Nebraska Vet Services (NVS) was founded in 1985 with one veterinarian, John Boucher, and his wife who worked as a receptionist in the office. NVS now has 8 veterinarians, 4 offices, and 20 employees. NVS provides small animal and large animal care and treatment, animal health product sales, and is involved in many veterinary and veterinary technician student externships. NVS also has a sister company, NVC Vet Supply, with sites in South Dakota, Wisconsin, and Iowa.
Growing Pains
With multiple offices, an ever-expanding product line and growing inventory, and a varied client base with patients, product resellers and other veterinary clinics, NVS needed a better way to manage it all.
Tana Jacobson, Office Manager at NVS recalls, “Our system simply wasn’t working for us anymore. We had outgrown it and we needed something that would work to help us manage the different branches and multi- location inventory issues.”
NVS had been using veterinary-specific software for accounts receivable and inventory, and QuickBooks for the accounts payable and accounting side of the business. They needed a higher level of efficiency and accuracy from a single, integrated solution. It would need to manage the warehouse and inventory, provide inventory valuation accuracy, ease inventory tracking, and be robust enough to handle a large amount of data with room for expansion.
NVS had been working with a company to set up their electronic data interchange (EDI) process, who ended up consulting with them through the software selection process. This ultimately led NVS to Mindover Software. Tana stated, “This process initially seemed overwhelming. Many software resellers only want to talk to big corporations with unlimited budgets, so it can be very frustrating when salespeople don’t call you back or don’t answer questions for days on end. Mindover Software, however, was always very quick with their responses and willing to work with us. And for a small to mid-size business, price was also an important factor for us. Mindover Software made it an easy decision to use their services.”
A Fully Integrated Prescription
Lloyd Smith, President & Director of Operations at Mindover Software, added, “Once we looked at what NVS was using and what they were trying to accomplish, we felt the best fit for them was Acumatica. It would not only solve all the issues they had identified but would provide a level of efficiency they hadn’t even been able to consider. By automating manual processes beyond their software system, NVS was going to be in for a pleasant surprise.”
The Acumatica implementation was started at NVS’ West Point, NE headquarters where all the moving parts were funneled into Acumatica’s cloud-based solution, and further streamlined for the subsequent implementations at the other locations. The implementation process was also used to fix prior accounting problems, so that subsequent financial reports would be accurate.
One Solution Brings Healthy Results
NVS is now operating solely on Acumatica. The veterinary specific system that had been used primarily as a CRM system to keep track of owners, their pets, and pet histories, was now all integrated into one system along with the accounting and inventory. In addition, streamlined processes that weren’t possible before, are now saving NVS time and money. Before, salespeople would write up orders and fax them into the office. Now, thanks to the solution being web- based, orders are automated giving NVS real -time visibility of all inventory regardless of location. Likewise, NVS gained efficiency by having all financial information in one place providing them a reconciliation processes for payables and receivables.
Dr. Gnad, a Veterinarian and Partner at NVS, stated, “For the first time in years everything is reconciled and up to date. We were never fully reconciled with the old system. Now with Acumatica we can see accurate information for our whole business, it’s always up to date, and we only have to look in one place. This change has already had a positive impact on our business and our staff.”
Tana added, “There have been several unexpected benefits of implementing Acumatica too. With our sister companies also on Acumatica, the intercompany transaction process that was set up by Mindover Software saves me a tremendous amount of time in manual data entry and bookkeeping work. Also, since Acumatica is hosted by an off-site server and is ‘in the cloud,’ we don’t have to maintain a server at an office. This also means that any of our staff can log into the system form anywhere they have internet access using a phone, tablet, or computer. We are still learning the system, but it has many more reports and different ways of looking at things than our old system did. We can trace a product from receipt to the time that it sells and have all the documentation to go with it. We are planning on implementing barcode scanners within the next year, which should increase accuracy even more.”
Tana concluded, “The team at Mindover Software is great! They are friendly, very quick to respond to questions or concerns, and you don’t feel like just another customer. You feel like they are on your ‘team,’ and they’re helping your business be the best it can be. I am always amazed at how quickly they respond. We have one main contact person for tech support that lets us know the status on each issue. If we have a problem, she is always right on top of it to make sure it gets resolved quickly. We are currently going thru a conversion for another company that will be completed around March 2016. We are constantly changing and expanding so new requirements for the system will be inevitable. Thank goodness Mindover Software knows how to roll with the punches.”
