Interview with Peter Adams, Sycle.net

Topic: Sycle's Growth & Success

Peter Adams

Carolyn Smaka: Hello, this is Carolyn Smaka from AudiologyOnline, and today I am speaking with Peter Adams from Sycle.net (www.sycle.net). Peter, thanks for your time today.

Peter Adams: Thank you so much for having me. It's good to be here once again.

Smaka: To jump right in, I was interested in how you got involved with Sycle. What's your background?

Adams: Prior to joining Sycle, my work focused on political campaigns and messaging. I came on board with Sycle shortly after moving to California from Vermont.



Smaka: I know it's been a busy year for you. Just to get us caught up since we talked with you in 2008, what's happening at Sycle this year?

Adams: Well, so far we're just beyond the halfway point of the year, and 2009 has really been a great year for Sycle, growth-wise and development-wise, as a company. We are close to having 3,000 clinics nationwide using Sycle and are projected to have over 4,000 by the end of FY09, which we are very excited about. Currently we have over 9,000 individual users logging into Sycle every day. We are seeing continued growth on all fronts.

Smaka: That's great, considering a lot of companies are not growing in this economy. To what do you attribute the growth of Sycle?

Adams: I think that there are a lot of things that have attributed to it. Not only do we have several large organizations using Sycle - people with anywhere from 100 to 1,000 clinics - but our largest segment of customers always has been, and probably always will be, the mom and pops. They make up the bulk of our customer base.

In the current economy, especially when things started to get unstable at the end of 2008 and in to early 2009, people realized in these smaller organizations that there was no better or more important time to implement a system that would provide visibility over their businesses.

Sycle's ability to provide detailed and robust real time reports gives people peace of mind by letting them see exactly what is going on in their business. That along with Sycle's ability to increase sales and efficiency - it only makes further sense for people to implement it when times are getting tough.

Smaka: Absolutely. When you have a new customer to Sycle, is it usually someone who is not using any practice management system at all, or are they using other systems?

Adams: We see people come from all fronts, really. In fact, a lot of our growth in 2008 and continuing through this portion of 2009 has been our own current customer base, expanding their businesses. People who have been with us for years calling or emailing to say, "Hey, you know what, I'm opening my third office, my fourth office, my fifth office and I need to get it running on Sycle." We're able to get additional locations set up on Sycle.net in a matter of minutes.

Also, we established a Refer-A-Friend Program, where current customers refer their friends and get them on board with Sycle, too. We've seen a lot of growth from that campaign.

Whether or not someone is starting a new business or has an established one, we find a lot of people are immediately turning to Sycle when it comes time to find a solution for practice management. As far as other systems people may use prior to us, we have seen everything from just home-grown database systems, Excel spreadsheets, and people who still use paper files. We also get many customers who are familiar with practice management systems and have been using one or more for years and are now switching to Sycle. I would say most of our new customers are those who are switching to Sycle from another system. No matter what system a new Sycle user may have used previously, we work to make sure the transition is a smooth one. We are a software company, not a hearing aid manufacturer. Sycle users know we care about our customers, not how many of "our" units they sell. I think people really like that about Sycle.

Smaka: So there are people out there not using any practice management systems?

Adams: Sure, we run across it often. People have in place different systems that they've been using for years, but we always say at Sycle, as soon as you have two database systems or two tracking systems in place, they're always going to be out of sync.

That's why we really encourage folks to get on board with Sycle, because it is an office suite that allows hearing care professionals to house everything in one place. It helps eliminate double entry and keeps everything on track.

Smaka: You mentioned one of the reasons for Sycle's growth is that you are a Web-based software. What are the advantages to using a Web-based system?

Adams: One of the main benefits of a web-based software is that it is constantly evolving. Sycle is a good example of that. It wasn't too long ago when, if you wanted a piece of software, you would have to go out and purchase the product outright. You would purchase a box of discs, and you would purchase licenses for it so that you could have it on multiple machines if need be. And, as that software aged, you would have to request or purchase upgrades from the developer. And in getting those upgrades, chances were you might have to also upgrade your hardware, meaning your computers or your servers or whatever it is that maintains that software.

