central brochure

To be successful in today’s market, you need to ensure that your practice is continuously evolving and moving forward and this can often be difficult to achieve as it takes time and resources.

There are a number of ways to develop your practice; from training and coaching staff, implementing marketing strategies to gain new clients, through to outsourcing the administration/accounts giving staff time to focus on animal care and client expectations.

Here at Central, we provide support and assistance to the veterinary profession to enable you and your staff to continue providing great client service whilst our team is dedicated to the development of your practice.

Central can help your practice with:

• Management Services

• Accounting Services

• Strategic Marketing

• Staff Management & Training

• Practice Benchmarking

As all of our services are bespoke, you will get a solution that fits the needs of your individual practice - we do not believe in a one size fits all approach. So whether you’re looking for help with accounting, purchasing, marketing or staff development, the team at Central can help.

Central Veterinary Services

Whatever the size and type of your veterinary practice and whatever your needs, please contact us:

• By visiting - www.centralvet.com

• By calling - 01359 245310

• By emailing - [email protected]

Management Services

Enabling you to get on with what you do best…

Developing and expanding your practice is key when it comes to retaining existing clients and generating new interest. However, growing a practice can be time-consuming, resource-heavy and costly.

Here at Central Veterinary Services, we have a dedicated team who will support practice managers and other staff members with all aspects of their role including book-keeping, payroll, accounting, purchasing, stock control and staff training. We can advise you on how and where your practice could grow and identify both opportunities and underlying concerns within the practice.

By providing practice staff with administrative relief, your team is free to focus on and carry out the other important services such as client care, relationship building and practicing medicine.

“Having someone from Central showing me how I could improve staff relationships really helped my management skills and morale is higher than ever.”

“I don’t really have the time to ensure the recruitment process is as smooth as it should be but the team at Central have really helped. From start to finish they have been there to offer advice: from placing the advert and negotiating a good rate right through to the contracts new staff should sign, they were brilliant.”

Central Veterinary Services can help your practice with:

• General Practice Management

• Staff & HR Management

• Recruitment

• Training and Staff Coaching

• Management Accounts

We can provide strategic planning and ongoing management services that will guide you towards your goal of satisfied customers and happier employees.

Key benefits of outsourcing management services:

• Less capital expenditure

• Complements the skills of existing staff

• Less dependency upon internal resources

• Increased flexibility to meet changing business and commercial conditions

• Tighter control of costs

• Efficient and effective way to get essential jobs done

Central can provide you with the tools needed to grow and develop your practice and achieve your goals, whilst minimising your administrative and management workload.

For more information please call 01359 245310, email [email protected] or visit www.centralvet.com

Book-keeping, Accounts, Payroll & Purchasing

Services to fully support the running of your business

When it comes to running a practice, getting the financial system, process and procedures in order can be a labour-intensive operation.

Central Veterinary Services offers a comprehensive range of services that will provide you with financial and accounting support.

Use as many or as few of Central’s administrative services to assist your business by:

• Obtaining full and detailed financial records and reports

• Efficiently managing incoming and outgoing payments

• Ensuring you have all the information you need to evaluate your progress and plan for your practice’s future

With minimal input from you we are able to offer the following support:

Book-keepingThe handling of all your financial data management, including key aspects such as:

• The recording of day-to-day financial transactions

• The management of bank accounts• The processing of purchase invoices and

payments to suppliers• The preparation of periodic VAT returns

AccountingThe preparation of detailed monthly management accounts for your practice, ensuring that:

• Your accountants are fully supported in their role

• Reports are ongoing and up-to-date• Practices can react quickly to changes in the

business• Any management decisions made are fully

informed

Payroll ManagementThe processing of all your staff payments straight from collated time sheets and management of:

• The monitoring of new and leaving staff members

• The calculation of statutory maternity pay and statutory correspondence

• Holiday and sick pay • The production of pay slips• Correspondence and reports with HMRC• All employment documents, such as P45s, P60s

and so on

Purchasing and Stock ControlSupport in all areas of purchase management, such as:

