Purchasing Control & Inventory Management Software for Dental Healthcare Offices
- Company Overview
Dentistry For Children is a leading dental health center that specializes in all areas of pediatric dentistry and orthodontics. It has locations throughout the Southeastern United States in Georgia, Virginia, South Carolina, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. Delayed and error-prone dental supply orders affected the quality of dental healthcare the team could provide. Making purchasing as efficient as possible was vital to business success.
- Why PLANERGY
Dentistry For Children couldn’t get purchasing and inventory under control across its 60+ locations. They were using Great Plains for accounting, but didn’t have a system for spend management or any kind of inventory software for their dental practice.
Key Challenges
- No dedicated spend management system in place
- Excel and email were being used to create and track purchase orders
- Ordering process was decentralized across 60+ locations, resulting in higher prices for supplies, order mistakes, and delayed deliveries
- No ability to analyze and report on inventory and expenditure
Key Benefits
- Centralized purchasing in one system, making it paperless, faster, and more streamlined
- Reduced costs by managing inventory more efficiently
- Provided local clinics with more purchasing freedom through customized permissions at the local level and an automated vendor catalogue
- Better budgeting with greater visibility into spend management across entire organization
The Story
Customer
Multistate pediatric dental health chain
Key client
Head of Purchasing and Real Estate
Industry
Healthcare
Company Size
180 employees
Before PLANERGY
This chain of dental health centers needed to gain more control over its purchasing process. The company was using Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains for its accounting functions, but didn’t have a spend management system in place to manage purchasing.
The company’s process was extremely labor-intensive and outdated – 180 staff in over 60 locations used Excel and email to create and track orders. Each individual clinic emailed its orders to one person at the main office who was responsible for approvals, rejections, and processing. Not surprisingly, dental supply orders were often bottlenecked, which resulted in delayed, duplicate, or incorrect orders. Several times, deliveries were even sent to the wrong clinic. It was clear that something had to change.
The company approached PLANERGY because the Head of Purchasing and Real Estate knew that purchasing needed an overhaul. His primary concern was training the staff, which was spread across several states and not technologically proficient. The team chose PLANERGY because of its best-in-class support and onboarding, as well as its great value.
After PLANERGY
With some best practice guidance from the PLANERGY team around approval routing and workflows, three levels of approval were created: 1) Self approval for items up to a small spend limit; 2) Medium approvals at a regional level; and 3) Large approvals that required main office approval. Once these approval levels were determined, the PLANERGY team completely managed the set up of the workflows.
Implementation was complete within ten days and training consisted of a 30-60 minute session with key stakeholders that was held completely remotely. Any questions that came up within the first few weeks after training were answered on an ad hoc basis. The team was particularly impressed with the speed and quality of onboarding support. Within a short time, 122 users across all departments and regions were using the system regularly and purchases were happening far more efficiently.
The company now has more control over purchasing than ever before – the purchasing process is fully automated and centralized within PLANERGY. The Head of Purchasing and Real Estate now has a real-time view of how spending happens across the entire organization, and can explore how individual clinics contribute towards the bigger picture. Dental inventory management is no longer a mystery as each clinic has full visibility into stock levels. With automated vendor catalogues, each clinic can order what they want at the best price, when they want it – without going over budget. By setting individual user permissions and limits, dental supply orders are processed quickly and easily because each clinic manages their own orders; the main office is no longer a bottleneck. The clinics appreciate the autonomy and freedom they now have to order dental supplies because of PLANERGY.
Implementation was handled so successfully that the team decided to manage Receiving and Accounts Payable within PLANERGY. Now, everything that is ordered can be tracked for delivery, vendor invoices are automatically matched with purchase orders, and overspending has been eliminated. Improving overall efficiency has helped this dental health chain continue to provide top quality care to its customers, and employee morale has improved since the team has been empowered to manage their own orders.
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