With a Web-based system, everything's hosted online. So, all you need in terms of hardware is a computer with an Internet connection, which is almost universal these days. It allows the maintenance of the software to be transferred away from the user to the software company.

So as the industry changes, Sycle is able to evolve with it, and our customers are able to see the software that they are using evolve at the same time. That may mean building new reporting features or new interfaces, or adding new hearing aid products and scheduling aspects to Sycle. As these changes happen, all our customers receive an e-mail notifying them of the changes that have been made. The upgrades go live to the Web, and our customers get them for free. This is why Sycle is such a cost-saver and has such a low impact as far as an investment.

A standard software package can cost several thousand dollars just to purchase, not even mentioning maintaining the hardware and so forth. With Sycle, it's just a low monthly fee, with free training and support included for our customers as long as they are with us. We actually discovered something very interesting by playing with a Cost of Ownership calculator. Even if someone were to get a standard software package for free the amount of money one would spend on internal costs and maintenance would far surpass the low usage fees of Sycle. We were actually shocked by the numbers. We encourage people to see for themselves by playing with the Cost Calculator on our website: www.sycle.net/total_cost.php

Smaka: Having never purchased practice management software myself, I had always imagined it would be a big, hefty up-front purchase.

Adams: Not with Sycle. We charge per office location. So, if you have one office, you can, for $149.00 a month, get your clinic all set up and have as many users as you want-it's unlimited. You can check your schedule from home, run reports from home. Any computer with an Internet connection allows you access to your account.

Smaka: You mentioned training. Tell me more about what Sycle offers.

Adams: Training is critical to our success and we are always looking for new ways to ensure Sycle customers receive the best and most effective training. We've got a really great training team, and we've successfully trained thousands and thousands of users online and over the phone. We host several scheduled sessions that encompass different aspects of the system, and they're offered at different times every week.

Any customer can register for these trainings, free of charge - whether it's a new customer that just signed up with us or a customer that's been with us for several years and they just want a refresher course. On the day and time a course is scheduled, everyone logs into a meeting and participates with one of the trainers.

In addition, we offer advanced one-on-one training sessions that can be scheduled in advance with a Sycle representative

Smaka: Or, I guess, if you hire somebody new in your practice, instead of devoting your own time to train that person, you just sign them up for Sycle training.

Adams: Absolutely, we actually strongly encourage that. I always tell people, if you hire a new staff member, please, please have them call us and spend an hour with one of our trainers on the phone, because we'd much rather get them off on the right foot, knowing how to use the system and knowing how to appreciate the system rather than start day one in a really busy office and only be able to learn bits and pieces of it when someone has time in the office to show them.

Smaka: If somebody wanted to test drive or check out Sycle, what would they have to do, and what kind of commitment is involved?

Adams: There's absolutely no risk, and that is what's great. There are no contracts to sign with Sycle. In fact, your first 30 days are free, and the following 90 days, once you're up and running, are risk free. So, you can essentially try it for four months, guaranteed to get any money you've paid back if you don't like it.

In fact, we're taking risk free to a new level. We'll take the risk instead of the customer. From now until the end of the year we are implementing a Double your Money Back Guarantee. If you're not happy with Sycle after 3 months we'll not only refund what you paid but we'll double it.

We strongly encourage people to go through a demo, which you can register for right at our Web site at www.Sycle.net, or if you're ready to sign up, you can also sign up right online. You'll be provided with a username and password to your account within a matter of hours of signing your user agreement.

Our training department then contacts you to schedule training for you and your staff. Of course, we can set up multiple sessions if need be, because we know not everyone can be available at the same exact time. But within a matter of weeks - it can even be a matter of a couple of days or hours depending on your time frame - you can be up and running on Sycle.

And you know what, if it ends up not being something that is right for you, then there's absolutely no risk involved. But like I said, with 3,000 clinics across the country up and running, it's clearly something that a lot of folks are benefiting from and turning to.

Smaka: A big concern for a lot of people with any kind of software is support. If someone has a problem or a question, how does he or she go about getting support from Sycle?