• The negotiation of purchasing rates for all significant aspects of the practice, including:• Utilities• Veterinary supplies

• The management of pet shop supplies • The tracking of discounts, sales and control of

stock accordingly

Cash Flow ForecastingAnalysis of your financial records, which help evaluate your progress and plan for the future by:

• Reviewing all past and current incoming and outgoing expenditure

• Predicting future cash flow


Practice Benchmarking

Benchmark your Practice

Competitive benchmarking can provide opportunities to achieve best practice and a competitive advantage, as well as helping identify the strengths and weaknesses in your practice.

MAI Benchmarking Services provides the tools needed to analyse business data and make enlightened and well informed decisions regarding services, products and internal processes. It can help deal with any current practice issues and areas of loss whilst also identifying any future challenges.

A joint initiative developed by Central Veterinary Services and supported by Intervet Schering Plough UK, the quarterly MAI report uses information from your computer system to outline trends and performance across a wide range of indicators and all species of animal.

Areas that are looked at include:

• Client and animal numbers• Total turnover and turnover per vet• Client and animal spends per visit and per

annum• Consultations• Vaccine reminders• Neutering• Dental• Parasite control • Microchipping

Central Veterinary Services also produces a quarterly newsletter, Veterinary Business News,

which provides a round up of the reports and gives helpful pointers on regional and national trends.

MAI is a simple and effective management tool and is less-time consuming than analysing masses of data yourself. The ultimate aim is for practices to achieve best practice and competitive advantage rather than just industry parity.

Joining MAI Central Veterinary Services treats all data in a confidential manner. It is not disclosed to third parties and the company takes precautions to ensure the data is not individually traceable to the submitting practices.

What’s involved in joining?

Simply send a back-up tape

of your practice management

system to the MAI team.

What does it cost?Just a few pounds per day.

For Further Information

To find out more about joining MAI, the Small Animal Practice Survey or the Equine Practice Survey, please contact Jan Starmer: 01359 [email protected]

‘‘Benchmarking can be compared to a sportsman taking regular medical check-ups. The initial exam identifies any problems that are putting him at a disadvantage to his competitors. These are then treated and monitored in subsequent check-ups and no new problems are allowed to develop.’’

Practice Marketing

Marketing

Central Veterinary Services specialises in helping veterinary practices to develop and implement strategic marketing campaigns. We understand that each practice requires a unique and bespoke service, which will strengthen and enhance a practice’s competitive standing.

Branding & Logos

Your practice brand and all the services/products you offer differentiates you from every other practice in your region.

A professional practice benefits immensely from having corresponding branding and logos. In today’s competitive market, this is viewed as an essential requirement.

Central can help you build strategic branding initiatives which will personalise and reflect your individual practice. Central works closely with your practice to deliver a consistent and powerful brand message at every marketing opportunity.

Central aims to work effectively and efficiently with your practice to cultivate a strong and emotive brand, which will benefit both you and your clients.

Achieving a strong practice brand involves:

• Creating a logo which uniquely reflects the practice

• Using the logo consistently throughout all literature and marketing material

• Having clear and precise brand messages• Regularly communicating with your clients• Ensuring practice staff are aware of the brand and

encouraging them to reinforce the key messages• Staff training and support

For more information on how we can help you with your marketing and branding, please call 01359 245310, email [email protected] or visit www.centralvet.com

Creating an all encompassing marketing plan that takes into account business objectives can be time consuming and resource intensive. The team at Central can prepare this plan for you and support you with the necessary marketing tools needed to carry the plan out successfully.

As part of your team, Central can help your practice develop tactical marketing strategies that utilise a variety of marketing mediums (including both traditional and online methods), which will optimise the success rate of your campaigns and activities.

You can choose a fully comprehensive marketing service or you can choose a key area in which you require some specific support.

