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Cal Wilson / August 7, 2024

Average cost of healthcare data breach nearly $10M

A new article from Healthcare Dive has taken a great look at the extra expense healthcare providers face when it comes to data breaches. You can read the whole article, here.

Here are a few of the key takeaways:

  • Healthcare remains the most expensive industry for responding to and recovering from data breaches, a rank the sector has held since 2011.
  • The average cost for a breach in the industry this year was $9.8 million, a decline from 2023 when the price tag reached $10.9 million.
  • Still, expenses from healthcare data breaches far outstrip other sectors. Finance, the second costliest industry for data breaches, reported an average cost of $6.1 million.

Investing in the proper software and practices to prioritize cyber-security is critical.

Cal Wilson / July 22, 2024

A Leader’s Duty to Financial Proactivity

In business, strong fiscal leadership has as much to do with preventing overspending as it does with innovating new ways to generate revenue. However, in an unpredictable economy, facing challenges like inflation, supply chain difficulties, labor shortages, and more, this is an increasingly difficult feat. As a leader in your company, you have a duty to financial proactivity – but how do you do that in the face of rising obstacles?

Proactivity isn’t punitive.

Reducing your spend – and thereby saving money – can sound punitive at a surface level, like going on a diet. No one likes being stingy or feeling like they must make budget cuts. Those decisions can be bad for business and staff morale.

Proactivity, in contrast, can look like a lot of different things, and not all of them are a painful exercise.

Think about indirect expenses.

Saving money can be harmful when it means making cuts to staff, services, or cutting corners with quality. Those decisions are sometimes unavoidable, but not what we recommend regarding a proactive strategy for long term financial health.

Instead, think about your vendors. Specifically, those for your operating costs. Things like your phone and internet services, courier, credit card processing, facility supplies, software, etcetera. Although these aren’t the core expenses your company has to produce or offer its services, they are critical to operations, and they certainly add up within your company’s budget. In fact, when you put them all together, indirect expenses can sometimes add up to as much as 20-30% of your overall spending.

These expenses are often overlooked.

Because these aren’t the core expenses in your budget – like staffing or the cost or product materials – it’s not unusual for these expenses to go unquestioned. The cost of a phone plan is the cost of a phone plan, right? And not much can be done for credit card processing rates, lots of people assume. However, this isn’t the case.

Oftentimes, vendors can charge more than is fair because their customers are missing two crucially important things; time and expertise in the service they’re paying for. Most C-level staff simply do not have the time to evaluate monthly or sometimes weekly invoices for billing errors and rate creep. Likewise, these invoices are often so deliberately complicated, that if you’re not specifically trained in that language, it’s like parsing out hieroglyphics.

In my experience, working with companies to lower these expenses, the time barrier is biggest component that allows these expenses to fly under the radar, building and building until they become a genuine budgetary problem.

Proactivity pays off.

When it comes to recurring, essential expenses – like those mentioned above – the sooner you reduce costs, the more money you save over time, the more of your revenue you hold onto. When it comes to these indirect expenses, sometimes the best thing corporate leadership can do is outsource this concern, to find an entity with the expertise and specialization to help them. Whether this be a cost reduction consultant, a group purchasing organization, or other professional service, utilizing these resources can give your business a competitive advantage in a difficult economy.

Cal Wilson / July 15, 2024

Can indirect cost procurement help your dental practice weather the storm?

Here’s a universal truth – difficult economic times often lead to difficult choices. The choices can be even harder if you’re a business owner or manager. With your company and your staff relying on your leadership, the stress relating to financial decisions can be overwhelming.

Dental practices may be among the many businesses to feel the challenges posed by inflation, supply chain issues, and staffing shortages. With consumer dollars stretched thin, your regular patients may even feel unable to afford regular dental care. Faced with such challenges, many businesses turn to cutting staff or reducing services.

Rather than making a decision that could potentially hurt your business in the long run, consider another, more strategic method of reducing your costs.

How do you cut costs without hurting your business?

The answer is simpler than you think. Instead of cutting staff or services, focus on your indirect operational expenses. Indirect expenses are costs not associated with your cost of goods sold or labor; this includes cost categories like telephone and internet, credit card processing, waste disposal, facility supplies, uniforms, and more.

Indirect cost procurement is the process of finding sustainable reductions to these costs; meaning they increase your bottom line without impacting your business’ operations.

Altogether, indirect costs can represent around 15% of your practice’s annual budget. In my experience, many business owners either don’t have the time to assess these expenses or don’t have the knowledge or tools to look for ways to reduce them.

Your practice might be overpaying.

My business, Schooley Mitchell, has been working with businesses and organizations across North America for over twenty years, reducing their operational expenses across thirteen different cost categories. We’ve found that many businesses don’t even know they’re overpaying vendors. Our indirect cost procurement process helps reduce these expenses by an average of 28% – which can amount to some significant savings.

For dental practices, one of the expenses we find needs optimizing the most is their merchant services and waste disposal spend. Recently, we helped deliver roughly $28,000 in payment processing savings to a two-location practice. For another dental practice, we found they were overspending by 29% on medical waste collection and 16% for general waste collection. We were able to negotiate with vendors to achieve a fair market rate.

Best practices in indirect cost procurement.

