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2009
Industry Profile: VisionWeb VisionWeb’s online ordering service makes it easier than ever before for eyecare providers to manage ophthalmic product ordering. As an open and neutral company, VisionWeb has connections with hundreds of suppliers of spectacle lenses, contact lenses, and frames. This broad connectivity allows practices that use VisionWeb to experience the benefits of online ordering, while maintaining relationships with the suppliers they know and trust. VisionWeb’s ordering service is also equipped with useful features like trace file uploading, which helps ensure accurate order processing, and online order tracking, which gives the practice access to real-time information without having to call their lab. For added convenience, VisionWeb’s online ordering service is integrated with industry-leading practice management systems, allowing users to order electronically to their suppliers without having to access the VisionWeb site or re-key order information. Recognizing the benefits of VisionWeb’s services, the AOA partnered with VisionWeb to help bring these benefits to the practice through VisionWeb’s AOA Royalty Program. This program allows eyecare providers to contribute non-dues revenue to their state affiliate, just for ordering on VisionWeb. VisionWeb pays a royalty to participating AOA affiliates each time its members place an order through VisionWeb. This year, VisionWeb $45,194 in royalty payments to participating state affiliates. VisionWeb is proud to support the AOA and is dedicated to providing services that help independent eyecare providers succeed. Visit www.visionweb.com to learn more. AOA News: Volume 48, No. 8, December 2009
Rice Joins VisionWeb as Director of Sales
VisionWeb Announces LOTY Honorees
VisionWeb Announces 2009 Lab of the Year Honorees
June 2009 | Return to the Top Are you looking for avenues to attract new business during these financially hard times? How about ways to get those existing patients you haven’t seen in years back in the office? The answer to both these questions lies in online marketing. Even when your practice closes for the day, the Internet works for you by allowing new and existing patients to learn about your practice’s services in the comfort of their home whenever they like. In fact, more and more consumers are researching eye health concerns and information on frames, lenses, and contact lenses, and are even trying to locate eyecare professionals (ECPs) in their area online. As Donna Lehmann, Marketing Communications Manager at First Insight, points out, “Patients expect ECPs to use the Internet as a marketing tool as it’s no longer considered leading edge, but more of a standard way to do business and to remain competitive in this fast-paced world.” Follow these helpful hints to help you market your practice online. The Must-Have Web Site Practices that want to create, manage, and host an affordable Web site in one location often prefer using a Web site builder service. First Insight’s Web site builder, optometry.net, lets the doctor determine the content and functionality by managing the site anytime with the ability to link PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Flash, ZIP, html, and other video and audio files. ECPs don’t need to purchase any special software or learn HTML programming. Eyefinity’s eWeb Extra Web development and hosting technology includes user-friendly (also no HTML required) professional templates tailored to eyecare practices, along with five e-mail addresses and optional appointment scheduling. eWeb Extra also features a helpful Web site marketing guide for users. If you are a VisionWeb member, you can work with its customer service team to create a practice Web site at no charge. All the content posted on the site is controlled by you with the help of customizable templates. An appointment scheduler also allows patients to easily search for available appointments without the assistance of your office staff. The Right Links For help growing and maintaining your contact lens business, for example, ECPs can link to Eyefinity’s ReorderContacts.com. This service has the ability to compete with discount chains and other online contact lens companies by offering your own Web-based lens service. Patients get the convenience of ordering contact lenses online 24/7 through your site while you retain the ability to approve and verify each prescription to ensure patient compliance and quality care. Greg Marko, Director of North America Marketing for Transitions Optical, Inc., emphasizes there’s no shame in using existing content for your site. “If your practice serves children, for example, it’s not necessary to create your own ‘kids corner’ to catch their attention,” he said. Visit eyedidntknowthat.com/partners to download a link to this site, which offers interesting and fun content, such as information about eye health and the principles of vision; an interactive Fun and Games section, including an “Eye-Q” trivia test; and a virtual lab visit. Transitions also offers the Eyeglass Guide at EyeglassGuide.com. This engaging link lets users answer lifestyle questions and then visually builds a pair of eyeglasses based on their responses. Users can print out a record of their customized eyeglasses to take to your office—giving you a foundation for addressing their eyewear needs. Another good link is 3D-Eye Online animated educational videos powered by Eyemaginations, Inc. “Be seen as an expert in your field and lead new patients to your doorstep with an online library of educational eye health care articles on vision problems, eye diseases, contact lenses, and more,” said Lehmann. Get Found The optometry.net Web site is immediately “search-engine” ready once it’s created. You can use the Site Promotion Manager to fine-tune Meta tags—what search engines look for and use when listing your site. Using the Site Promotion Manager, you can create your own keywords, making it ready for search engine submission. In addition, when you work with Web site developers and hosters, many will list your site in their own search engines for consumers to search by location or doctor name. Other Opportunities This month, optometry.net will enhance its e-mail newsletter feature by adding easy-to-use templates for optometric newsletters, past due notices, recalls, and thank you letters. The online e-newsletters provided by Websystem2’s Patient Communication System include both vision-related and general-health articles. Select pre-written articles from a menu or write your own. Downloadable coupons are big incentives to get new and existing patients into your office. Participating in blogs, forums, and online chats are other great ways to attract patients. Once you have an online marketing presence, you can virtually sit back and relax as the Internet grows your practice. Vision Care Product News: June 2009