Key activities include:

• Marketing Plans• Marketing Audits/Health Checks• Marketing Campaigns including email, direct

mailings and advertising• Practice Branding• Logo Creation• Promotional Material• Websites• Events • Social Media • iPhone apps and Smartphone technology

Client Literature & Communications

Having a consistent and powerful image across all your client communications is important

Central Veterinary Services offers practices the opportunity to have a unique range of materials created in the practice style and image.

It can be a daunting prospect to manage all the printing and design of your promotional material and stationery.

Central’s team of graphic designers, marketers, copywriters and photographers can undertake every aspect of producing, and if needed, distributing the materials. From initial ideas for design and content through to selecting the right paper, every step is covered.

Key elements Central can help with:

Stationery The design, production and printing of stationery for your practice including letter heads, compliment slips and business cards. These can help promote a professional and complete image.

producing material that promotes responsible pet ownership and supports the practice’s preferences and ethos.

Practice BrochuresThe production of new brochures to promote all the services you offer. Complete with hand drawn or computerised maps, pictures of the practice, opening hours, events and details about the staff and facilities, a brochure can really encourage clients to visit and take advantage of what your practice offers.

Flyers and Posters No waiting room is complete without flyers and posters. These are a great way to promote events, treatment and your practice. We specialise in

NewslettersA practice newsletter is a great way to keep clients informed of the latest happenings in the practice. It also serves to make them feel part of a community and provides an opportunity for promoting new services and publicising special promotions, offers and events. The team produce regular newsletters on behalf of a number of practices. Practices can get as involved as they would like in the production of these – either providing all or none of the pictures and content - and the editorial and design team help ensure the end result meets all your specifications.

SignsInside or outside, signage can be important in showing clients they are in the right place. We deal with a number of different printers, all of which can help ensure your signs are the correct material and quality.

Reminder and Appointment Cards Having branded reminder and appointment cards with pictures or colourful designs can help put the finishing touches to your practice’s image. If telephone numbers and addresses are included these can also ensure clients don’t forget important details.

Of course, these are just a small number of the ways in which Central can help your practice. We provide bespoke and flexible services and can produce whatever sort of materials you require: from signage and client handouts to magnets and tax disc holders. Just tell us what you want and we can help you from start to finish.


Membership Plans & Loyalty Cards

Loyal clients are the backbone of any successful business

A loyalty card scheme is an effective way of building loyalty within a practice as it comes with tangible rewards such as vouchers, points and/or special offers.

The vouchers and offers that clients receive from the loyalty scheme is an incentive to return to your practice and another communication tool between you and your clients.

Benefits of Loyalty Cards:

• Increased practice profits• Improved client loyalty • Provides a perfect way of welcoming new

clients to the practice and winning back defected clients

• Increased number of clients through ‘introduce a friend’ incentives

• Practice promotion - tangible plastic loyalty cards are a great reminder of the practice

• Loyalty schemes encourage positive word of mouth advertising

• Offers the chance to promote the practice’s services to clients via the membership mailing

• Increased opportunity for cross and up-selling

Central Veterinary Services provides a comprehensive service that means there is minimal additional workload for practice staff. Everything is taken care of: from the design, creation, printing and mailing of the loyalty card and relevant promotional material, to the ongoing scheme management.

Key points in brief

• The value of customer loyalty cannot be under-estimated. Research shows that in a five-year duration, a business with a 70 per cent retention rate would have lost between two and three times as many clients as a company with a 90 per cent retention rate.

• Building customer loyalty increases profits and an effective means of building loyalty is the introduction of a membership or loyalty card scheme, with tangible rewards such as vouchers, points and/or discounts.

• With static growth in client numbers, UK practices should ideally be seeking to encourage their existing clients to bond more with their practices and participate on a more regular basis.

Central Veterinary Services also provide the following facilities:

• The folding of letters, envelope stuffing, franking and postage.

