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Dental software is a difficult thing to decide upon. Lot's of startup or recently taken over practices consider an update to the business. This update often includes management processes and central to this is the dental software that the practice uses.
Its all too easy to settle for what everyone else does, maintaining the status quo and playing it safe going with one of the traditional providers but if you venture off into the frontier of dental software it turns out that its' come on a long way and can improve your business greatly.
Here are the top 5 things to consider when picking dental software for the practice.
1. Cost vs Value
If you go for bargain basement dental software you get bargain basement software. In our experience of migrating people from other providers what this equates to is software that simply is not secure (i.e leaks patient data) and is unpleasant to use. What we believe at Dentally is that dental software should be good value for money. This means providing beautiful, highly functional and highly secure software. Beyond this base level we believe that when your practice team is spending 6 hours plus every day using dental software that experience should be as pleasurable as possible. This takes me to my next point.
2. Involve all stake holders in the process
When looking into a new practice management system to run your practice on, you need to involve all of the stake holders. What this means is that everyone from front of house staff through to part time practitioners should be asked what problems they have. Once you have surveyed all of these problems you should engage with a dental software provider and ask them how they can help solve these problems.
3. What are you looking new software to bring to your practice?
You should look at dental software like a new hire. If it was a person what challenges are you hiring them solve? Is your staff overloaded corresponding with patients? Can you 'hire' dental software like Dentally to alleviate some of that pressure. Look at the jobs to be done and ask can the software help you do these jobs.
4. Will you and your staff enjoy using this software?
As I previously mentioned at Dentally we think great value technology is a pleasure to use. For us this is a huge requirement because your staff will be working with this system all day. If the practice management software is cumbersome and there's a lot of 'friction' to it's use your practice team will want to spend as little time using it as possible. This likely means rushing through tasks or resorting to paper based methods. To pick great software, ensure that the software is easy to use, all the workflows make sense and also make sure it is aesthetically pleasing. So much software tailored to dental practices features terrible design, YOU DESERVE BETTER!
5. Will the software grow with your practice?
Finally your practice is going to grow and so is your team. How is your dental software going to grow with you. A lot of other software providers are happy to sit on stagnant products that are built with old technologies. These systems do not meet the modern needs of a practice trying to cater to increasingly more fickle patients that will go wherever they can get the better patient experience. Ensure you are picking a provider that is continually evolving there product making it better every week.
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