Milo: Building the Future of Pet Healthcare

A Major Gap for Vet Clinics

NYC-based Milo’s vision is to revolutionize pet healthcare through better software. Milo’s founding team first partnered with a group of vet clinics and learned first-hand the technology pain points facing vet businesses; outdated software systems that don’t integrate properly, a severe lack of modern messaging tools for customers, difficult and confusing UI for clinicians, and bugs that led to everything from lost data to double-booked appointments. Ultimately this gap meant lost revenue and margin for clinics and a poor customer experience for pet parents.

But Milo envisioned a better way; a modern, easy to use, b2b SaaS ‘all-in-one’ platform so clinics could efficiently manage their day-to-day practices and massively improve the experience for their customers. Their goal- software that would not only increase profits but could improve pet healthcare outcomes overall.

From MVP to Architecting the Future

Initially engaged to develop an MVP for the customer-facing portal, Whitespectre developed a close, fast-moving partnership with Milo early on. We quickly moved from working on one components to helping Milo architect and build their keystone ‘all in one’ solution. Milo’s scope for their two-sided platform was ambitious; not only did it include comprehensive customer-facing components, the ‘back office’ pieces involved a large number of integrations with multiple lab and prescription services. These required complex data syncing with no room for error.

Whitespectre’s tech team for Milo was involved in all aspects of development, collaborating daily with the Milo team. Whitespectre’s executive leadership supported Milo on critical technical decisions which were key for scaling the product.

2,000+

new patients acquired in the first 12 months after Milo opened a new hospital

53%

reduction in phone volume compared to hospitals not using Milo texting.

Early Wins: Pet Telehealth

Within a year, the collective Milo/Whitespectre team deployed a first version of the end-to-end platform for the company’s own veterinary clinics. From launch, there was a rapid and invaluable iteration cycle. Clinicians provided daily first-hand feedback on using the new tools and capabilities during their practice. Our team quickly turned those learnings into optimizations for the product, delivered continuously and safely. (Move fast, but don’t break things!).

The positive business impact- even in the earliest days- was compelling. When COVID hit, Milo was in the enviable position of already offering the pet telehealth tools that clinics needed to thrive in the new environment. From Evan Maridou the CEO, “Our texting product is bar-none the best in the industry, and the foundation of everything we have built. And every single Whitespectre team member we’ve worked with has been a part of building it”.

What started as a single project has turned into an ongoing relationship and a team that has scaled nimbly with our needs. Whitespectre consistently delivers incredible work for some of our most complicated technical (and business) challenges. I have and will continue to recommend them every chance I get.

Evan Maridou
Co-founder & CEO

$20M+

payments processed on the platform over the last year

Achieving the Full Vision

During the next year, the team completed the core features and optimizations to launch the product to external clinics, and successfully migrated and launched these initial customers.

In addition to launching within new clinics, Whitespectre is now working to enable Milo’s seamless integration within existing software to expand its hospital customer base. Another upcoming expansion will be a standalone app portal for pet parents, increasing the number of Milo end users from hundreds to thousands. Today, our three year partnership continues as the company grows its base.

20+

integrations with core business tools, from communication services like Slack and Twilio to interfacing with Lab services and complex synchronizations.

Finally! An app that offers rewards for things I actually want to buy for me and my family. I’m so impressed by how easy it is to earn points. I’ve been using this app for about a month and I absolutely love it"

- App Store User Review, June 17, 2020

The outcome

As an integrated partner across development and product, Whitespectre enabled Merryfield to bring their mission to users with the launch of the Merryfield Everyday Rewards iOS App in June, 2020 with 16 brands. We continue to work with Merryfield today as the company expands its user base and adds new brand partners each month.

In its launch-ready version, users can simply download the app, create an account, then discover clean label brands and earn rewards when they buy their products. Features include brand discovery and favoriting, opting into special offers, an easy shopping list view and smart notifications tied to shopping and recommended offers.