Orthopaedic products maker Bill Lemon believes in four things: product quality, service, people management, and most of all cashflow
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Entrepreneur: Bill Lemon, Former Managing Director
Company: Biomet Australia Pty Ltd
Business type: Marketing and distribution of orthopaedic products
Founded: 1979
Turnover: $10M - $50M
Head office: North Ryde, New South Wales
Contact details: +61 2 9878 6100
The Biomet Australia Story
When a company consistently reaches or exceeds its own growth targets in the range 23-27% per annum, it must be doing something well. In Biomet’s case, Bill Lemon would say they are doing four things very well - product, service, people and cashflow.
In the orthopaedic products market, ‘clinicals’ - results of independent, peer-reviewed and published tests on patients’ hip, shoulder or knee replacements over 8-15 year periods - are all-important. In 1995, when clinicals for Biomet’s Mallory-Head Hip replacement began to show percentage success rates in the mid-to-high 90s, the orthopaedic community became very interested. In subsequent years, Biomet repeated those success rates with shoulder and knee replacements.
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Key learning points:
- Product quality - Offer products that are tested and proven.
- Service standards - Give service that is expert, reliable, timely and accurate.
- People management - Be accessible to all your people; delegate; give them opportunities.
- Cashflow - Look after your cashflow and the profit and loss will take care of itself.
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Lemon says: “Biomet is one of those companies that is always trying to do better. The philosophy is to look for new ideas all the time and to take pride in your results.”
The company invests considerable time and effort to inform and train Australian and foreign surgeons and hospital staff about the best application of Biomet products. Full-day meetings for over one hundred surgeons feature live surgery beamed in by satellite. This is routinely followed up with videos, lectures, workshops, practice runs on dry bones, and assistance provided to operating theatre staff by salespeople (many of whom have a background in nursing, theatre or surgical skills).
“Service is equally important as product,” says Lemon. “Hospitals are not renowned for their organisation in ordering things in advance. We have cases where hospitals will ring up and have forgotten to order what they need while they have a patient on the table.” Service means giving hospitals the product and procedure knowledge as well as getting product out in a timely and accurate fashion.
A major part of the service lies in providing a knee-replacement technique that allows the patient to return home, fully mobile, on the same day as the surgery. Biomet is already well down the track towards the next level of that service - returning the patient home totally pain-free.
Lemon’s approach to people management rests on three principles: accessibility, delegation and opportunity. He says: “You’ve got to get away from your desk, get around and talk to your people, looking at what they’re doing, asking, helping, being accessible when they are ready. Once you start to grow you need to realise that you can’t do it all, that you need help so the skill of delegation is important. We are always giving people an opportunity, giving them a go. It’s surprising how much they blossom and really give back.”
Lemon works to a monthly cash-flow budget showing sales and expenses and this allows him to project his financial situation at year’s end. He says: “If I want to keep my expenses down a bit, I can. It doesn’t give you ultimate control but very near it. Cashflow is what it’s all about.”