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Rangiora Vet Centre (RVC) has established itself as a centre of veterinary excellence by providing the highest standards of professional veterinary care from their three clinics in North Canterbury, New Zealand. As well as busy pet care services and hospital care, the group runs a specialist equine clinic and supports the farming community with 24/7 veterinary care. Large animal, equine and pet retailing forms a significant part of their annual revenue.

These busy vet practices were growing rapidly and needed to implement better systems and processes to manage inventory levels. VetLinkSQL by Computer Fanatics Limited, a veterinary practice management system captures all sales and stock transaction data and has an in-built automatic ordering system based on pre-set seasonal min and max settings. Unfortunately, it does not take into consideration dynamic seasonal variations or current sales trends. Retail and fast-moving drug ordering had become a time-consuming, manual process with too many different products, and many inaccuracies. The RVC management team wanted to put in place an automated ordering system that would free up staff time and improve customer experience instore.

RPM is Montage’s cloud-based Business Intelligence solution for retailers. It delivers best-of-breed BI to users at retail chains across NZ and Australia anywhere, anytime. It was about time to work with experts to see what they could bring in terms of cost savings and efficiencies.

The RPM consultants advised on a redesigned category structure in VetLinkSQL for a more meaningful classification of all retail and animal medicine products. The inventory managers at each branch were trained to use an automated RPM ordering tool once a week to view replenishment orders for all products from their veterinary wholesaler. The results were encouraging but the process was still manual when having to submit orders to wholesalers and suppliers.

"The daily sales and stock reporting in RPM had given us a much better handle on stock performance. This led to time savings, less wastage, and an improved bottom line. By improving our visibility on the performance of each category, we have simplified our offering and made it easier for our customers, who previously had too much choice."
– Ben Davidson B.V.Sc
Director, RVC

While RPM produced items and order quantities using its BI tools, purchase orders needed to be imported into VetLinkSQL so electronic submission and subsequent financial invoice receipting could be achieved to complete workflow into the PMS stock on hand data as well Accounts Payables module.
RPM Retail and VetLinkSQL have worked together to achieve an efficient workflow. The RPM cloud-based software was integrated with VetLinkSQL to display sales and stock KPIs for each practice. The inventory managers at each branch were trained to use an automated RPM order once a week to replenish all products from their veterinary wholesaler. These orders then automatically synchronise with VetLinkSQL via a purpose-built API – making the order sending and receiving process seamless.

Since the implementation of RPM, The Rangiora Vet Centre has rationalised their product range, and optimised the amount of stock carried. Key staff at the branches can now see results every day for each part of the business. By moving to weekly ordering instead of reacting every day, they have reduced out-of-stocks and improved sales and profits.

• Products stocked: Down by 14%.
• Dead stock: Reduced by $40,000.
• Average Trans Value: Increased by 16%
• Staff Efficiency: Absolutely Amazing

"Automated ordering means that we have more cash in the bank, and less dead or slow-selling stock."
– Ben Davidson B.V.Sc
Director, RVC

This integration is provided free of charge from VetLinkSQL. Simply contact RPM Retail for their expertise and services, and we will work with them to get your inventory and ordering using the very latest Business Intelligence technology.