use, but youshould absolutely adopt your or
modify your process to maximizethe potential of that technology
.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
So to jump in some traction conversation for a
second, um that, do you feelthat?
That's why, having you know avision, organizer rocks and
parking lot and all these things, so you know what the problems
are, so then you can find apiece of technology to salute,
solve that problem.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Yeah, the thing I love most about traction is that
you set out with some goals andthen you focus on those goals
and you break them down right.
So you have your rocks and thenyou have your tasks and you're
able to stay focused on it, makesure that you're progressing.
So it forces you to focus onsomething that you want to
improve and it forces you tofocus on improving it without
getting distracted fromeverything.
Our, our natural behavior tendsto be this the flavor of the
(17:49):
week, yeah, what's importantthis week, what's important next
week, and we don't actually getthings complete.
So I'm a huge fan of what areour goals and how are we gonna
stay focused and are we gonna,how are we gonna work together
on achieving those goals?
it's not just me yeah, cuz thenI'm right, then I have a
headwind which makes it morecomplicated.
So I've used traction and Ithink four businesses now where
(18:13):
I've helped implement it andleverage it, and we have our
level 10s every week and we stayvery focused and that allows us
to be very successful.
I'd mentioned earlier in theconversation the five whys.
It tends to be one of theoverlays I do why do we want to
fix this and what's the barrier?
And let's dig into that to makesure that when we go out for
find a technology or modify aprocess or hire a person, it's
(18:34):
solving the root cause of whatwe're trying to actually achieve
here.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Otherwise you're going to spend a thousand, uh,
you know, say, uh, you know,even if it's just a hundred, but
you know, oh, it's a hundreddollars a month per seat.
We're going to do one seat.
Well, that's $1,200.
And then the technology onlydid 40% of what you actually
needed to do.
And then you're like well, this, this, this didn't solve the
problem because you didn'treally understand the root cause
of what you're trying, the goalof the root cause.
(18:57):
That's right.
So then when you go to vmx orwvc and you're walking the floor
, you can talk to it like I needthis piece of technology to do
these eight things, and if youcan only do seven, you're not
the right vendor for me and havethose things identified before
you know.
You walk into the booth andthey say, oh, we can fix all
these problems, but you don't.
I think that's we get the shinyobject syndrome, especially in
(19:20):
the insurance industry, becausewe are integrating a lot of
technology, just like everyother industry with AI, and so
it's easy to get sucked in onthat monthly fee.
And then you go, oh, thisdidn't solve anything.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Yeah, and a really important differentiator
actually, if I, if I saidthere's one key takeaway from
this, from this conversation,it's when you go to have those
conversations, go in knowingwhat the issues are, the root
cause problems that you want tosolve.
Don't go to the conversationswith a predetermined solution.
When you go in looking for asolution and they don't have it
and you write it off, it mayactually be a great solution to
(19:53):
what you're trying to solve.
Sure, but you weren't open toit.
Sure Important.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
So how does this help with patient outcomes?
I mean, you know we're talkingabout inventory and back off,
back end stuff and back officetasks.
How does this impact?
And you know some of theseconversations revolving around,
you know, workflow and aninventory process how does that
help with patient outcomes?
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Yeah, I'll go through a little series you touched on
a little bit ago a lot offrustration.
There's still a lot ofconversations around burnout and
frustration and turnover in thespace.
So when I back it up to a30,000-foot level, I already
said earlier but the long-termsuccess of a business is
customers come back and refertheir friends.
They'll only do that if theyhave a good experience and the
(20:39):
only way they're going to have agood experience is if the team
is highly engaged in thatexperience.
They're delivering right, andso you come one more removed
from that.
What's causing the team to befrustrated or distracted or
overworked.
They're not going to deliver agood experience, so you're not
going to get that long-termresult.
So you have to start with thatin mind and say, okay, how do we
actually start to improve theirexperience?
(21:01):
And technology and process, ai avariety of different things
will help enable them to focuson what they got into vet med
for, which is going to reinforcethat experience that they
deliver, which will generatemore revenue, generate more
recurring patients, generatemore referrals.
So that's really where I comeat it from.
(21:23):
So inventory is one of thosethings.
If you have a lot of stockoutsor you're spending a lot of time
or you're causing a lot offrustration around it, it's
distracting from that desiredoutcome.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
It's interesting because that's it's one of the
things that I'm a big JimCollins fan I talk, you know,
getting into some books on theuh, on this podcast.
Um, I'm a big Jim Collins fanand one of the things that he
talks about in his series of ofbooks is that, um, you know,
technology isn't actually the.
You can't use technology to bethe catalyst for something.
(21:53):
What it can do is actuallyfacilitate, and so it's having
that process in mind.
And then what piece oftechnology can help us improve
patient care and patientoutcomes?
How can it help improve theteam?
But technology by itself isn'tthe solution to the problem.
It's like buying a betterwrench to fix a car.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
That's right.
It's leverage, it's anamplifier to what you're trying
to achieve, but it's not thesolution.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
Agreed.
So if I was a practice today,given your experience dealing
with operations, working with athousand practices as you opened
up with efficiencies, workingwith a thousand practices as you
opened up with um efficiencies,what are some some of the
quickest wins or things that yousee or have seen practices
(22:42):
implement or integrate that arejust some easy, quick wins for
them to streamline process,procedure or, you know, specific
to inventory yeah, no, just ingeneral I like to.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
I like to encourage hospitals to think about what
I'd say is your simple economics, which is supply and demand.
