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Veterinary TIMES
PEOPLE28
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HHHHowowQ&AQ How long have you
worked at Zoetis and what is your background?
A I joined Pfizer in 1997 as a medical representative
on the human health side of the business. My journey to this point was an interest-ing one. After graduating in biological sciences, I thought I wanted to be a university lecturer, so I started a PhD at the University of Aberdeen School of Medicine, work-ing as a research student with Hugh Pennington.
Within the first two months I knew it was a bad deci-sion. The laboratory envi-ronment didn’t suit me and I knew this was not a path to the future I had in mind.
As I was contemplating this, I was visited by a scientific sales representative. She drove a company car, wore great clothes and agreed laboratory research was not for me. I decided to look at human pharmaceuticals and got a job as a medical repre-sentative for Pfizer cover-ing the Glasgow area. It’s a huge company with multiple career options so when some field trainers came to coach me one day I liked the look of their job and knew which new career path to follow.
When a training man-ager role became available in Edinburgh, I applied and was successful. This role exposed me to training in leadership development and I achieved my CIPD certificate.
A job then came up to move from human to animal health and I realised the vet world is
AS someone whose driving focus is in the ability to stay on the ball with changing trends in the veterinary industry, Nick Steele’s role at Zoetis is both challeng-ing yet crucial to his practice clients, as he explains.
a much nicer environment to work in, so I was hooked from that moment on. I was looking to move back into a business- type role and the national consulting manager oppor-tunity came up in 2011. The rest, as they say, is history.
Q How would you say the business has evolved
during your time with Zoetis?
A In many ways the ani-mal health industry has
mirrored what the human pharmaceutical business went through. The environ-ment has become increas-ingly challenging for different reasons. You can no longer just sell drugs and vaccines to vet practices – you have to work collaboratively.
Customers have their own agendas, challenges and needs and we at Zoetis have realised we need to have a shared agenda with custom-ers so we can work collabora-tively and build a sustainable business in partnership with our veterinary practice clients.
Q What are the biggest challenges you face
as national consulting manager and what skills do you possess to meet those challenges?
A Some of the biggest chal-lenges I face are to make
sure the services I develop are pertinent to veterinary practices, as well as predicting their needs and staying ahead of the change curve. This is
why we have been investing in upscaling our team and in digital marketing to produce tools such as PetDialog, which we believe will be vital in enhancing client relationships and touchpoints for practices.
I need to have the curiosity to look for the next big thing, so I am constantly researching and drawing from other sec-tors and predicting the needs of our veterinary clients.
Q You have played a key role in a number of prac-
tice management-type initia-tives, including the Effective Leadership Programme and now Profit Solver. How impor-tant is it firms such as Zoetis offer this kind of service?
A Concepts like the Effec-tive Leadership Pro-
gramme and Profit Solver are extremely expensive to bring to market, so represent a sig-nificant investment. It’s only really companies like Zoetis that have both the resources and foresight to see how important these sort of ser-vices are and to realise we’ll be successful if our veterinary practice clients are successful.
Q Can you explain what kind of impact you
expect Profit Solver to have on the way the profession and those within it operate?
A We are constantly looking to practices to see what
they want and the two areas of our consultancy in most demand are people manage-ment skills and financial skills.
We’ve produced a lot of programmes that explore every different aspect of peo-ple management, so finance was the next topic to tackle.
Veterinary practices have tended to face historical, unresolved problems where finances are concerned. They have no standard method for pricing their services, profit levels are low for many practices, they are unable to clearly see which services make money and which don’t, and this ham-pers their ability to accu-rately value the business.
Our new Profit Solver soft-ware is an evidence-based tool that will provide the solution to all these financial issues. It uses the practice’s actual data – not benchmarks
or accepted norms – to ena-ble the practice to manage costs, set prices and gain return from investments.
By using a collection of data such as practice costs, which staff perform what elements of the procedure, how long the procedure takes and what equipment and materials are used, Profit Solver calculates the price necessary to cover cost and deliver a prede-termined profit margin.
Profit Solver helps prac-tices to understand how the overall practice profit is being generated. With this tool, if a practice is in a very price sensitive area, it can match its prices with the competi-tion on items and procedures where clients are likely to shop around, but maintain its profit margins as a business by increasing the price in other less price-sensitive areas.
Profit Solver is a complete game changer. It has been going in the United States
QUALIFICATIONS: BSc(Hons) Biological Sciences, CIPD Certificate in Learning and Development.POSITION: National consulting manager, Zoetis.JOB DESCRIPTION: Leading a team of 10 business consultants to provide consultancy support to veterinary practices across the UK, driving business growth for both the practice and Zoetis. Identifying new business service needs for practices, designing the solutions and developing the skills and knowledge of the team to deliver the service to practices.BRIEF CV: After graduating from university, I studied for a PhD in molecular genetics before joining the human pharmaceutical industry as a Pfizer medical representative for nine years. My passion for training and development began in 2004 when I became training manager for Pfizer in Scotland. I then moved from human health to animal health in 2008 and took on my current role in 2011.HOBBIES: Business life doesn’t leave much time for hobbies, but I’ve recently moved to the Helensburgh area in Argyll and enjoy exploring the area and village life at the weekend. I have three cats and plan to add a couple of standard poodles to the clan later in the year.LITTLE KNOWN FACT: There are three – I am a published poet, played piano up to Grade 9 and have been shoe shopping with Boyzone.
NAME: Nick Steele
for the past two years and has delivered an average of $154,000 (£104,000) extra profit to practices and when we piloted it here, the tool identified 15 per cent extra revenue for the practice in question.
Q What do you think will be the major business
trends in the profession over the next few years?
A I think harnessing and using data will be a
major business trend. Devel-oping tools around using data to enhance both the clinical aspects of veteri-nary practices and the way a practice communicates and engages with its cli-ents will be important.
More and more prac-tices are realising this and becoming increasingly savvy with using digital market-ing and tools such as our PetDialog app and its new quality of life assessment.
‘I was visited by a scientific sales representative. She drove a company
car, wore great clothes and agreed laboratory research was not for me.’
‘I need to have the curiosity to look for the next big thing, so I am constantly researching
and drawing from other sectors and predicting the needs of our veterinary clients.’
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March 20, 2015
