Wow – The Router Is Only $75

The other day I was asked to look over a proposal from a software vendor to a new startup practice. The proposal included all of the computer hardware to get started.

Along with the computers and printers, the proposal had a needed router listed. As the independent observer, I first questioned why this vendor would be including a low end router with a high end proposal. After looking at the rest of the proposal, I changed my first reaction and suggested that the router is fine for now.

This little router points out the question – what is appropriate? If this is just a 5 workstation network, does it deserve a complex $700 router/firewall? Part of me says yes, but if the $75 router will be technically adequate for right now and it requires less labor to implement and maintain – I am OK with that.

Warning: I am saying that in some cases, it makes sense to use a product that is actually very inexpensive. But more often than not, the opposite is true. Do not buy a $500 laptop. I have a client that just did that. She could not return it and is now buying another laptop at $1600.

Kevin Scholz
CEO
DVMConnexx, Inc.

Trust or Buyer's Remorse

We all know that worried feeling right after we signed the credit card form or the contract – is this a big mistake? In the days that follow a purchase, we watch for signs that we made a mistake.

Is the product performing as promised? Is the vendor keeping to their promises?

As vendors and service providers – we celebrate acquiring new clients but that does not mean our clients are in the same mood. Our new client does not yet trust us. Trust comes with time. We made a promise to our client that we would deliver products/services in a timely, professional manner. While mistakes happen, we need to be at our best or we will merely feed our new client’s worry.

A new client called in a few days ago and left a message. The doctor was definitely having buyer’s remorse. We are helping her practice with new computers. She had gotten a piece of hardware from another vendor but was missing some pieces from them and a CD from us. Sounds simple – we send the doctor a CD and we move forward? Well, the doctor saw this as a sign of a purchase mistake and expressed that! I called the doctor personally to help her with her concerns and gave her my cell phone number to help her know she can easily reach me whenever needed. We quickly worked through the remaining issues and got moving forward again. The doctor is now more trusting but still guarded.

To us, it is critical that our clients trust us. It is almost impossible to be responsible for “everything” involved with computers in the veterinary practices if we are not trusted. Yet, we need to earn trust. The answer comes from doing great work every day and truly caring about our existing clients. It is our existing clients that will propagate trust to those that do not yet know us.

Kevin Scholz
CEO
DVMConnexx, Inc.

When Service Really Works

Well, I had a great week. Why did I have a great week? Because a few of my clients did something that clients rarely do – they said thank you and meant it!

Those of us in the service business, whether veterinary services or computer services, live on positive feedback as the fuel to feed us for another day. It is not the money that motivates us. Being good can come from the money but being great takes more. We have to love what we do and live for completely surprising our clients with service that is beyond their expectations and the reaction it causes.

Among the many technical services we provide at DVMConnexx, the most unique is the help we provide clinics struggling with poor x-ray image quality from specific CR x-ray systems. To our clients, the success is the diagnostic image quality they are now seeing in every image. To me it is the excitement I hear in their voices when they see the images they have been hoping for but had yet to produce.

Great service produces great clients. These clients are now sharing their great images with us so we can share them with the rest of you. These clients are offering to be spotlights in our newsletters and related educational content. Great service creates partnerships.

Continual goal going into this week – deliver great service, love what we do, and create partnerships.



Kevin Scholz
CEO
DVMConnexx, Inc.

The File Type – What does that mean to Image Quality?

NAVC Orlando, FL – while I was standing next to a monitor that happened to have an x-ray image displayed, I was approached by a veterinarian holding an iPhone. On the iPhone screen was an x-ray image. He asked me if I could get this x-ray image to display on my computer screen. With the right tools, we could have figured it out but that wasn’t possible on a busy trade-show floor.

This brought us to a conversation about image quality and file types. What he was seeing on his iPhone was not diagnostic. The Dr asked me if JPEG files are considered diagnostic – that is a tough question. He was asking because he thought that x-ray images produced with the JPEG format could not be diagnostic. I quickly opened an x-ray image in our Metron software and performed an export to JPEG. I then opened the JPEG file in a simple Windows image viewer program. The copy was very close to the original – how could that be? Compression! You can produce image files that employ compression tricks to help reduce the file size and if not being careful that might include a “lossy” technique resulting in less data in the image. An image that started out “diagnostic” may no longer be diagnostic after “compression” was applied.

The JPEG file type is very common, the default file type of digital cameras and easily viewed on computers without the need for special software. Several years ago, the digital camera produced a “nice” JPEG image. Today’s average digital cameras are pushing past 10 mega pixels – which produces a huge file. Here you can also control the file size – choose when it makes sense to take a picture that results in a 10 MB file.

TIFF is another popular file type. The TIFF among other less common file types is more commonly used with very high resolution applications such as digital x-ray and digital publishing. The TIFF file contains all of the original image data but in trade is much larger than the JPEG. Often a TIFF can be 10 times the size of a JPEG of the same image.

The JPEG is a visually reliable file type as long as it is used properly. Check with your diagnostic imaging vendors to confirm proper use of compression. Think about how you want to use your digital camera files – with the new cameras, even though more efficient than most other file types, they too will quickly consume lots of disk space.

Kevin Scholz
CEO
DVMConnexx, Inc.