• PetFocus magazines as an added membership incentive.

• Other promotional vouchers which can be sent to clients who have not earned enough points for monetary vouchers (this could be free dental checks/10% off microchipping etc.)

• Newsletters which can also be sent out with the quarterly loyalty points statement - reducing postage and increasing practice communications.

For more information on how your practice can benefit from a loyalty scheme, please call 01359 245310, email [email protected] or visit www.centralvet.com

Websites & Electronic Communication

Central Web Design

With the Internet fast becoming the most popular method of communication, websites are a critical marketing and communication tool for veterinary practices.

Your practice website is a virtual shop window providing existing and potential clients with practical information about opening times, location and contact details. It is also a great opportunity to showcase the services, products, history and value added benefits that your practice offers.

By working closely with your practice, Central’s team of web designers can ensure that the look, feel and design of the website clearly reflects your practice’s individual personality and also meets the needs and expectations of both existing and potential clients.

The web team offers a dynamic website creation service that includes:

• Acquiring Domain Names• Webspace & Hosting • Web Design• Web Development• Copywriting• RSS News Feed• Regular Updates• Appointments/Ordering Services

Central has extensive experience of creating different veterinary websites all tailored exactly to a clients’ needs and have deep understanding of how to achieve the best web design solution for your practice.

Email Communications

With more people communicating online, traditional marketing methods such as direct mailing and offline advertising are being supplemented with online activities.

E-communication is an important marketing tool and has proved itself as a viable way to expand and grow your practice. With correct targeting alongside an engaging message, practices can deliver the right content to the right people at the right time.

Email communications are a great way of staying in touch with clients and reinforcing your pet care recommendations. Regular emails not only strengthen client relationships but can help your practice be seen as a source of reliable and educational pet-related information.

Benefits of Practice Emails:

• Lower Costs - email is less resource heavy and has significantly lower sending prices than typical postage

• Highly Interactive - use graphics/videos/music and games to interact with your clients

• Highly Personalised - bond with your clients by personalising your messages

• Measurable Results - monitor the success of each campaign

• Environmentally Friendly - emails are a lot greener than direct mail

Central can support you with your e-marketing by creating, designing, writing and sending your email campaigns. From interpreting your database and segmenting target audiences to designing vibrant and appealing emails, Central will provide your practice with as much help as required.

Statistical reports can be generated on a weekly or monthy basis and will provide in-depth information regarding the outcomes of each campaign.

To find out how your practice could benefit from e-marketing or a new website, please call 01359 245310, email [email protected] or visit www.centralvet.com

Staff Development & Training

Training and development of support staff is a key component of the modern practice.

Developing your staff will help to ensure that your practice runs smoothly and efficiently. It can also help to keep staff turnover at a minimum as employees will be motivated and feel part of a valued team.

At Central, we have developed training programmes for:

• Nurses• Receptionists• Practice Managers• Groomers

All our training packages have been specifically designed to meet the needs of veterinary professionals.

Central understand that it can be hard to make time for staff training within a busy practice. That is why our training programmes have a range of delivery methods that will suit the needs of your practice.

Training can be with specific groups of practice staff or alternatively we can focus on an individual’s development and progression.

Training across the whole practice is highly recommended as this greatly improves team morale and gives staff the confidence to carry out their roles to the best of their ability.

We can help with many different areas of a practice, including:

• Client care• Management/Supervisory Skills• Reception Skills• Telephone Skills• Work/Lifestyle Balance

Central provide staff with the skills needed to implement future improvements and help put their knowledge into practice.

If you would like more information on staff training and development, please call 01359 245310, email [email protected] or visit www.centralvet.com

Key benefits of staff training and development:

• Increase job satisfaction for staff• Increase practice morale among employees• Reduce employee turnover• Enhance practice image• Risk management• Improve client satisfaction• Increase staff ability to take on new tasks• Increase efficiencies in processes and

procedures