In our business, supply is thelabor service and the demand is
the customer's needs.
And oftentimes we actuallystart with the supply in mind
when we start scheduling ourstaff and then try to force
customers into that availability, which actually creates a
(23:14):
bottleneck that you don'tnecessarily see.
If you can turn that around andsay when do customers want to
come through, how can I staff orenable that visibility, You'll
actually unlock quite a bit ofpotential.
It's one that I like to speakto because it's generally an
offset, but put in those termsof supply and demand.
Everybody's been through Econ101 most of the time, so kind of
think of it that way.
(23:35):
And Everybody's been throughEcon 101 most of the time, so
kind of think of it that way.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
And that starts to unlock a bunch of other things
when you start to think abouthow do I unlock more potential,
supply and demand?
We're seeing practices do laterhours of you know, like I can't
bring my cat in at 5 becauseI'm here and you know I've got
the for those listening.
You can't see the mug For thoselistening.
You can't see the mug I'mdrinking out of, a coffee mug
that says the cat loves me best.
That my wife gave me becauseshe knows that Louie, my little
(23:59):
buddy at home, is my favorite.
I'm his favorite guy.
But I can't bring Louie into thevet because I'm here at the
office until 5 o'clock and ifyou only have hours till 6, that
gives me one hour a day that Ican maybe get in there.
And we're seeing more extendedhours, more Saturday hours,
hours till eight o'clock and youknow if you're returning to
(24:20):
work, a single parent or parentout there you might want to be
there for the kids to get homefrom school and then go to work
from four, three to eight.
And so it's it's.
It's a different mindset ofsaying when, when is the supply?
(24:42):
And for the practices who aredoing those extended hours say,
okay, well, we're going to havelimited scheduling from 11 to 3.
We're going to staff, but we'reactually going to staff more
from 4 to 8 than we are from 11to 3, because there just isn't
the demand during the day.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
That's right, exactly right, because that's good for
the customers, it's good for thepatients and it's also good for
the staff, because you don'toverload them at the end of the
day because you've beenunderstaffed on this high demand
.
Those types of things areimportant.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
So what's on the horizon for Inventory Ally, what
do you see coming in?
So we didn't chat about this.
This is kind of a pop quizquestion at the end here for you
, Emmett.
But what do you see for thefuture of inventory and
practices and what is InventoryAlly doing to address some of
those?
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Yeah, thanks, bill.
Well, inventory Ally is a veryunique solution because we
actually start with orderhistory data and we monitor and
manage consumption patternsversus transactional patterns in
the PIMS, which gives usvisibility to everything and we
can simplify it all so we get ina very specific replenishment
pattern that's guided to meetthe specific needs of every
individual hospital.
(25:39):
Where we're moving towards ismore automated counts and
replenishment so we can savemore time and effort Defaulting
to preferred suppliers throughGPO relationships and others.
One of the big things forInventory Allies we want to
optimize your relationships.
You are a service business andto be a successful service
(26:01):
business you need successfulpartners to enable you.
So one of the things I talkabout that is if a patient comes
through or an owner comesthrough the door and says how
much is this going to cost?
They've undermined everythingabout what you have to offer
them as a partner.
Sure Right, what you really wantto do is be their partner for
the lifetime of that pet andeverything you do and and you're
(26:21):
going to charge for thatsimilar concept when you're
building partners with yourbusiness, you need those that
are going to look out for youand you're going to invest in
them because they're going toinvest in you.
So we enable that relationshipsignificantly.
Uh, we're releasing a newmobile app soon and some other
defaults and automations andvisibility towards margins and
shrink and stuff that's going toreally help hospitals out.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
Wow, awesome.
So we'll have information inthe show notes.
If somebody is listening rightnow and they don't have access
to everything, where can theyfind Inventory Ally?
You guys do a lot of the boothstuff at the big national
conventions, but where can theyfind you on the internet?
A lot of the booth stuff at thebig national conventions, but
where can they find you on theinternet?
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Yeah, go to inventoryallycom A-L-L-Y.
Sometimes we call it InventoryAlley, but it doesn't quite work
.
It doesn't quite work, butyou're Inventory Ally, check us
out, book a demo, happy to chatwith you and show you what we
have.
Two-week free trial.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
So no barriers to getting it figured out, no
barriers to take a.
Take a test drive to see how itworks for you.
Well, emmett, I reallyappreciate our conversation
today.
Um, you know, interesting diveinto some of the the the more
you know boring aspects.
But I say boring, but when youlook at boring it can get real
exciting.
When you look at the P and Land go, oh man, that was a lot
(27:40):
of money I got sitting on theshelf over here for products and
so you know, I think it'ssomething that a lot of
practices struggle with.
You know cost of goods andinventory and relationships and
who's going to give me the bestdeal, and if you just manage
some of your inventory you canincrease your bottom line quite
significantly, as we chattedabout.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Right.
Increase your bottom line.
Put some money in your pocketand save time in the staff.
Lots of opportunities there.
We'd love to help you out.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
Perfect.
Well, thanks so much, emmett,for joining us and we appreciate
your insights.
Thanks, bill, great to be here.
All right, listeners, as always, make sure to like, subscribe
and share the podcast with yourfriends so we can help share our
message of entrepreneurship andbusiness insights to practice
managers and veterinarianseverywhere out there in the
(28:19):
world.
Thanks so much for listeningand everyone have a great day.
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