Australasian Dentist Magazine March-April 2023

CATEGORY 120 AUSTRALASIAN DENTIST COLUMNISTS By Berris Saultry Helping you achieve your 2023 goals Berris Saultry With the start of the new year comes the perfect time to plan and review your practice’s key objectives so that you can proactively move towards your goals in 2023. These goals may be focused on getting your practice’s finances in check, increasing the efficiencies in your practice, or achieving a better work life balance. Whatever they are Dental Innovations is here to help you achieve your goals through our suite of member services. At the centre of everything we do at Dental Innovations is our goal of assisting independent practice owners to reduce their operating costs and in turn become more profitable. As inflationary pressures continue to increase, this goal has never been more important. With consumable prices continuing to increase we recommend that all practice owners take the time to review their ordering systems to ensure their teams are ordering efficiently and are actively reviewing their practices pricing on consumables. Setting a clear goal for the percentage turnover spent of consumables is a good way to focus the team on reducing costs. 5-6% of turnover is an achievable goal for practices through focus and working to a budget. This percentage can be calculated out into an annual dollar amount using your own practices figures. This can then be broken down to a monthly budget for expenditure on dental consumables to provide a focused and accountable way for teams to reach this goal. One of Dental Innovations most utilised services is our Online Ordering Portal which provides the system and tools to help members reach their goals in dental consumable expenditure. This system provides access to significant reductions in dental consumable costs for our members and is helping our members hit their targets in this area. Through the DI Online Ordering practices can order from multiple companies at one point, access exclusive DI pricing, set budgets and extract management reporting creating an efficient, accountable and transparent ordering process for dental practices. In addition to this, savings in staff time is considerable both in dollar term as well as time. To learn more about our online ordering system contact Sally at headoffice@dentalinnovations.com. au and she will be able to organise a demonstration. Marketing is another critical element for independent practice owners to review frequently. With increasing pressure on discretionary spending it is vital that dentists keep constant presence in their local area market to keep new patient flows and the activation of their existing patient base. We recommend taking the time to objectively review your digital marketing assets and social media strategies to ensure they are up to date and effective in communicating to your market utilising the right marketing mix to reach the patients you want. To help in this area DI members have a marketing service available through Zen Dental Marketing at a concessional pricing. Zen Dental Marketing are there to assist dentists in all aspects of their digital marketing from website design and build, to SEO and Google Ads. If you are considering upgrading your website, Zen Dental Marketing are currently offering 10 free competitive analyses, to identify the important differences between your website and your competitors’ websites, ranging from SEO to user experience, and even whose page loads faster. To register for one of the 10 complimentary reviews available, please contact Taylar at taylar@ zendentalmarketing.com.au The protection of your most valuable assets, your dental practice, through insurance is critical. And whilst all practices will have practice insurance in place, many dentists fail to actively review their level of cover which can result in inadequate cover or even being under insured which can result in a substantially reduced payout if a claim is made. With insurance premiums anticipated to increase by 10-25% this year, we encourage all practice owners to take the opportunity to get their current insurance reviewed by Dental Assured. Not only will Scott (Director of Dental Assured) review your current cover, he will also provide advice on additional cover where he thinks it may be required. Examples of this are management liability and cyber risk which are becoming critical for practice owners to have in place. If your policy is due soon, email your renewal notice to scott@dentalassured. com.au and Scott will provide a review and quote for you. If your premium is due later in the year, please take the time to send Scott the renewal date of your policy and he will make a note to contact you several weeks prior to this date to review your policy and provide a quote. Our goal at Dental Innovations is to assist independent practice owners to achieve success in their individual practices. This is achieved through over 750 dentist joining us under our network to collaborate and use their critical mass to create solutions and savings across the entire operation of a dental practice. If you are not a DI member, then we invite you to contact us to learn how we can help you achieve your goals and together let’s make 2023 our best year yet. u To learn more about Dental Innovations membership contact berris@dentalinnovations.com.au or call on 0400 001 172 to book a discovery call.

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