Medivet is a leading provider of small animal veterinary services in the UK, with a community of over 1,000 dedicated vets committed to delivering exceptional care. The company operates on a co-ownership model, allowing vets to own their own practices while benefiting from a national network of 24-hour practices, animal hospitals and centralised services at its Watford support centre.
Medivet’s telephony system is a vital communication channel for its clients to secure care both during practice hours as well as out of hours and for emergencies.
In January 2023, having rolled out a new network, Medivet was ready to begin a programme of telephony transformation to allow it to support its dynamic operations and ensure clients and vets could reliably communicate with each other.
Medivet had over 100 different providers of telephony, each providing their own services and each with their own terms and conditions, so there were a lot of unknowns. The strategy was to bring all these disparate telephony systems together into an enterprise class system.
Redcentric was selected to deliver a modern enterprise-grade hosted telephony service across 378 vets’ practices and the Watford support centre.
Redcentric’s hosted telephony service – Unity – offered a rich feature set and flexibility which meant that individual practice needs could be met through configuration and ongoing refinement of call flows.
It enabled Medivet to accommodate the different work processes across vets’ practices and ensured that key information such as different opening hours and different services could be accessed by Medivet’s clients.
Importantly it offered the resilience and scalability that Medivet needed, coupled with reliable high-quality support.
Three key design types were delivered to meet the needs of different types of users:
The solution was rolled out smoothly and the telephony transformation was completed by December 2023. Key to successful delivery was the collaborative approach adopted by both parties. Weekly meetings ensured that both IT teams at Redcentric and Medivet were closely aligned and able to solve problems together. A rolling programme of site surveys ensured that each practices’ requirements were clearly understood and when implemented, clinic teams were trained to use the system, so that adoption was rapid.
The headline on the deployment is, we intended to finish by Christmas, and we finished by Christmas. The level of engagement we had from Redcentric was brilliant. We had weekly meetings, and the wider team were always present and engaged. But above all, it was the can-do attitude that stood out for us.
A single fully integrated hosted telephony service delivered consistent service availability and an improved call experience for clients.
Matt Lindop, Head of IT Service at Medivet commented,
We’ve been able to roll out a robust telephony system to a very aggressive timescale, at a rate of 20 practices a week at one point in time, with very few issues.
The hosted telephony service has not only enhanced the client experience, but it has enabled the IT team to deliver an enhanced user experience for the practices.
The benefits for Medivet’s operations team within the Watford support centre and for staff across practices were:
It's been about six months since the new telephone service was installed and our experience has been good. The automated messaging is very effective, it lets clients know their call will be answered shortly and the system switches over automatically at night to the 24 hours emergency line so that clients can contact us if they need to in an emergency. We can always pick up messages and be confident they are getting through. Compared to the previous system it has the features we need but it is a simpler and more reliable system which is a big improvement as it means we can focus on our patients without having to sort out problems.
Benefits delivered by the new telephony system included:
The telephony programme means Medivet has a resilient, reliable system to support its organisation.
Recognising the benefits of working with Redcentric as a trusted partner, Claire O’Connell, CIO at Medivet commented,
“I have worked with Redcentric before, and they are consistently one of the best companies I have worked with. They go far beyond being regarded as a supplier and are now definitely a trusted partner.
Over the years I have worked on many IT projects, and having a strong partnership is critical to successful and smooth delivery. Redcentric don’t penny pinch over small changes, but instead focus on the long-term relationship, which really facilitates a win-win situation for us both.
Together we’ve delivered a successful project, which at times wasn’t easy and wasn’t without challenges. However, whenever we’ve reached out for help and support, the team have been pragmatic and reliable.
It is often the issues and complaints that are escalated to me, but it’s also important to recognise when things have gone well and that we are very grateful for everything they’ve done.”
