Eye On Equipment
Knowing when it's time to upgrade
By Susan P. Tarrant

Are you getting everything you can out of your in-office edging equipment? Are you getting the best possible return on your investment; saving valuable time as well as money; and serving your patients thoroughly and efficiently, all of the time?

If you're not certain that the answer to these questions is "yes," you might benefit from an equipment upgrade.

Sure, upgrading capital equipment means making an investment. But if you're edging on outdated equipment, especially pattern edgers, an upgrade would pay for itself in no time and actually start saving you money. Or, if you're spending more time edging than you can afford, an upgraded edger would do the work in less time, freeing you up to spend more time on your business, or on your life.

It can be a tough decision to change the way you've been doing things, especially if you're among those people who subscribe to the "it's worked for me all these years, I'm not going to change my philosophy now" point of view.

Showing customers the return on investment through charts illustrates how quickly new equipment pays for itself and saves the practice money. "It's really a no-brainer chart," he says. "We can show how much you can save by upgrading. It's not a question of investing, it's a question of saving."

Your equipment vendor can produce such charts and customize the information to a particular dispensary.

Tim Aiken, marketing director of Briot-Weco USA, manufacturer of both the Briot and Weco lines of in-office lab equipment, says she will go so far as to produce a business analysis for the dispenser that outlines financial as well as hard-to-quantify factors.

"We like to be able to show how new equipment can impact a business from a marketing viewpoint as well as a financial viewpoint," Aiken says. "We find other opportunities for them, so they can do rimless jobs, they can do all the premium materials, and they can make those high-end sales." Modern equipment plays a large role in that.

"The most successful practices I've seen realize that equipment has a finite lifespan, and they think long-term rather than short-term," Aiken says. "They know to use sales reps as resources to inform them of what can benefit their businesses."

To help you decide if you're losing money and wasting valuable time by sticking with your old equipment, consider these reasons to upgrade.

1. You're sending premium lenses to an outside lab instead of doing them in-house. Premium lenses cost more to edge in an outside facility. If your equipment isn't capable of processing a poly or high index job reliably, it's time to upgrade. Today's new automatic patternless edgers are capable of handling premium lenses with a high degree of accuracy. This is important, as lens manufacturers continue to come out with new lens materials, such as Trivex .

2. You don't promote premium lenses to your patients because of in-house processing difficulties. Our equipment experts tell us they know of many practices that undersell patients on the potential for premium lenses because concerns about spoilage when edging these expensive lenses. Promoting only CR 39 lenses with no coatings is a lost opportunity for profit. You're also cheating your patients out of their potential for customer satisfaction and the opportunity to get the best possible product for their needs.

3. You spend an average of more than four minutes on each lens job. Today's automatic edgers are fast, allowing you to complete most lens jobs--trace to finish--in an average of four minutes or less. Older edgers can take as long as 10 to 15 minutes to do the same job. And if you're still using a pattern edger, you're spending as long as 20 or 30 minutes per job, including the time needed to fish through the files to find the right pattern or to make a new one.

Aiken explains that switching from a pattern edger to a new automatic patternless edger can represent a savings of at least 10 minutes per job. At a rate of six jobs per day, that's a savings of an hour a day. Over the course of a year, it can mean a savings of up to six weeks.

"That's pretty impactful," he says. "What else could be done with that time? Could you spend more time with your patients? Could you spend more time working on your business instead of for your business?" If your staff does the edging, think of the extra time they'll have for other tasks.

4. Your equipment requires a high degree of skill to operate, and limits your staff flexibility. Anyone who can follow simple computer prompts can learn to operate modern equipment. Its high degree of automation creates an ease of use that is unprecedented in the category. That means you can save money on less-skilled staff, and you and your staff can multi-task.

"It's very simple to operate, and other people in the dispensary can use it instead of the doctor or one trained person all the time," says Smith of Santinelli. "Instead of having to baby-sit the edger in the back room, you or your staff can be up front doing other things, tending to other facets of the practice or business."

5. The overall quality of jobs you're turning out is not consistently up to par. You obviously want the best possible product for your patients, and they expect nothing short of excellence from you. But when that doesn't always happen because your edger isn't capable of excellence on all jobs, or operator error keeps the re-do rates high, it's time to think about upgrading. New automatic edgers can not only handle every job well, they can do the job with little operator interruption, which reduces the margin for error.

6. You need help in financing before you can even consider upgrading. Never before have there been so many options to finance new equipment. Leasing rates are particularly attractive right now, and offer the opportunity to leverage your investment from a tax standpoint with a minimal cash outlay. Talk to your accountant to determine the best plan for your business. And, many vendors offer attractive upgrade pricing.

If your business fits any of these scenarios, or you think it's time to upgrade your lab equipment, talk to your equipment vendor. Your rep should be able to illustrate a savings of time, money, and effort that will make such an investment a wise one.