April 2009 | Return to the Top Vision Web
June 2009 | Return to the Top AUSTIN, Texas—Industry Internet portal VisionWeb will present royalty payments totaling $45,194 to state optometric societies affiliated with the American Optometric Association. The royalty payments reflect product orders placed by those societies’ members via VisionWeb over the last 12 months. The number of participating state societies is up 25 percent this year, and the number of qualifying accounts increased by 6 percent, according to VisionWeb. The amount of royalty payments declined by about $2,000 compared to the royalties presented last June, the company noted. AOA members automatically earn royalties for their state affiliates by placing orders through VisionWeb. Once an account reaches 1,200 orders placed annually, those orders contribute toward the affiliate’s royalty payment, which is calculated as a percentage of the transaction fee paid to VisionWeb by the supplier receiving the order. “Adoption of VisionWeb’s ordering service by independent eyecare providers continues to grow, making it possible for us to provide this level of support to the AOA state affiliates despite recent market conditions,” said Ken Engelhart, VisionWeb’s president and chief executive officer. VisionMonday.com: 6/19/2009
VisionWeb Sweepstakes to Launch in April NEW YORK—VisionWeb executives are here at International Vision Expo East telling attendees about the Internet portal’s latest promotion for eyecare providers, the Money Madness Sweepstakes. The sweepstakes is designed to reward practices for ordering through VisionWeb via the VisionWeb site or an integrated practice-management system, according to the company.
AUSTIN, Texas—C. Thomas Crooks III, OD, a former president of the American Optometric Association, recently joined industry Internet portal VisionWeb as professional relations advisor, to serve as VisionWeb’s primary liaison to eyecare professionals and professional organizations and provide “strategic advice to the VisionWeb team on behalf of eyecare professionals,” an announcement said.
A new advanced searching feature allows eyecare professionals (ECPs) to search for contact lenses based on several categories including lens type, manufacturer, color, series, wear schedule, pack, and UPC. When the product is found, ECPs have the choice to order one product at a time or to order multiple products using the new Grid View feature. In addition, the new contact lens engine offers a Fast Order feature, which allows ECPs to scan the UPC barcode of a contact lens product and automatically add the product to their Item List. This timesaving feature will make it easy to order products to fill their in-house stock. For more information, contact VisionWeb at 800-874-6601 or visionweb.com. Excerpt From E-Tech New Product Gallery, Vision Care Product News: March 2009
Eyewear B-to-B Even before the economy took its current turn, the business-to-business implications of the Internet presented immediate opportunities for eliminating paperwork and saving time for businesses in every field. With today’s climate sharpening the need to reduce costs and to improve productivity and efficiency throughout ECP practices, optical retail, supplier and lab operations, there is new momentum behind the growth in the number of people doing a portion of their business online. Far from the initial skepticism created by the initial dot-com boom and bust, there is now a willingness to engage in the resources available across the optical industry as email and the currency of the Internet has become more familiar and an ingrained component of doing business 21st century style. Leaders at the industry’s largest portals, Eyefinity and VisionWeb, are reporting that integration efforts among suppliers and systems and practices have progressed to the point where they are scaled to accommodate a great variety of needs on the part of ECPs and retailers. User numbers are growing and transactions are growing, they report, as more people in more practices take advantage of the computer and the Internet’s capabilities in their daily business. At VisionWeb, Ken Engelhart, president and CEO, observed, “Yes, if the overall top line of consumption is flat or down it will affect everyone to some degree. But as we see it at VisionWeb, the whole category of electronic connectivity is a growth category, nowhere near mature. More people are moving every day to doing a larger portion of their business online. It’s more important than ever for ECPs to be as productive as they can—suppliers, too.” Today, Engelhart reported, there are some 80,000 registered accounts on VisionWeb; some are multiple users at one practice or retail company. An estimated 75 percent of all registered accounts are in the U.S., ECPs using either the VisionWeb.com portal, practice management integrations, or third-party Web sites powered by VisionWeb’s technology. The remaining 25 percent are accounts using an international Web site or international practice management integration, powered by VisionWeb’s technology. He noted, “We are running about 30 percent or more ahead in weekly transactions since the year started—and that doesn’t include claims processing. Several things are impacting this. In the U.S., there’s traction in people beginning to be less fearful to adopt e-ordering in general. Further, in the past year or two, VisionWeb has continued to add suppliers to its mix—nothing makes utility easier than having a broad enough supplier base to e-connnect users.” Its supplier ranks have grown from 365 a year ago to approximately 450-500, according to Engelhart, in virtually every optical product category, from labs to spectacle lenses, contact lenses and a growing roster of e-connected frame companies. VisionWeb’s equity partners include Essilor of