​Paws-itive Transformation: How Odoo Unleashed Dextronix’s Efficiency

During this interview, Dextronix CEO and President Thomas Jacob sat on his office couch with his dog, Murphy, lying comfortably beside him. Thomas is a proud pet owner along with 66% of U.S. households, with 51% of these households considering their pets to be “as much a part of their family as a human family member.” [1] As any pet parent knows, the well-being of their animal is of the utmost importance– however, the animal medical device industry fails to reflect this value. As Thomas puts it, this sector of the healthcare industry is “underserved”. Dextronix is here to change that.

In animal medicine, veterinarians see the same complexity of diseases in pets as doctors do in humans– from cancer and heart disease to diabetes and broken bones. However, there are very few companies in the world that design, develop, and manufacture medical devices specifically for use in pet animals. While the veterinary industry provides a critical service to a majority of U.S. households, human medicine dominates the field. Often, veterinary institutions resort to repurposing human medical equipment, resulting in ill-fitted devices that fail to address the unique needs of their animal patients. Having manufactured medical devices for humans in his previous job, Thomas recognized this underserved market and saw the pressing need for an animal-equivalent company. Thus, Dextronix was created.

Dextronix utilizes established technology from the human medical device industry to create high-quality implantable medical devices and advanced monitoring technology for pets. This includes pacemakers, airway devices, and EKG equipment. The company has been proudly offering its products to veterinary clinics and universities at an affordable price point for 14 years, allowing more pet owners to get their furry companions the healthcare they deserve. Dextronix’s customer base spans close to 30 countries, including the U.S., Canada, parts of Europe and South America, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.

 Dextronix’s Veterinary EKG | VET-ECG: Wireless Diagnostic Resting ECG System

Thomas Jacob and his team at Dextronix are dedicated to improving the health of the animals they love, and their products are a significant step in achieving this. However, as their business continued to grow, they began to experience operational challenges that necessitated a new, robust software solution. Enter Odoo– the perfect fit for Dextronix’s evolving needs. 

Despite being a small business, Thomas says that Dextronix faces the same complex challenges that a much larger company would encounter. Before finding Odoo, the company used over nine different software programs to manage its operations. Each software platform ran independently from the others, leading to challenges in their daily operations as the company grew. As Thomas stated, it became “cumbersome to operate all these different operating software that do not work together.” Tasks as simple as editing the contact information for a client became unnecessarily complicated, as their different software didn’t “talk” to one another. Thomas gave the example of editing a customer’s zip code in one platform, which was not reflected in the others. This led to errors, redundancy, and wasted time spent confirming the accuracy of information. 

Thomas explained in detail how a typical workflow used to go with their old systems all operating independently from one another:

 “We take in orders from a customer, and then our warehouse team has to fill that order. That starts normally with an order that comes in from a website– WordPress. WordPress uses WooCommerce, which is very strangely integrated and doesn't really work well. It uses a payment portal that is Stripe or something else that is also weird. And then it creates some sort of a communication that we reroute from the website into our email server. And then from there, the information is taken manually and entered into an accounting system like Quickbooks. They cannot even do order confirmation. So now we have to create an invoice. From the invoice, it has to go into inventory management, and then they have to prepare the shipment of the implantable device… And then they have to go into UPS Logistic software that runs in a browser, and then have to replicate the invoice information, the customs documentation, the tracking information, the product information, and then create the shipping label and ship it out. And from there, they have to go back into our CRM, look up the customer, and then send them the email with the tracking information and invoice.”

In other words, it was a painstaking process to simply fulfill customer orders, leaving a lot of opportunities along the way for human error, overlooked information, and inefficiency. Thomas emphasized that their old way of doing things required more manpower and dedicated time to do what Odoo now accomplishes automatically. “If a trained team is doing this, it takes about one hour and three people in the old system. And in the new system, in Odoo, it takes, technically, one person five minutes. Because the moment the customer orders [a product], the rest is seamlessly transmitted.”

Odoo has made a positive impact on Dextronix’s day-to-day operations in very tangible ways, with one application in particular having a sizable impact on the company’s workflow. Thomas explains, “The Accounting module is currently our favorite. It comes with a built-in dashboard that you can customize that creates an insight and overview that we need for our daily activities to see where we are. And that is really, really excellent.”

The Accounting application's dashboard gives an overview of all financial tasks​

In a larger sense, Dextronix benefits from the overall integration and practical functionality of Odoo. Information only has to be entered once, meaning “everything relates and pulls data from the same spot. That is the trick of Odoo.”

The increased efficiency created by Odoo gives Dextronix the freed-up time and manpower to focus on furthering their mission– spearheading new technology to help the health and well-being of beloved pets all over the world. The company continues to bring new, life-changing medical technology to the animal health market, and has even partnered with large organizations to eventually introduce these innovations to human medicine down the line.

“We believe - and this has proven true - that Odoo will significantly improve our process flow, our communication flow, it harmonizes documentation, and it increases overall control and oversight into our business operations. And this is accomplished. This is exactly what you did.”

[1] Forbes. (n.d.). Pet Ownership Statistics: How Many Americans Have Dogs, Cats and Other Pets? Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/advisor/pet-insurance/pet-ownership-statistics/#:~:text=Dogs%20are%20the%20most%20popular,fish%20(11.1%20million%20households.