Customer profile: Valerie Papuga, CVBL, Evanston Animal Hospital

Moderator of the IDEXX Neo Users Group on Facebook. Live concert and street festival fan. Volunteer at animal healthcare events from Chicago to Central America. Valerie Papuga, 34, has a heart of gold and generous spirit to match. We chatted with her to discover what drives her passion to help pets, people and Neo users. 

What's your favorite ice-breaker question when meeting new people? 

I like to ask what people are passionate about. Not only does that help you learn a lot about them but they're more willing to talk in detail. 

So what’s your passion? 

Helping animals. I spend a lot of my time working with animals but before COVID hit, I was doing a lot of volunteer events. I'm doing a rabies clinic tomorrow with my practice owner.  

What was one of your favorite volunteer experiences?  

A couple of years ago a bunch of shelters and rescues got together and did a parvo prevention project on the South Side of Chicago where they don't have much funding for it. We had a couple weekends where we'd vaccinate dogs for parvo and rabies and microchip and do other parvo prevention projects afterwards so that they would get the booster vaccines too.  

Where else has your passion taken you? 

I love traveling and helping animals, so I Googled “Doctors Without Borders for animals” and World Vets (worldvets.org) popped up. It sounded perfect so I jumped right in and went to Central America. You have three to four days where you're doing 10 hours of spaying and neutering animals, exams, and vaccines, but you also have free time. You're not in touristy areas, so you can actually see the culture and spend time with the locals.  

You're also a big concert and festival fan. What's the best show that you've seen recently? 

Earlier this year I went out to California to Cali Vibes. It was amazing: I even got to see Wu Tang Clan! In Chicago in the summer there are festivals basically every weekend. This weekend there's going to be a Chalk Art Festival where artists will be drawing on the sidewalks and streets. I'm going to walk over and check it out. 

How did you learn so much about Neo and what inspires you to share it? 

In middle school, I taught myself how to build websites. I started getting into eBay and realized I could apply my HTML and source code skills to make my listings more attractive by adding colors and images. I’m basically self-taught with Neo too. I enjoy sharing tips because people get overwhelmed with technology; the more tricks you learn, the more comfortable you get learning and doing more.  

What's one aspect of Neo you really enjoy using? 

Inventory. Neo makes ordering and receiving products a lot less tedious especially since it integrates with Vetcove. I also like how easy it is to readjust reorder points, and view items that are running low.  

What's one piece of advice you’d give Neo users who want to deepen their skills? 

Learn more about source codes: just Google it. It makes editing templates and tweaking consults a lot easier and there's so much more you can do. When you look at the source code, especially in templates, you're able to understand what each line means and how to change it.  

You recently worked with the Neo product team to provide feedback on some features that are in development. How was that? 

It was neat to see what’s going on behind the scenes, the input they're getting from other practices, and that they're actually applying it. The fact that they wanted my opinion was great. When people ask about Neo, one of the main things I say is “they listen to what you say to them. They want our opinions on how to improve it!” 

If a friend at another practice told you she was considering Neo, what would you tell her? 

I would highly recommend it. It's very user friendly and there are constant updates coming out. Again, the fact that the developers actually listen to what the people using it say they need is amazing. And the updates just come out. We'll see it at the top of the page like, "New update. Click here." It just happens.  

Our thanks to Valerie for sharing her passions and her outlook on Neo with us. 

Interested to see what Neo is like for yourself? Book a demo today!