America, Johnson & Johnson Vision Care, Advanced Medical Optics, Jobson Medical Information, Marchon Eyewear, the American Optometric Association and Transitions Optical. Engelhart said, “Our equity partners are industry leaders, however, VisionWeb’s mission from the outset has been and continues to be the ‘open and neutral’ portal.” A full list of affiliates and integrated technology partners and industry companies is posted on www.visionweb.com. Over at Eyefinity/OfficeMate, which is the business solutions division of the VSP family of companies, Jim McGrann, president, commented, “If you take a look at the combined entity, what we focus on is to be a provider of business solutions to help practices run more effectively, to put technology solutions into practices that help them be more efficient and provide a great return on investment. We have about 25,000 ECPs who visit Eyefinity every single day. The main thing that brings them there is processing insurance claims, including VSP claims. But as time has gone on, more than 60 percent of the business we do comes from sources outside of VSP, since doctors are processing claims from other commercial and government plans. “Of that 25,000, some 5,000 are now actively using other services like eBuy, eLearn and eLab to order products and services as well as to take advantage of other training and practice management programs for their staff. A lot of the real future opportunity is education, explaining to people who are using some of our services that other options can create real efficiencies for their practice,” McGrann said. VisionWeb’s Engelhart summed it up: “In a tough environment, you have to manage much more tightly than before. Our message is ‘Take advantage of online.’ There’s never been a better time to explore it.” —Marge Axelrad, Editorial Director Vision Monday Volume Number 23:03, Issue 3/09/09
March 2009 | Return to the Top Each of the optical industry’s big Internet B-to-B portals offers a range of services which bring e-connectivity to practices’ management systems, insurance claims’ processing and suppliers’ systems to facilitate product ordering. The merger of OfficeMate and Eyefinity “enables the web ‘front end’ to be the OfficeMater/ExamWriter solution for practices,” pointed out Eyefinity’s president, Jim McGrann. In addition, capabilities like eBuy, eLab and the expanding section, eLearn, offer many other options for eyecare practices and optical retailers. Input from a team of eyecare practices is helping Eyefinity prepare a significant expansion for eLearn, McGrann reported. “We are developing a series of training programs that span everything from helping new staff members get trained on the basics of optics and eyewear all the way through the business management of the practice. A number of our doctors are using it already and we expect to ramp up this dashboard later this year to provide a full suite of eLearn programs.” Eyefinity’s eBuy features promotions and training seminars from a growing roster of frame supplier partners which can be run directly through the system. The site also features its popular Top Sellers report and a “My Dispensed” feature which enables users to see the frames they’ve dispensed, facilitating ordering and reordering decisions. The latest enhancement to OfficeMate/ExamWriter, the 8.5 version, will be introduced later this month at Vision Expo. Among its many new features, 8.5 will bring in electronic remittance advice and a patient “Out of Pocket” calculator. Stated McGrann, “We encourage doctors to be the ‘CEO’ of their practice; increasingly they can start to see the value VisionWeb recently introduced a refreshed “user interface” as part of its contact lens ordering service for VisionWeb members. Similar to VisionWeb’s spectacle lens and frame engines, the contact lens engine displays unique product catalogs for each contact lens supplier. A new advanced search feature allows users to look for contact lenses based on several categories including lens type, manufacturer, color, series, wear schedule, pack, and UPC. When the product is found, users have the choice to order lenses one product at a time, or to order multiple products using the new Grid View feature. In addition, the new contact lens engine offers a Fast Order feature, which allows users to scan the UPC barcode of a contact lens product and automatically add the product to their Item List. This timesaving feature will make it easy for users to order products to fill their in-house stock. All selected products are stored in an Item List, or shopping cart, until the order is complete, making it easy to place a single bundled order for multiple products to a supplier. Bundling orders like this is more efficient and saves the eyecare provider in shipping charges. When ordering contact lenses on VisionWeb, users have the ability to ship the order to the office, or directly to the patient. Patients benefit by receiving their annual supply of contact lenses direct to their door without having to come back to the office. VisionWeb’s insurance subscription business saw a 30 percent increase last year, according to president and CEO Ken Engelhart. “We have an exclusive arrangement in the eyecare space with Emdeon, one of the largest clearinghouses in the U.S. for processing claims. (Emdeon was formerly known as WebMD, but the company split out the consumer brand “WebMD” from the B-to-B brand, “Emdeon.”) VisionWeb members have access to this which helps them manage the whole process for a large range of commercial and government plans. Said Engelhart, “It includes real-time eligibility and authorization and claims status and ERA, electronic remittance advice, all of which helps doctors get reimbursed sooner.” And, noted Jessica Clark, VisionWeb’s director of marketing and business development, “We are not just passing business through to Emdeon, rather, we add value to the clearinghouse product with our extensive training/hand-holding and issue resolution process.” Clark said, “We’re also getting ready to launch a new sweepstakes to encourage members to take advantage of ordering from multiple suppliers. The new ‘Money Madness’ program, which will launch April 5, will offer the chance for registered VW users to win weekly and two grand prizes in American —Marge Axelrad, Editorial Director Vision Monday Volume Number 23:3, Issue 3/09/09 |
