See 20/20 brings great business improvements to expanding optician network Duncan and Todd, ophthalmic opticians, Scotland

The company has since grown into a chain of 23 branches, serving the local community between Dundee and Nairn in the north east of Scotland and Ireland. Duncan and Todd also provides on and off-site eye care to more than 200 corporate clients including Halifax, Orange and the Inland Revenue.

Combining over 30 years’ experience and knowledge, Duncan and Todd remains committed to its local community, providing an unrivalled customer service where individual attention, high quality products and affordability are always prioritised.

The company has grown rapidly throughout Scotland and Ireland, to a position where it now employs 160 staff.

It is this unrelenting commitment to customer service that led director, Frances Duncan, to team up with Practice Management Services Ltd. to consolidate and improve all existing customer, diary and resource information into a single, comprehensive management system that would provide instant access and visibility to all branches.

“As the company has grown, we have increasingly inherited a wide variety of recall and reminder systems from each branch joining our network,” explains Frances Duncan. “This has often created up to five different databases of disjointed and ineffective information, which meant valuable business time was lost in searching for the details needed. Importantly, none of these systems stood out as capable or robust enough to both manage existing information and to help in the rapid growth of our business.”

Against this backdrop of disparate information, Duncan embarked on an 18-month trial of six different systems to find a practice management system capable of supporting a large, complex and growing multi-site business. Having failed to identify any as suitable, the company’s IT director recommended Practice Management Services Ltd.’s ophthalmic practice management software, See 20/20 – the UK’s first web-based ophthalmic management system.

“I liked Practice Management Services Ltd.’s forward thinking approach,” explains Frances. “Practice Management Services Ltd. understands the issues facing the optician industry, which is vital for a successful partnership. The technology is very futuristic, and this was a great opportunity for us to be at the forefront of ophthalmic technology.”

With Practice Management Services Ltd.’s groundbreaking system, See 20/20 – then known as Metspex II -  still at the concept stage, Duncan and Todd became partners in developing the system. The ophthalmic specialists continue to work closely with Practice Management Services Ltd. to ensure its management software evolves regularly to keep up to date with the current needs of today’s optician practices.

Dramatic improvements in efficiency and resource planning are just some of the major improvements being experienced by Duncan & Todd, since Practice Management Services Ltd.’s See20/20 implementation.

Employing a project manager to take responsibility for filtering training to each branch manager ensured that there was no disruption to day-to-day business.

Now used by every branch, See 20/20 has made a significant impact on Duncan and Todd’s daily business. The system is already managing more than 300,000 patient records across the whole business and has recorded over one million patient events.

Not only is each branch now using the same system to make appointments and plan resources more effectively, but customer recalls can be tied in better with advertising campaigns.

“See20/20 has been the best investment we’ve made. Not only does it give us complete visibility and greater control of the business, but it has freed up our staff to concentrate on the jobs they do best - looking after our customers, ” says Frances Duncan.  “We can go online to look at the capacity of each branch, and plan resources so much more effectively to where the demand is.”

The system’s virtually limitless capacity is essential in Duncan and Todd’s continued growth and success. With additional processing power provided on demand within the centrally hosted infrastructure, changing requirements are easily met.

Since partnering with Practice Management Services Ltd. and its See 20/20 management system, every Duncan and Todd practice has started to make a significant increase in profit. The business is seeing a regular 9 per cent improvement in efficiency, with more sight tests being undertaken in the same number of days. The ability to time advertising campaigns more effectively to patient recalls has also produced sales that show a consistent 5 per cent improvement every month.

With the successful implementation of Practice Management Services Ltd.’s instant access, all visible management software, Duncan and Todd is well prepared to meet the expected rise in demand from new legislation coming into effect in Scotland in April 2006.

“The requirements brought by this new legislation means that we will be required to carry out more supplementary eye tests. Stricter and more specific criteria mean that additional time will have to be spent on each patient,” explains Frances Duncan.  “Without See 20/20, I would have been dreading this sudden upsurge in requests, but with a single-point electronic diary and staff allocation system, we are well equipped to deal with every patient request, as well as continue to build on our spectacle business. This means success all round – for our business and our customers.”