How to Avoid Costly Downtime in Your Practice

Why digitising your assets is the key to saving time and money.

By Lee Slater – Head of Commercial at Agilio Software

Having worked for two of the largest dental equipment suppliers and servicers for the past decade, I’ve witnessed first-hand the importance of asset management to ensure practices get the best return on their investments. Without the correct management of your dental assets or an insufficient approach to preventative maintenance, you can find yourself vulnerable to substantial, and sometimes surprising, repair or replacement costs.  

Most practices are extremely busy, with time at a premium. When a fault occurs it’s usually reported via a nurse for the practice manager to follow up. If, through time constraints, a minor fault is not reported, it can quickly escalate into something more serious.  

It’s also no understatement to say that, in the UK, we are currently living through some somewhat bizarre economic times. The cost-of-living crisis, rising interest and inflation rates and the challenges of Brexit are just some factors that have seen the purchase, import and movement of goods become both much more expensive and carry much longer lead times

The cost-of-living crisis, compounded by Brexit, has led to much disruption across numerous supply chains, leading to soaring costs and vastly extended lead times. For the dental sector specifically, inflation has crested over 11%, proving how costly essential goods are for the sector.   

Other influencing factors from the wider economic landscape include rising energy costs, so many practices simply have less available capital owing to drastically higher overhead costs – up to 50% more in some cases. With less disposable income, borrowing starts to become a necessity and rising interest rates have seen the cost of borrowing capital increase sharply.  

All of the above creates the perfect storm where practices and dental groups are seeing a significant threat from the fault and failure of their equipment and having market forces reduce their ability to be agile in the face of adversity.

The Cost of Closing a Practice due to Faulty Assets  

So, with the need to preserve capital at an all-time high and the cost of having a practice closed for a day being somewhere in the region of £1,100 to £1,650, now, more than ever, is the right time to take control of managing your dental assets. Taking a proactive approach to the management and upkeep of your dental assets not only reduces the likelihood of ending up in a position where you need to suddenly purchase vital, expensive equipment or borrow capital to rapidly replace faulty assets; but also means that if you do find yourself in that position, banks can easily see the levels of prior planning and quality management that they need in order to lend money at a more favourable rate.  

Traditional Asset Management  

The vast majority of groups or Dental Service Organisations (DSOs) have very little data on the assets within their estate. Where there is data, it is predominantly stored on a spreadsheet and unless rigorously maintained, that spreadsheet is quickly out of date. Where it is accurate, the time and human resources needed to maintain an up-to-date record are costly, to say the least. Make, model, age, last service date, subsequent service date, serial number, fault, the severity of the fault, and the list goes on. Not only is it an onerous task it’s open to mistakes, whether at a practice level or centrally, which can leave practices exposed to non-compliance challenges and increased downtime. Not only that but if the cost of repairs is not being logged and tracked effectively, then you could be spending vast quantities on a piece of equipment that would be more cost-effective to replace. Recognising this deficiency, Agilio Software developed its digital one-stop, electronically stored, single-platform asset management software – iService.  

The Benefits of Digital Asset Management  

iService answers many of the problems faced by practices and dental group organisations through its comprehensive digital overview of all assets across the practice/group of practices, including their age, cost, and projected end of life. iService facilitates a regular programme of scheduled maintenance aimed at preventative care through alerts when servicing is due, so practices are safe in the knowledge that they have given their assets their best chance at a long and fault-free life.  

Faults and failures are, however, unfortunately, sometimes unavoidable. The best solution when these issues arise is to be as agile and dynamic as possible in fixing the faults promptly. The data collected and stored by iService can be easily provided to service companies so that they can ensure they send the correct engineer with the correct parts and tools for the right assets. If running a dental group, engineer callouts are expensive! Instead of having several separate call-outs, practices can consolidate them into one, saving call-out charges and ensuring that servicing and faults are dealt with promptly. The benefit of planned service downtime vs episodic emergency fixes is fewer wasted staff hours and less patient disruption equalling improved patient experience and a vastly reduced or eliminated need to borrow capital.  

iService can create QR codes for each piece of equipment so that if a fault occurs the nurse can scan the QR code on a mobile device which will then take them to the relevant asset card in iService to report the fault as it occurs. This means that those minor faults get resolved before they become major faults and incur additional costs to the business. 

The benefits of iService don’t end at improving asset management either, as further cost savings can be seen in areas such as insurance premiums. Companies will be more likely to offer a favourable premium on an insurance quote if they know A) precisely what it is that they are insuring and B) that you are taking every precaution to keep your assets in good condition. The utility of iService as a powerful financial forecasting tool means that practices are now more in control of their finances than ever before, allowing for more accurate budgeting and planning. Practices and groups can record financial events such as asset value, service cost, or fault cost and quickly see the value of the assets in the estate in its entirety or at a practice level and know how much to budget for servicing or if an asset should be replaced. This evidence and data can be highly useful for an accurate valuation when negotiating the sale of a practice or group sale when the time is right.  

Finally, iService gives the ability to benefit from economies of scale with service providers. The estate can be viewed as a whole and dependent on how it’s managed if practice managers know that in the next few months, they are going to need several dental chairs serviced, they’ll be able to negotiate better pricing on service kits but also reduce the cost of service contracts. 

How to Know if iService is for You 

For more information on how digitally managing your dental assets with Agilio’s iService can save you time, money and stress while future-proofing your business, please book a demo here.

About Lee
Lee Slater is Head of Commercial at Agilio Software (Dental) and was previously Multi-Practice Business Manager for Henry Schein and Head of Corporate Sales of Dental Buying Group (DBG). He has a successful 20-year track record in sales across a number of industries, the latter half in the dental market. In his most recent role at Henry Schein, Lee worked with a team of 35 field sales staff and led a group of specialised business consultants to triple the revenue of the company’s small to mid-sized corporate sector. At Agilio, Lee is responsible for leading the sales and corporate accounts teams to support DSO clients and identify growth opportunities.