Backups are for babies....Not!

The other night I was sitting at the kitchen table “working” on my laptop, responding to emails, and writing notes about tasks performed earlier in the day. My wife was across from me dueling on her laptop – our resident website admin and graphic artist on deadline for NAVC tradeshow preparation.

About 9:00pm my wife noticed a strange whining sound. We could not tell where it was coming from and it stopped. Again the noise, this time seemed like it was coming from her laptop. At 9:30, she hooked in her external “backup” disk and went to bed. Now 10:30pm and the noise is getting louder and clearly coming from the laptop. I am thinking to start up the backup software to get a full backup, since I am not sure how we setup the current backup process – just in case this laptop is about to quit on us. In the 10 minutes it took me to ponder the question before moving to the other laptop, it managed to “Blue Screen” with a hard disk error. I tried to reboot – “disk error”.

Should I wake my wife – tell her the laptop is dead? Should I look at what is on the “backup” disk? At this point, I am “very” hopeful the backup disk has everything on it that is critical and having that “need-to-know” feeling – spent the next 30 minutes digging through the backup software. I went to bed thinking that we had at least most of her critical files.

7:00am and my wife now knows she her laptop is dead and “maybe” has everything backed up. Needless to say she was in a bad mood at that point. We poured through the backup info and found nearly everything – she is feeling a little better at this point. Because she has only been using this laptop for the last few months, she still had her old laptop and started opening files….. her mood is getting better.

This story has a happy ending but I will tell you that many people do not bother with backups. It is critical to regularly backup your important files and to check that the backups actually work.

Backups are not an option – they are a must.



Kevin Scholz
CEO
DVMConnexx, Inc.

Is value greater than price?

Christmas was upon us and I promised my wife I would fix the toilet… yes a working toilet was on her Christmas list.

So along with my last minute gift shopping on Christmas Eve, I added a stop at Home Depot for some toilet parts (do I sound like a plummer?). You are now wondering why a veterinary computer guy is writing about toilet repair and Christmas?

I needed to replace the water valve and float that controls the fill and level of the tank water. Of course the store had about 50 different brands and models ranging from $8 to $65 and with no clear way to distinguish the value of one over the other. I seriously pondered the question, what price do I pay to help ensure success – I am not interested in completing this project only to find out at the end that the new parts do not work any better than the old ones. Like most of you, I would rather shovel snow than work on toilets.

Why can’t the labeling on the $8 product just say “Seldom works, but buy me if you have the time to tinker and can throw away the $8 if it does not work”.

This same challenge holds true with most products and services that we pursue for purchase! It is really hard to know which of the many choices offer the right balance between value and price. If we do not have a way to measure “value” before the purchase, the purchase often is lead by price as the determining factor. Of course we all know that price should not be the leading factor when choosing what and whom to purchase from.

At least with our more important purchases, we need to apply a few rules that can help improve our odds of success. By the way – success means the value received is greater than or equal to the price paid.

• Try before you buy
• No contract commitment
• Strong list of references
• Money back guarantee
• Know what it is you need solved
• Know the company you are buying from
• If a service, you need to “trust” those providing the service

In our business, we face the same challenges when purchasing products and services. Conversely, if we are really good at what we do and you need many of the services we provide, we still need to live by the rules above before we get to be your chosen service provider.

Merry Christmas everyone and good luck with your purchases.

Kevin Scholz
CEO
DVMConnexx, Inc.

An Image is Worth a Thousand Words

Today it is incredibly easy to take a digital picture and save it to your computer. Many of you are now using digital cameras in your veterinary practices. Even x-ray & ultrasound images are digital and get stored on your computers.

The challenges with digital images include:

• Knowing what pictures are worth taking
• Make the image capture part of the daily routine
• How and where to save the pictures
  

Just because it is possible to take digital pictures during surgery, does not mean you should do it. Like most everything in business, there should be a clear benefit corresponding benefit to the expense. The process of taking and storing digital pictures is not free.

Many practices have the ability to store a “pet picture” in the patient record of their practice management software. This little picture can help make your invoices and marketing materials appear more personal. Consistency – once you start, you have to do it every day. Also, you do need to actually use the images. Too often that “great idea” didn’t stick. You are now taking pictures but they are not showing up on invoices, not being used in your reminders or wellness plans, and you are not checking to see that every pet is getting their picture taken.

Digital pictures can be non-diagnostic like the “pet picture” or diagnostic like digital x-rays and intra-oral dental photos. Diagnostic images need to be taken with similar rules – value and consistency.

Storing images can be a big challenge depending on the type of image you are taking and the kind of practice management software you have installed. Digital images need to be saved/stored on your computer in some organized way so they are easily found when you need them. There’s only a few “save” options available but each has its complexities and compromises.

The simple “Pet Picture” just needs someone to take a picture and then import that picture into the “Pet Picture” space in the corresponding patient record. Question – is the “Pet Picture” function in your practice management software the only way you want to use this picture? Once you import it to the “Pet Picture” space and then delete it from your camera, that tiny version of the original is not very applicable for anything else.

In the next posting, we will explore many of the digital picture types practices tend to take and how they get saved. We will also help to explain the various image files and which file type is appropriate for each picture.

Kevin Scholz
CEO
DVMConnexx, Inc.