If you’ve landed on this article page, you’re probably searching for a
good business idea—an idea that’s light on the pocket but heavy on
returns, promising both a fulfilling journey and potential profit.
|
How to Start a Veterinary Practice in Nigeria
A veterinary clinic or vet clinic is a facility where animals
are given medical health care services. These services include
physical check-ups, vaccinations, diagnostic tests, emergency
treatments, and surgeries
Before starting your veterinary clinic, it’s essential to
understand how a business works. One of the critical things you
need to understand is cash flow. It is the amount of money your
business has available at any given time, and it’s essential to
know how this affects your business. Cash flow helps you
determine whether or not you can afford certain purchases and
expenses, and it also helps you plan where you want to spend
your money. You can use cash flow statements to determine
whether or not an investment is worth doing and how much money
your business needs at different times of the year.
You’ll also need to familiarize yourself with the principles of
operating a veterinary practice. When it comes to being
successful in the industry, there are certain rules and
regulations that you must abide by.
Find your niche: You need to decide on what services you plan to
offer before you embark on the journey. Some veterinarians
nowadays offer not only high and low-end medical services but
also ancillary services like grooming and selling pet care
products. Certain services will require certain instruments and
medical equipment as well as the staff with the right skills.
Get some experience: Look before leaping straight into starting
a business of your own; it would be wise to begin by getting an
apprenticeship or job with an established veterinarian or
veterinary hospital. The key is to sharpen up your skills and
gain practical knowledge so you know exactly where you are
starting from. Get the knowledge and inside information that
will help you build a practice of your own. This also a great
way to figure out the requirements of the day-to-day running of
a clinic.
Location: Veterinary clinics require real physical space. You
cannot cure those lovely pets virtually. Location is one of the
larger investments a veterinary has to do in the initial stage
of planning. One must consider various factors while planning
the location:
You would like to open the practice at a location that is easily
accessible by your larger client base.
You would also like to figure out the competition in that area
since if there are already too many clinics in that area, then
making inroads will be tough if not impossible.
Buy or rent, would be another important decision to make. One
must weigh financial pros and cons before making the decision.
Buying would incur a one time fixed cost while rent would be
periodic lesser variable cost.
Staffing: You cannot do all the work by yourself. You would need
technicians, receptionists etc. for running the practice
successfully. You must also forecast at this stage how many of
each of the support staff do you need. Once you have a clear
idea on requirements you can start the hiring process. Hiring is
an important activity, since a wrong hire may impact the
business in the beginning. It is also one of the most time
consuming activity, since you need to screen profiles, take
interviews and then possibly select one of them. You can either
choose to do by yourself or ask an agency to do some work for
you.
Design your services:
Although most services will follow a standard operating
procedure and there is little modification which you can do.
However, in this limited scope you can see what best you can do
to create a positive differential over others. Also, in today’s
world customer experience has the prime importance. You can also
think about how you want to give a long lasting and positive
customer experience to your clients.
Pricing: Pricing is the next activity in the line since you have
already designed your services by now. Some of the common
methodologies to price are mentioned as below. Based on your
context you can choose anyone:
Customer Willingness to Pay: Eventually, your customer will be
paying for the services. So you must figure out how much is the
maximum an average customer can pay and price accordingly.
Equipment: Once most of the above steps are done, the clinic
then needs to be fitted with the equipment required, laboratory
instruments, medical supplies etc. Not having them is surely not
going to create a positive customer experience.
Marketing: Once you are ready to go, you need to start marketing
the practice. You could choose to do by yourself, get p eople on
board or outsource this to professional agencies. You can do
marketing in print media like advertisement in newspapers,
magazines etc., in outdoor media like banners, billboards,
posters etc., in electronic media like Email Campaigns etc. If
you are high on budget, you can opt for TV and Radio Ads as
well. Social Media is the newest trend and your presence is very
vital there to engage with the community by and large. It goes
without saying, that a strong and good website will add value to
your brand further.
|
