For sports fans, the month of March is special. The post-Super Bowl lull is finally over (although this year the Winter Olympics filled the gap quite nicely), college basketball takes center stage, the Masters is a couple of weeks away, baseball season begins and playoff hockey is just around the corner. If you’re a sports fan, the excitement and anticipation felt during the month of March is hard to beat. And this year, not to be outdone, the animal health industry is undergoing its own version of March Madness. Sanofi-aventis and Merck officially announced their plans to combine Merial and Intervet/Schering-Plough businesses, Pfizer and Boehringer Ingelheim are rapidly revealing their plans in the post-Fort Dodge era, Butler and Schein are holding their first national sales meeting as one company, distribution agreements are being re-written on some of the industry’s most important products, and we’re still fighting through a recession that has everyone working harder and smarter to stay in a growth mode.

Wow… For Veterinary Advantage, it’s an exciting time. It is our chance to step up and provide value to our readers and advertisers. In times of change, people need solid information and insight. We will do our best to provide it – both in the magazine as well as through our electronic publications. We hope articles like “Game Changers,” which examines the activity in the flea/tick segment of the business, and the Sales Meeting article on Heartworm, an educational piece another important category, will better prepare you to bring value to your customers. In times of change, knowledge is a very powerful tool. And last, please be sure to read “GPOs: The Verdict is Out” which starts on page 20. I spent 25 years on the human side of the business and GPOs remain one of the industry’s most emotional topics. Originally created for the hospital market to contain costs, they deliver tangible value to the hospital customer, allowing them to save money on their purchases by leveraging their purchasing power with a number of other facilities while outsourcing their contracting functions. And with billions in annual hospital purchases, the GPO business is a lucrative one.

As business has migrated from the hospital to alternate sites (that look a lot like the animal health industry) such as physician offices, surgery centers and nursing homes, the GPOs have followed. In these markets the volume is smaller, in many cases it has to be broken down into individual units of measure, and it is usually delivered in a van, not a tractor trailer, yet the contracts don’t always account for these differences. Driven by a fear of hospital pricing coming into their markets by new and large competitors, many alternate site suppliers originally embraced alternate site GPOs and would likely stand behind those decisions today regardless of the cost to their businesses.

The dynamics in the animal health market are different. We don’t have a hospitaltype supplier ready to bring much lower pricing in the market. But today the GPO model is beginning to hit the radar screen, and if successful, it is likely the suppliers have the most to lose. So what is our best collective response? Clearly explain to your customers the value of doing business with you and your company. And then prove it everyday, on every call …. and watch your business grow.