Most dental practices are no longer small enterprises with a single location. The business of dentistry has changed in the last decades and acquisition is one of the popular ways for a practice to grow. Dentists provide a health care service. Health is the product, but dentists, like many health practitioners, are small business owners.
With acquisition being one of the fastest and surest ways to grow your medical practice, the need for customized back-end systems that can speak with each other is paramount for success. For some, this may seem complicated—so complicated that most often inefficiency is the norm as more paper piles up for storage or shredding.
The most impacted back office system you may ask? Accounts Payable. After all, the ability to pay for goods received from vendors is the lifeblood of any business. Business reputations can be ruined with late payments, confusing systems, and high overhead. Research shows that a single employee error can result in frustration, late fees, or even a stop on shipping supplies. Suppliers and doctors talk, and when vendors are not paid in a timely fashion, your reputation and the ability to grow your practice are tainted.
Taking into consideration the often-increased headcount, printing costs, postage, and more instead of growth, your traditional systems may be losing money for your practice, even impeding future growth. The answer may seem complicated if you don’t consider the technological edge available to most small and medium enterprises today. What was a pie-in-the-sky idea just a few years ago is now available to everyone that can use a customized system with less paper, fewer errors, and increased productivity.
Let’s walk through the challenges faced in the AP departments when dental acquisitions occur – Our dental practice is located in Atlanta and has been in existence for ten years. This is a family practice started by two brothers: one went to dental school, and the other has an MBA. They joined forces and, over the last decade through acquisitions, they now own over 175 locations across the country. Dental practice’s digital transformation.
Our dentist focused on making sure that the healthcare providers adopted the best dental solutions, learning from some practices and educating others. Our office/operations manager was great at training the new teams and their customer service was consistent across every office. Our MBA was focused on continued growth when he heard a few rumblings from vendors. After some research, he was able to trace this challenge directly to their AP departments.
Their initial acquisitions were easy to incorporate into their traditional systems. Some acquisitions came with their own proprietary AP software. A few offices were almost in their system, but still had to print out paper to complete their processes. An incorrectly dated invoice had set off a chain reaction, resulting in late payments. Another error resulted in double payments to some vendors. Postage and shipping charges were increasing, and the still necessary manual processes were leading to reduced team morale.
The challenge was clear, but the solution was thought to be complicated.
Was it possible to find a digital system that could be customized specifically for their needs?
A solution that was flexible enough, so their continued growth wasn’t thwarted?
A tool that was easy to use so that employees would embrace the new system?
The MBA reached out to Mosaic. Mosaic implemented the DocStar AP Automation solution. With an internal processing engineer hired to streamline the AP system, the dental office has experienced a savings of over $350,000 in one year.
This resulted in new practices immediately following acquisition being included in the new system, due to the newfound scalability provided. Additionally, the dental practice now:
- Captures all invoices electronically by using standard MFP copiers at locations or getting vendors to send PDFs
- Uses intelligent data capture software to harvest all data from invoices using advanced OCR technology
- Employs DocStar’s workflow to route invoices to approvers who can approve on PCs or smartphones
Automatically updates to Dynamics GP, eliminating manual data entry and lowering error rates significantly - Has increased visibility into accrued outstanding payables and other key info through DocStar’s reporting tools
- Achieved lowered costs of document storage and printing
- Created goodwill with employees, vendors, and leadership
Today, a team of three AP people is processing thousands of invoices per month with much lower error rates, much faster pay cycles, almost no printing costs (in AP), and flatlined shipping costs.
The Dental Practice can now acquire a new provider and completely take over the payables to their suppliers in less than 10 business days!
Mosaic would like to work with you to offer our services if your practice is having similar issues. Call us to learn more about how we can help you achieve your goals.
