The Next Big Market for ISVs

Here’s a look at the impact integrated payments can have on the vet industry.

The global veterinary-services market is projected to reach $200 billion in 2020. Indeed, the landscape is quickly evolving, creating more demanding needs from practice managers looking to reduce costs, improve the customer experience, and generate revenue.

And now the digitization of veterinary practices has created a need for practice-management software that aggregates billing, payments, client-data management, revenue-cycle management, and customer service into one clean interface.

In addition to digitization, many practices are now offering telehealth services to pet owners, which has an entirely separate set of requirements to tack on top of the already-complex needs of the practice that exist today.

With roughly 35,000 veterinary clinics in the United States serving more than 160 million pets, the market is ripe for a solution that encompasses all of the must-haves that clinics are seeking alongside additional features that allow clinics to provide the best care possible.

Software developers and independent software vendors (ISVs) must be cognizant of the features that clinics need most. Certainly, billing, prescription management, client communications, and inventory management are integral to operations.

There are also additional features—instant messaging, video calls, text communications, analytics, and competitive insights—that can make one software product stand apart from the rest.

Seamless Payments

Those things are all important. However, the glue that holds the pieces together is integrated payments. High-quality, business-grade payment processing does more than integrate with the workflow and offer secure payment options to vet clients. Integrated payments save essential time for practice owners and staff who already have their hands full treating patients.

The average veterinary practice likely processes at least hundreds of card swipes per month. Consider the time commitment that a clinic without integrated payments faces as those swipes occur on a system separate from the practice-management software. Dozens of hours of wasted time and productivity can seriously impact how a clinic is operating.

Reconciliation and manual, dupli­cate data entry is time-intensive and resource-draining, and that negative impact trickles down to how well a clinic is able to care for its patients. Integrating payments into your practice-management software restores time that would have otherwise been wasted on these administrative tasks.

The other side of it is the customer experience. Without integrated payments, checkout time for clients is longer. Manual data entry and duplication of records across systems not only slow staff down, they slow the clinic’s customers down, too. Integrated payment processing can shorten checkout time and keep customers happy.

Also, as consumers move away from cash and checks, they are looking for more convenient—and broader—ways to pay. This means practice-management software with integrated payments should include an array of payment methods, including credit and debit (via swipe or chip, in-person, and online), SMS, mobile pay, and over the phone.

Consumers are demanding a seamless payment process. Developers paying attention are helping their practice owners cater to these needs effortlessly.

More Benefits

As practice owners increasingly look for little and big ways to save money and staff time, integrated payments offer both of these savings along with numerous additional benefits.

First, there’s convenience. Integrated payments make practice-management software quick and convenient to use. It reduces duplicate data entry and facilitates secure payments, including the ability to store card data for recurring billing or future payments. Clinics can cut down on the time spent re-entering payment data on each visit.

Next, accuracy. Integrating payments into practice-management software can help eliminate missed charges and human error that can occur when sales data must be transferred to a separate system.

Then, there’s efficiency. Practices can reduce overdue payments by enabling their customers to pay immediately in a way that is most convenient for them. Practice management software can reduce the time spent manually sorting and recording invoices and receipts as charges are automatically attached to the patient’s electronic file within the software.

Next, security. Working with an integrated payments partner removes the burdens of handling EMV certification and security, end-to-end encryption and tokenization, and PCI compliance. Not only can this save months of internal work, but it means lower losses related to data breaches and non-compliance. A payments partner can lend its expertise while developers focus on the core competencies of the software.

Also, consider growth. Integrating payments into practice-management software can enhance customer engagement in unforeseen ways. Some integrated payments partners augment payments with other tools geared towards improving the customer experience.

Things like reputation management, real-time customer data, and competitive analytics can catapult a veterinary practice into faster growth cycles, especially when a streamlined payments system ties everything together.

Finally, there’s monetization. This is an especially compelling benefit for software developers and ISVs that have the opportunity to control and enhance the transactions their systems already touch, while embedding commerce and starting a new revenue stream for the business. Offering payments as a value-added solution can create new revenue streams for ISVs while making their product easier to sell.

The benefits and impacts of integrated payments tend to have a trickle-down effect on how the rest of the practice operates, including back-office and front-office tasks. With less confusion around payments and reconciliation, the staff is freed up to focus on what matters most: caring for patients and their human counterparts.

—Ashley Jones is the marketing content coordinator at Global Payments Integrated.