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Industry newsletter November 2009 |
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|  | Free Veterinary Practice Management Software |  | Powerful Market Research and Advertising Platform | | | | What's going on in BEE FREE World... | the latest news and event updates in one informative newsletter | Oct 2009 | | |
| | BEE FREE software is becoming a global phenomenon! Due to demand, we have had to purchase a second server in the UK, located in London. This was required to reduce the load placed on our Sydney server by European practices. In the near future we will be acquiring a server on the Western coast of North America, to meet the demand from the USA and Canada. As our user base grows, so does our market research, data mining and advertising. We now have the capabilities of performing complex analysis of trends within the veterinary profession in the areas of dispensing/sales, clinical conditions and financial trends. Best of all, this data is live and updated to the last second! We currently working hard at building up partnerships within the para-veterinary and veterinary support industries as we feel that our product is a world first in offering in depth analysis about marketing, financial and sales trends in this area. Have a look at the graphs below where we have monitored trends in usage of ototis externa medications: Sales of otitis externa medications over a 5 month period    The above data is information that can be extracted in seconds. Absolute totals and percentages have been omitted, however the above graphs are based on our current user clinic trends over the last 5 months. This form of analysis can be provided for any product commonly used in veterinary practice. | |  | | The power of targeted marketing The user interface that is displayed to veterinary clinicians and staff has about 20% of the screen space allocated to advertising.  The BEE FREE user interface has an intelligent advertising engine. As seen above, you are able to display advertisements to clinicians and veterinary staff based on the clinical notes, reasons for the appointment and products dispensed for the patient that they are currently treating. So if for example, a patient with otitis was being treated, the screen display would be for your choice of otitis medication. Because this advertising is so focused, you are able to fine tune it so it displays only at relevant times. Over and above this, we offer you an interface where you can pause your advertising at any time. This makes it extremely affordable and less costly than the usual channels of product advertising. Advertisements can be very original, allowing for animations, links to a website/web page of your choice and product recommendations.
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| | BEE FREE CRM Our developers are currently working around the clock to complete development of our CRM interface. This will allow us to transpose our product into other service based industries. Para veterinary industries will be able to benefit from a customer relationship management solution that will be accessible by sales staff at all times - allowing them to keep up to date notes, tasks, share documents and contact lists. Our solution is unique in that there will no longer be a requirement for time consuming and frustrating database synchronisations between remote staff and head office databases - all BEE FREE data is live and instant. The CRM solution will be bundled together with our market research and advertising tools. Our users are contractually obliged to put time aside for sales visits and survey form completion - giving you a complete solution to promote and manage your business.
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Newsletter October 2009 |
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| | | What's going on in BEE FREE World... | the latest news and event updates in one informative email | Oct 2009 | |
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| | Over and above performing daily business functions, we intend BEE FREE software to have a business management and marketing focus. As a server based software platform, it has distinct advantages over any competitor product, namely the ability to obtain information in real time and the ability to effortlessly contact your customers by email and SMS (text messaging). As vets we may or may not have heard of the buzzword 'CRM systems'. This stands for customer relationship management systems. Large corporates have been using this sort of system for years, however software driving the service industries has been slow to evolve in this direction. The main reason has probably been affordability, because service based businesses are small by comparison. In the last few years, the release of excellent 'free to use' software products has bridged that affordability gap. With public opinion in pet vaccination policy changing, it's going to become more important to touch base with our customers, some of whom we may not see for as long as 2-3 years. An occasional text message or newsletter will remind them that you are still available and hopefully keep them visiting the practice for non-prescription products. For this reason we urge BEE FREE users to play around with the available CRM modules (emailing and text messaging) - these are extremely affordable ways to keep your clients bonded! Also, use the KPI module to do an occasional health check on your business. You will be able to see if average visits per client are decreasing over the months and years. This modue is also a world first, because it also benchmarks you against an industry average. We were shocked to find that only 50% of our users had even looked at the KPI section of the software (based on the last survey we sent out) -this is information that your accountant would charge you hundreds of dollars for. Here are some examples of the Key Performance Indicators that are available: 
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| | September survey on Newsletters and use of KPI's As you may recall, all practices using the BEE FREE system completed a survey on use of performance indicators and whether they would be interested in a client newsletter. Here are the results: 75% of practices are considering a newsletter to clients. Of these, 79% would prefer it to be done by email. This makes sense, because it's a lot cheaper. We calculated that with printing costs, postage and the time taken to fold and package a newsletter, it would cost in excess of $1.20-$1.50 per client to send out a postal letter. Email on the other hand would be a fraction of that cost. What are the implications for your practice? BEE FREE will be proposing a newsletter service to all user practices, however, you are able to produce an email newsletter yourselves without any help! BEE FREE has a 'built in' email newsletter service that allows you to email as many clients as you like. To use this facility, you will eventually need to license the 2 modules that make this possible (KPI module and Email Output module), however, most practices still have these modules on free trial until next year, so you can start using it! click here for some instructions on how to do this. For those practices that are to busy to do their own newsletter, we are prepared to do one for you and email it out to your customers at a very reasonable cost. However, regardless of how you want the newsletter done, YOU MUST START COLLECTING CLIENT EMAIL ADDRESSES NOW!! A quick scan through our databases has shown that practices are not collecting client email addresses consistently, and if this continues, they will be losing out on a valuable marketing opportunity. | |
| | You can send text messages with BEE FREE!! Because of user demand, we have linked BEE FREE with a text messaging service. Now you can text all your appointments for the next day a small reminder of their appointment time. You can text message vaccination reminders, worming reminders and individual clients with one button click. We charge a reasonable rate for this service and you can buy text messaging credits in relatively small quantities (similar to a pay as you go mobile phone). Click here for instructions on using this feature. There is no license fee.
