Minimizing risk
But both Sightpath and Vantage have seized the opportunity to go
beyond that initial premise. Now they pride themselves on being as
flexible as possible. Their focus depends on what customers need,
says Mr. Swing. "That's really what our business is — it's a service
beyond anything else."
Mr. Gaslin agrees: "We're like the Geek Squad at Best Buy. People
realize: 'OK, I've bought this technology, now what do I do with it?
How do I make it work for me?' It's a very complicated device to run,
and if you're not doing a lot of volume, you get people saying: 'Who's
going to run this today? I don't really want to run it.'"
The idea is to mitigate both technical risk and financial risk, he says.
"I think of our business more as a service. It's a different way to access
technology," says Mr. Gaslin. Sightpath, he says, now has a significant
number of "fixed accounts, where we have equipment that lives there,
and we provide some level of staffing for inventory management, as
well as for managing the equipment and warranties."
Flexibility can be key for a customer like the Allied Physicians
Surgery Center in South Bend, Ind. "We used an outsourcing company
for years and years, but we got so big here, we opted to purchase our
own machine," says administrator Charles Strasser, RN, CASC. So big,
in fact, that Allied Physicians is now considering acquiring a second
laser, and mulling the potential advantages of again partnering with an
outsourcing company. "They seem more flexible now," says Mr.
Strasser. "They're actually willing to place it in our facility and train
one of our technicians to run it. That way we can use it when we want
it and we'll have our own in-house technician."
Such an arrangement would also provide for a trial period, a chance
to see whether volume will be sufficient to justify that second femto.
"If we buy something and end up not having the volume, we're stuck
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