Adams: We have a wonderful support team. Even though our corporate office is based in San Francisco, California, our support team is based out of Birmingham, Alabama, and there are several advantages to that. First of all, time-zone wise, they're easily accessible for our east coast as well as our west coast clients.

In addition to their availability during the work day, they also are equipped with mobile devices for 24-hour emergency service.

Smaka: Now, Peter, what is on the horizon for Sycle going forward?

Adams: Well, Sycle is always evolving. We've seen this even more in 2009. We've released several new features into the system in 2009, and our current customer base has played a bigger part in that development than ever before.

I often tell hearing care professionals when introducing them to Sycle that they're actually looking at a system that's been developed and has progressed thanks to the feedback of their peers. Sycle wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the input we receive from our current customers.

For example, people have expanded their businesses and opened satellite locations. Customers started telling us they wanted to be able to run their reports by groups of clinics. So, this year we released Regional Reporting, allowing people to run all of their reports not by individual office, but by clusters of offices if needed.

We're always looking at ways to provide more marketing support to our customers. Marketing lists are a big center of development for Sycle. This year, we've released new reports that allow people to really reach out to all of the primary physicians that they might have in their database to cross-market for patients.

Even things that are seemingly small details, such as allowing our customers to track messages that have been left for patients, are constantly being added to Sycle to improve our customers' workflow and efficiency. It's these simplicities that make sure the program doesn't get static and keeps our customers happy. And we have some bigger advancements we are also excited to be exploring such as the potential of creating a completely paperless office and new, easier methods of filing insurance claims electronically.

Smaka: Can Sycle be customized for each practice?

Adams: The main framework of Sycle- its reporting capabilities, the appointment scheduler- is pretty standard as we have found this to be the necessary framework for hearing healthcare practices. Every customer that signs up is going to get that full package. But we have made the system quite flexible in many regards as far as providing customers with a selection of fields that they can name themselves. We also provide all users with customizable administrative tables allowing them to set up their own product types, prices, referral sources...the list goes on.

Smaka: You mentioned that Sycle started about eight years ago. How did it start?

Adams: Ridge Sampson, the CEO and founder of Sycle, is also in the advertising industry, and he was doing some advertising and branding work for an industry leader. During his research for that campaign, he noticed a need to help hearing care professionals market and grow their businesses. He realized that the entry point at the clinics, the point of sale, was really where it all happens.

There's so much data to collect in this industry, and that sets hearing care apart from a lot of other medical fields. It is unique the amount of data that is collected and the necessary technology behind it all. So, Ridge developed this full loop system that allows people to collect patient data and trigger marketing off of that. And this loop is where Sycle got its name. You can read Sycle's entire story by visiting our website: sycle.net/about.php#

Smaka: When I think of practice management, I first think of billing or scheduling, but from what you're saying, it sounds like marketing is a key part of Sycle.

Adams: Absolutely, and that's what Sycle was born out of. One of the main features of Sycle is our automated CRM system, CRM being customer relationship mail. Sycle takes data that people enter every day, and allows it to pull a trigger and send out patient mail. So, for instance, if a patient comes into your office and receives a hearing test that warrants a hearing aid, and they purchase a hearing aid, the system will automatically send them a thank you letter. Whereas if they got the hearing test and hearing aids were recommended but not purchased, then the system knows to send them a tested and not sold letter.

Additionally, if the patient came in today and bought a one year warranty, the clock in Sycle starts ticking and in 335 days the system sends them a warranty expiration notice - exactly 30 days before that warranty expires.

It's great, because hearing care professionals don't have to remember to stay on top of all these items any more. It's all done automatically from our bonded mailing house. So, it truly is the closed loop system that the CEO envisioned- it takes those extra steps out of the hands of the busy practitioners that are seeing patients and allows them the time to see more patients and automate the back-end marketing for better efficiency.

Smaka: Peter, it has been a pleasure talking to you. Thanks for sharing the latest information about Sycle. Wishing you continued success and hope to follow up with you later this year.

Adams: Thank you, Carolyn.

About Sycle

Sycle, the number one hearing care practice management system, is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

More information about Sycle can be found at the Sycle Web Channel at AudiologyOnline or by visiting www.sycle.net