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Bee Free - September 2009 |
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Finally, version 1.2.4 is completed and we are now in the process of upgrading all our user practices. We have had many vets trying out our online demo of the older version who would now like to have a look at the new version. If you have been given a user name and password for the old version, then you can now log into the new version using the same details. Simply go to http://www.atlanticpacificconsulting.com.au and fill in your user name and password. If you have forgottent your user name and password we can re-issue you with a new one, just email your name or practice name to: beefree@atlanticpacificconsulting.com.au and we will send you a new user name and password Primarily, the user interface was updated and made to look more tidy with better menu icons. Menus are now also fully customisable for each user. Some of the other new and exciting features of version 1.2.4 are: Mass Mailouts and emailing of paperwork such as invoices, reminders and statementsThis is an obvious time and paper saver and allows Bee Free to be used as a CRM system that can send email outs to different client grades and types selectively 
Monitor Practice performance and staff performance with a powerful KPI moduleThis unique KPI module not only allows you to monitor your practice performance, but also to monitor your practice and staff compared to the average of all Bee free practices.  Image and file storageUsers of the previous version wanted the ability to store various forms of paperwork and images. This is now possible, and images can also be linked into consultation notes 
So if you want to try it out or apply for your practice to use the Bee Free system, feel free to contact us: ATLANTIC PACIFIC CONSULTING PTY LTD Tel: 07 3286 3192 email:
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www.atlanticpacificconsulting.com |
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Veterinary practices are surviving the financial crisis |
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Bee Free Newsletter August 2009 How has the veterinary profession weathered the financial crisis?We performed a quick analysis across our user practices to see if the financial crisis has had a significant impact on the veterinary profession by monitoring the number of monthly transactions and the average transaction fee of all the practices.
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| #transactions/practice |
| Ave Transaction fee | | Jan |
| 894.8 |
| 40.25 | | Feb |
| 882 |
| 40.46 | | Mar |
| 945.8 |
| 40.46 | | Apr |
| 977.75 |
| 40.11 | | May |
| 892.5 |
| 41.12 | | Jun |
| 871.5 |
| 42.62 | | Jul |
| 966.75 |
| 44.03 |
As you can see, there has been no significant change in the average number of transactions per practice over the last 7 months. Of course, seasonal effects are not taken into account because this analysis spans less than 1 year. However, the good news seems to be that average transaction fees have increased significantly over this time. It appears that the veterinary profession has been fairly resilient to this financial crisis. Consistent indexes for the Australian veterinary profession.Now for the first ime ever, Bee Free is able to provide the veterinary profession with consistent performance indexes. Bee free software resides on a dedicated server and automatically calculates indexes in real time. Our developers are now completing an interface that will allow users to compare their practice performance to the averages of all other Bee Free practices. Because these indexes will be calculated in exactly the same way, there will be no sampling error or errors caused by different calculation methods. The results will remain consistent from one month to the next and best of all they will be calculated on a daily basis. Bee Free users will be able to view their practice performance right down to individual products, services or staff members and compare them to the 'average' practice. 'Busy Bee' business discussion forums startedWe are in a unique position to offer our software users business advice and support. Two of the company directors have qualifications in accounting and are veterinary surgeons. Anne who will be moderating and posting on the discussion forums has owned her own veterinary practice in the UK for 7 years. She has subsequently completed a Masters in Business Administration through the University of Edinburgh, a Masters in Professional Accounting through the University of Southern Queensland and has worked in a public accounting practice for 2 years. She is one of the few people who understands the veterinary profession both from the angles of a practitioner and an accountant and is in a position to offer some very good business advice. The discussion boards can be viewed by anyone at: http://www.atlanticpacificconsulting.com.au/smf/index.php however, only Bee Free users can post questions on the forum. Version 1.2.4 nearly ready for releaseAfter nearly a year of ongoing development, version 1.2.4 has now been installed in our primary practices. It will be used here for a few weeks to make sure that there are no bugs before being deployed to all our other user practices. The new version contains many more useful enhancements and plug-ins bringing this software solution on a par to or even better than some paid for competitor products. The enhancements allow the system to be more customisable to meet the different needs of each individual practice. Contact UsIf you are interested in trialing out Bee Free software, do not hesitate to contact us. No special hardware is required and the setup can be done with less than 5 minutes of your time. Regards Paolo Lencioni Tel: 07 32863192 Mob: 0439548506 Email:
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User base continues to grow |
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We are very excited at the continuing interest in the Bee Free project. We are building up a fantastic international assortment of clinics wanting to be part of this project. There are more and more vets out there realising that there is no sense in paying thousands of dollars or pounds when they can get an equivalent product at no cost to themselves. As more clinics join our community word is spreading that there is no catch and this is no gimmick. This is a genuine system that is stable and user friendly. With this ongoing clinician support and funding starting to flow in from pharmaceutical and other veterinary industry companies we will be upgrading our current Bee Free software version within the next few months. We are also looking at other ways to support our user clinics in the business world and will soon be starting an online business discussion forum to be headed by a veterinarian with an MBA and accounting degree. |
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