So you want to begin cutting indirect costs, but where do you start? Here is my five-step recommendation for indirect cost procurement that any practice can follow:

  1. Identify and track indirect costs: It is important for your practice to have a clear understanding of what your indirect costs are and how they are incurred. This may involve setting up systems to track and allocate indirect costs to specific projects or activities.
  2. Set budget and cost control measures: Businesses can set budget and cost control measures in place to help manage indirect costs. This may involve setting limits on spending or implementing processes to review and approve indirect cost expenditures.
  3. Negotiate with suppliers: Practices can negotiate with suppliers to get the best possible prices on indirect costs. This may involve seeking out new suppliers, negotiating contracts, and leveraging the business’ purchasing power.
  4. Implement cost-saving initiatives: Businesses can implement cost-saving initiatives to reduce indirect costs. This may involve streamlining processes, using technology to automate tasks, or consolidating vendors.
  5. Monitor and review indirect costs: It is important for you to regularly review and monitor indirect costs to ensure that they are being managed effectively. This may involve conducting cost-benefit analyses, comparing costs to industry benchmarks, and identifying opportunities for cost reduction.

In conclusion…

Admittedly, these five steps can be time consuming and feel a bit daunting. However, 15% or more of your practice’s annual budget is no small thing, and with an ever-changing economic environment, that piece of the pie could go from important to critical in the blink of an eye.

Your time is valuable, and so is your budget. If you don’t want to choose between cutting costs and doing the work you love, I’d be happy to arrange a time to talk about how Schooley Mitchell can do a risk-free analysis of your indirect costs. The best part? Our fees are self-funded from a portion of the savings we find – meaning, if we don’t find savings, our work comes at no cost.

Cal Wilson / July 11, 2024

How to tell a persuasive story

“Storytelling is one of the most powerful marketing and leadership tools there is,” says communications expert Kelly D. Parker. In this TED Talk, she explains how stories make proposals of all kinds more memorable — and shows how you can craft a compelling narrative to connect, persuade and drive meaningful action. 

Cal Wilson / June 21, 2024

“I am so impressed with what Schooley Mitchell did for my business that I invested in a franchise office.”

“I am so impressed with what Schooley Mitchell did for my business that I invested in a franchise office. Now, in addition to our sales and marketing agency, we are working to help other companies save money and increase their profitability!”

Peter Day

President, Endo Networks Inc. North American sales and marketing agency

Let me share my great experience with Schooley Mitchell with you…

1. Endo was contacted by a franchise office of Schooley Mitchell in November, 2022.

2. My team reviewed Schooley Mitchell’s value proposition, and were drawn by the risk-free, no-obligation audit, as well as the contingency-based fee model.

3. We signed Schooley Mitchell’s service agreement in December, 2022.

4. Schooley Mitchell did a preliminary review of our expenses in various categories and determined that the best place to start would be with our telecom expenses. We have many voice and data devices used by our reps in field. At that time, we were working with a major Canadian provider.

At first, we were skeptical that Schooley Mitchell would find any areas of savings because we work our suppliers hard, but there was no risk to find out, and then we would have the peace of mind of knowing if we were getting the best deal.

5. Schooley Mitchell worked with a contact on my finance team to dive deeper into our actual telecom fees. This involved us sharing detailed billing information with Schooley Mitchell, and authorizing Schooley Mitchell to work directly with the telecom providers on our behalf – which they did professionally and effectively.

6. Schooley Mitchell presented us with their findings in a detailed report, and I was floored – we could stay with our current provider and reduce our telecom costs by 40%, or we could move to a competitor and reduce our telecom costs by 48%! If we moved providers, the competitor would cover all our transition costs and provide us with better tools than our current provider for managing our wireless devices. We chose to move to the competitor in March, 2023.

At first, we were skeptical that Schooley Mitchell would find any areas of savings because we work our suppliers hard, but there was no risk to find out, and then we would have the peace of mind of knowing if we were getting the best deal.

7. It took three months to make the transition, and Schooley Mitchell looked after every step. I wish we had moved faster to provide the initial approval to Schooley Mitchell to work their magic for us!

8. A conservative estimate on the 36 month savings is:

Year 1 savings $22,000
Year 2 savings $38,000
Year 3 savings $80,000
Total savings $140,000

We split the $140,000 50/50 with Schooley Mitchell. For us to have $70,000 in net profit, we need to sell almost $700,000 in revenue. After the third year, the savings are all ours.

Our business is growing, and our number of devices is increasing, so the amount of the savings is even more significant in the future. We estimate our Year 4 savings will be around $200,000, all to Endo.

9. Schooley Mitchell is monitoring our costs in several categories to watch for other areas of savings, which gives me great confidence in knowing we aren’t spending more than we should.

Cal Wilson / January 2, 2024

Start 2024 off strong

This year, give yourself the gift of peace of mind, knowing you aren’t overspending on across several essential business services, like telecom, payment processing, waste disposal, small package shipping, eSignature, and more. We ensure our clients are getting the best services at the best price – all while identifying billing errors, eliminating redundancies, and improving efficiency.

Cal Wilson / December 21, 2023

Awards Recipient – Schooley Mitchell Annual Conference 2023

At Schooley Mitchell’s annual conference in Montego Bay, Jamaica, Treigh Hubbard received the following awards:

  • Highest Billings for 2023 (4th Runner Up)
  • Most Clients Obtained in 2023
  • Most EPP Billings in 2023
  • Most EPP Clients Overall in 2023
  • Good News Contributor (2023)

Congratulations Treigh and thank you for all the hard work you do!