Driving Innovation And Improving Customer Experience In Pet Care

Pet care is a rapidly expanding market, with room for disruptive innovation

Two of the most important functions of a CFO today are driving innovation and improving customer experience. For the former, a CFO needs to be able to spot market opportunities before others do; for the latter, they need to have a grasp of what makes the target customer tick. Pet health care is an example of an area with immense growth opportunity: there was a nationwide surge in pet ownership during the Covid-19 pandemic, with 5 million more pets added to the population, and Morgan Stanley predicts that spending on this sector will grow by 8% annually from now through 2030. This was something spotted by Or Boiman, CFO at veterinary care startup The Vets, and his team. "The Vets was founded in response to the lack of consumer-centric innovation in the pet care space, despite the growing pet ownership trend in the U.S.," Boiman told me. "While the human health care category and the pet category overall have seen an influx of innovation, the traditional model for clinic-based pet care was left behind."

But Boiman also discussed how spotting a need isn't enough; one has to develop a keen understanding of customer mindset. There are valuable lessons here for CFOs, not just at startups but at well-established companies too.

Jeff Thomson: The Vets is a tech-enabled veterinary care provider that offers at-home vet visits. You joined as CFO in 2021 at the height of the pandemic when pet ownership rates were on the rise. What unmet market demand did your team spot that made you embark on this enterprise? How did you develop a business model that could fulfill a need for digitally enabled veterinary care that was scalable across the entire nation?

Or Boiman: Initially, we launched The Vets as an upgraded brick-and-mortar veterinary clinic experience. However, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020, it created a major hurdle for pet owners who wanted to ensure their pets received the care they needed but were hesitant to make unnecessary trips out of their homes.

Or Boiman, CFO of The Vets

To address this issue, we pivoted our business model to focus on mobile veterinary care, bringing experienced veterinary teams directly to people's homes to deliver wellness and sick care. Our new model provides a safe, stress-free and convenient alternative to traditional clinics, and pet owners especially love the personalized attention and care their pets receive in the comfort of their own homes. Pets are more comfortable at home, and our veterinarians can spend the time they need giving them the best care possible and answering pet parents’ important questions about how to best care for the long term health of their pet.

Through this pivot, we created a new model for pet care that works better for everyone - the pets, pet parents and the veterinarian teams. And we fulfilled a true unmet need in the marketplace, not just a temporary one created by Covid.

As opposed to brick and mortar operations that would typically require heavy capital investments and many months to scale, our business model is extremely scalable, and given market size and addressable market, we will soon be able to reach pets across the country.

To scale, we needed to balance operational efficiency and ROI with maintaining the highest quality medical care and customer experience. Our business model empowers teams in each market with technological solutions to provide gold standard treatment at home, as well as efficiently plan comfortable routes and medical team schedules, thus perfecting the pets’, pets owners’ and the medical teams’ experience.

Overall, we are proud of the tremendously scalable business model and the innovative approach we are taking to meet the needs of pets and pet owners, as well as our ability to rapidly meet the continued demand for our services in more cities across the country.

Thomson: Pet owners have strong emotional attachments to their pets which can make veterinary care delivery complex. What type of market research did you embark on to better understand these consumers? Did you make any new discoveries that helped inform revenue forecasting or strategic growth plans? How well does a finance department need to know their customers to undertake scenario planning and risk management?

Boiman: At The Vets, we are always seeking to better understand our existing customer base as well as the needs of potential future customers. Through our market research, we discovered that our target customers are part of a growing segment of American pet owners who view their pets as integral members of their family. Understanding this emotional bond and the importance of pets in their owners' lives helped us to design our services to be more personal, empathetic and convenient than a typical brick and mortar clinic experience.

Our research also showed that pet owners who view their pets as family members are more likely to invest in their pets’ health care, particularly preventative care and wellness. This is because they see their pets as a long-term investment in their happiness and well-being. We recognized the value of preventative care, which is often overlooked in pet health, but can have a significant impact on a pet's overall health and lifespan. By focusing on preventative care, we aim to help pets live longer and happier lives, while also helping pet owners to save money on costly treatments and procedures in the long run.

As a finance department, understanding our customers’ values and preferences is critical for scenario planning and risk management. By knowing what drives our customers’ behaviors, we can identify potential risks and opportunities and design financial strategies that align with our customers’ needs. This information also helps us to make data-driven decisions that can drive growth and create value for both our customers and our business.

Thomson: Innovation is at the core of your company. How do you cultivate a culture of innovation? Do you encourage employees to bring you new ideas? How does the finance team support a culture of innovation?

Boiman: Innovation is truly at the heart of our service model, from the way in which we empower our veterinary teams to deliver gold-standard medical care to how we develop technology to make it easier for pet owners to access and experience the best care possible.

We recognize that innovation and technology can ultimately help us to deliver better outcomes for pet health, and as a result better pet care, alongside strong financial performance. That belief, coupled with a strong desire to make our services more convenient, personalized and accessible to pets and their owners, drives an internal culture of innovation at all levels of the company.

As a finance team, we support allocating resources that bring The Vets vision to life. We support a culture of innovation to create an environment that encourages creativity, experimentation and balanced risk-taking. We work with teams to conduct risk/benefit analysis and operate to tie decision making to ROI targets for innovation initiatives. We encourage experimentation and learning, and we allocate resources based on the potential risks and ROI of the innovation initiatives.