Central Control

Every configurable function of the practice level Acuitas PMS can be controlled by the Acuitas Enterprise product at the Head Office, for example: staff related functions such as passwords, diary setups and levels of access; recall reminder, referral, marketing, collection and ad-hoc letters, emails and SMS (text) templates; stock and catalogue availability, orders, deliveries and the recorded amounts of items in each practice; Direct Debit mandates, the processing of payment collection, suspending, cancelling, amending, reviewing histories or any other process.

The central control of each practice guarantees Enterprise customers a reliable and secure means to maintain standardised administrative processes, a continuous flow of information between practices and the head office, and a uniformity of brand, aesthetics and behaviours that provide a consistent environment for a chain’s customers and staff alike. Further, as enterprise can be configured to integrate with a number of third party Data Warehouse, ERP, SAP and Data Mining applications, customers have the opportunity to get even more out of the other enterprise products that they are already using.

Central Product Maintenance

The availability of all items, both stocked and non-stocked, in each practice is set from the head office. Items can be marked as available, out of stock, sell from stock, phased out, and so on, Prices can be configured as well as templates which allow updates and new ranges to be added quickly and easily. Prescription lenses and contact lenses are set for validated dispensing where prescriptive ranges are set from the head office to ensure that the appropriate lenses are applied in every instance. Enterprise also supports an integrated Adaro catalogue and ordering facility, where contact lenses prescriptive ranges are updated by the suppliers, eliminating user administration.

Recall & Marketing

Recall schemes are created from the head office Enterprise software, ensuring a uniform set of reminders, motivations and letter templates. The individual practices apply the recall to patients during their visit, and can run the recall on site, using the processes defined at the head office. Alternatively the Recalls can be run and handled by the head office Enterprise software, on a practice by practice basis, or for the entire group, centralising the entire procedure.

The Query function provides a filtering method for separating groups of customers by a set of user defined criteria, such as age, purchase history, visit history, location, prescription, and so on. As with the Recall functionality, this can be done by practice or for the entire group. The Enterprise application allows for a multitude of different correspondence templates to be employed: printed letters, emails, and SMS text messages. Used in conjunction with the Query module, users can design and create marketing collaterals and target them to the desired customers across their entire group. The Enterprise system can also export lists to be completed, and updated, through third party mail fulfilment.

Cross Practice Service

Acuitas Enterprise retail groups are dynamic, allowing the company to allocate human resources and adapt to customer movements with a bare minimum of user administration. The broad, and standardised, range of the software is centrally managed, ensuring that each practice in the group shares an identical configuration and access to all records.

Customer records are available across all sites in an Acuitas Enterprise structure. If a patient from one practice patronises another practice in the retail chain, the staff can complete the full patient journey with unfettered access to all that customer’s recorded information including all examinations, prescriptions, purchases, images and communications. Customers can move between different practices within the retail chain with ease, minimising potential customer churn. The enterprise structure ensures uniformity across the entire retail chain group, if the company moves staff or has a roaming complement of optometrists and opticians, they will have access to the same records and an identical practice management system, where all configurations match.

Complete Patient Journey

Acuitas has the capability to complete an entire patient appointment without using any printed documents or transferring to any third party system record. The fully integrated process means that everyone working in any practice, or the head office, can access, add and edit the sections of a patient record appropriate to their function within the company. There is no need to pause a patient journey process to retrieve or handover information from physical records, other staff members, or from third party systems (such as imaging or testing equipment). The appointment scheduling, Examinations, Prescriptions, Dispensing, Sale, Benefit Claim Application and Order Processing can all be completed using the same interface.

The considerable saving in time and easy retrieval of information significantly improves efficiency for individual practices, and the company as a whole. Our customers have reported that they are able to conduct more appointments and have enjoyed far greater patient examination and optical sales revenue thanks to the implementation of the Acuitas Practice Management System. Further, the Enterprise functionality allows this to be carried out for every patient between every practice, requiring no disruption in performance, which would otherwise be incurred transferring records between locations.

PROMOTIONS MANAGEMENT

Acuitas includes a set of tools that allow back-office product manager to easily configure and control the sales and marketing deals and specials on offer to patients. The Promotion module enables users to configure multiple validated promotions to be run perpetually, or set to run between specific dates, or up to a cut off time. Promotion configurations are wide and varied across individual products, ranges of products, by price, or by using a combination of these. Promotions are not limited to spectacles; they are applied to and across product types including contact lenses, accessories, treatments, and services offered by the practice. Also, promotions are supported by the Commissions Module, allowing managers to align bonuses with promotions to incentivise staff to upsell or meet specified criteria when fulfilling a promotional sale.

The Discounts functionality allows administrators to create a series of pre-set concessions; applying either a fixed or variable percentage rate or monetary amount reduction to the original price. These discounts are configurable to be applied at either or both the dispense and payment stage of the purchasing process. User pin access determines promotions and discounts available to each user level. Practices are also able to configure loyalty cards/schemes through Acuitas; where the practice can limit defined promotions to cardholders, as dictated by user configuration. Central product or marketing managers distribute promotions and discounts across individual or sets of practices within the group.

Data Analysis

This feature will furnish the executive team of any chain a complete arsenal of reports and analytics to review and plan their strategies and processes. The module is broken down to Reports, Logix, and KPI’s. The Reports section provides an array of patient, sales, stock, appointments, accounts and so forth. Each report can be set to an individual practice, or all practices in the group, configured by date range, providing detailed or concise breakdowns, and a myriad of individual configuration for the 100+ individual reports available.

The Key Performance Indicator (KPI) module provides charts for Sales and Appointment statistics across the entire group and on a practice level to measure trends. These can be filtered weekly or monthly and searched through years and week numbers. The Logix module provides a powerful business intelligence tool allowing the head office team to make decisions on purchases, re-position older products and formulate sell-out strategies.

ERP AND ACCOUNTING INTEGRATIONS

Acuitas Enterprise provides centralised management control over optical retail chains of any scale; the software has the facility to assimilate other head-office system and act as the primary Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software solution, or it can bolt onto an existing ERP system. Acuitas Enterprise provides bi-directional integrations with third-party products such as JDE, MMS, SAP, SAGE, Kerridge, and Diapason, and can even incorporate bespoke accounting and back office packages. For example, the customer may use SAP for data warehousing, inventory control, central ordering and so on. Ocuco has developed custom interfaces for SAP; delivering continuity of product, pricing, promotions through the organisation with either SAP or Acuitas as the primary system.

Our experience incorporating third-party systems saves time and effort for our customers with their ERP integrations. Ocuco’s team of developers understand the complexities of spectacle and contact lens dispense and validation, are highly proficient in optics, and experts in optical software.

E-commerce

Ocuco offers Enterprise customers E-commerce systems that can integrate their extant website with the Acuitas Enterprise platform; stock, catalogue and patient prescriptions can be accessed through the internet service allowing a company’s patients to purchase prescription spectacles and contact lenses online. The major advantage being that, as the patient’s prescription was recorded with the company, theirs is the only site which can facilitate such sales. Benefitting patients requiring new, replacement or top up orders, and are inconvenienced or otherwise unable to visit a practice in person.

Enterprise customers can also enable Ocuco’s Web Diary scheduling service, allowing new and existing patients to log in, view available time slots and book appointments, based on the live Acuitas Diary, for any chain practice they wish. With these facilities Enterprise users can provide services to their patients 24 hours a day, every day of the year, maximising potential appointments and sales without any additional staff workload.