As with any business, an understanding of how a dental practice is performing is vital to tackling challenges and maximising opportunities. Most practice owners have ambitions and long-term goals, yet daily pressures can often take precedent in the moment.
To prioritise growth, a firm handle on key metrics is important, and this all starts with setting meaningful and measurable Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). In this way business owners and managers can unlock potential in a way that’s manageable and targeted.
Why benchmark performance?
It can be all too easy to get caught up in day-to-day minutia when running a fast-paced business. Any dental practice owner will relate to that, with the industry currently facing unprecedented challenges and pressures. Yet, there are ways to navigate these obstacles and even grow business in the process.
Having full knowledge of these hurdles and transparency of the inner workings of the business is the foundation. Business progression is a journey, and a roadmap is required to achieve success. Like any journey, setting out blind and without a plan will only hinder development. The purpose of identifying KPIs is to restore focus, allowing practice owners to keep the bigger picture in mind and make sense of how each element feeds into this.
These so-called SMART KPIs are:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
The power of KPIs
Ultimately, the process is about uncovering facts on where a business is, and visualising where it needs to be, using specific, key metrics to get there. Data is important here, but it’s much more than a number crunching exercise, the goal is to make sense of the statistics you gather and relate them to the bigger picture.
Typical KPIs for a dental practice will help in achieving:
- Increased patient satisfaction
- Reduced costs
- Increased efficiency
Goals with this focus enable long-term prosperity based on an evidence-based strategy for growth. Software of Excellence recognises how crucial this is to the success of a dental practice. Using the right tools can help dentists gain sight of practice performance and plan a successful future for the entire business, and the people within it.
Customer Success Programme
Software of Excellence’s Customer Success Programme is designed around this premise, providing customers on the programme with monthly “magic numbers”- a set of statistics that shows a practice how well it’s performing against KPIs such as:
- Patient Revenue
- Chair-time Utilisation
- Short-notice Cancellations
- FTAs
- Recall Effectiveness
- Average Hourly Earnings
- New Patients
- Workflow Compliance
All data-related content requires a context to make sense of the numbers, so the programme also provides data from top-performing practices, which helps to give businesses a benchmark, allowing comparisons which can help further drive and motivate success throughout the team.
Dedicated support
Navigating the challenges of the recent past and now those which are being faced in the future in order to grow a practice requires the right support from experts who understand the industry. As well as uncovering the data, Software of Excellence’s Customer Success Programme provides dental practices with a dedicated business coach who will provide one-to-one support. By working in partnership, practice owners can gain the insight they need to reach their growth goals.
Software of Excellent is here to help practices find the right one-to-one support and achieve long-term success. To find out more about how Software of Excellence can help build dental businesses contact us now.
