Need for robust business data

“May you live in interesting times” – an English expression purported to be a translation of a traditional Chinese curse. Despite being so common in English as to be known as “the Chinese curse”, the saying is apocryphal and no actual Chinese source has ever been produced.

Well, that’s what Wikipedia says about the expression and we clearly live in interesting times if, as is almost always the case, the Wikipedia option comes up first in an internet search. Not long ago, we might have questioned the provenance of such unrevised information, but no one seems to care about that anymore.

A glance at the political climate around the world will confirm the unusual nature of the times we live in, as nation after nation is experiencing a surge in nationalism – some controlled and even gentlemanly in nature, some rather less so – but history shows us moderation is not usually the watchword of any nationalistic movement and, as the global economy requires stability for growth, our economic future is sailing into uncharted waters.

Snapshot figures

Economists would urge us not to worry too much about snapshot economic data and, over the years, most of us have come to recognise trends are a more useful pointer to the economic health of a country or even a business, but one can only applaud the SPVS for producing its snapshot figures from survey returns, including around 100 practices, ranging from independent businesses to joint venture concerns.

The range included equine, mixed and small animal businesses and a wide variation in turnover to encompass a fairly representative sample of UK veterinary practices.

I know this is a small survey and the size of the sample will have professional market researchers mumbling in their sleep, but it is a start and is all the more valuable for that.

The UK is one of the world’s most sophisticated countries for the provision of market data and yet, despite some independent attempts to garner such vital business data, we too have a paucity of information that beggars belief.

Think about it; you may be able to work out some business parameters for yourselves, but unless your practice is one of a limited number involved with one of two independent providers, you will have no national or regional benchmark data to compare it against.

Do you know the ratio of your active clients per full-time equivalent (FTE)? If so, can you compare today’s ratio with one of five years ago?

At the time when the Fort Dodge company was acquired, its foreign direct investment data showed across approximately a decade, there had been almost a 20% attrition in the ratio, leaving the sample average at around 970 active clients/FTE. A decade later, I cannot tell you what the figures will be, because I don’t have access to them, but it is vitally important to know if we are to make sensible and prudent plans to develop our practice businesses.

No robust numbers

No robust numbers exist to assess the current UK pet population and when I asked the International Society of Feline Medicine it was only able to offer a range between 9-month-old to 12-month-old cats, using the published data available. In a world where parallel imports and internet sales of products muddy the waters for the production of robust volume and value data for pet food, it has become increasingly difficult to extrapolate data to produce reliable figures.

Of course, if we managed to persuade the Government to include pet ownership data on the census forms it would make a huge difference, but this hasn’t been possible to date. It is, perhaps, surprising, as there is much data showing the beneficial effect of the proximity of pets to a wide range of different people, from the elderly to the bedridden, and those with autism to those with dementia, so there is clearly a cost benefit to be calculated for the NHS, but we continue to live in hope for the future.

Back to the present day, the SPVS profitability survey brings us down to earth with a bump. I know it’s a small sample and I know it is just a snapshot, but shouldn’t we be concerned to learn more than half the practices surveyed showed below average profitability and 15% showed negative profitability?

For some years, I, and others, have been urging the veterinary associations to take the step of providing useful, robust business data so we can have a sensible debate about the state of our veterinary world, and I take my hat off to SPVS for this initiative.

More data

So now what? Shall we do what we normally do and simply consign our worries to the kitchen drawer, the one containing all the other stuff we don’t know what to do with, or can we use this as a meaningful, baseline building block for a more educated economic future for our collective businesses?

This is, as Stephanie Writer-Davies, SPVS president, commented “just a small proportion of UK practices, but the more data we have, the more useful it will be”.

If our august veterinary associations could wave a magic wand, the wish I would want them to grant would be to jointly take responsibility for establishing a nationwide, routinely reproduced data set accessible to all practices, looking at all the key data points that allow us to chart our progress in these uncharted waters.

Of course, there would be concerns about the sensitivity of business data, but, in a world where Brexit is still to play its hand, where imminent events in the US will have a major effect on the money markets and where most of our economic navigation instruments appear to be of little use, gathering and disseminating this data could well be critical – if not to all practices but certainly to the 15% in negative profitability.

Just before the summer, Vetfile data showed equine, mixed and small animal practices represented around 95% of the UK’s total of 4,921 veterinary practices.

You have to admit, 15% is a large number. If we think practices don’t fail – we should look at what’s been happening in the Netherlands.