Innovation
The Best Time To Prepare For The Future Is Now Alison Farber
A
s DSOs begin to pivot from focusing on rapid growth to long-term profitability, their investment strategies must become more diverse, with greater emphasis placed on sustained ROI.
Over recent years, DSOs have looked to accomplish their growth goals primarily by buying up privately owned practices. However, more often than not, that hyper-focus on acquisition does not deliver strong profit margins. Growing a company’s overall revenue is important for maintaining financial health, but just increasing income does not guarantee profitability. For dental businesses that want to increase profits while continuing to expand, there is more than one way to get there. INNOVATION COMES IN MANY FORMS Innovation is all the rage in business these days. There are “innovation teams,” “innovation leaders,” and the phrase “return on innovation” is even appearing in corporate boardrooms.
One of the more interesting definitions is as follows: “Innovation provides the ability to leverage invention in a way that pays a tangible return.” As competition heats up in the dental industry, and consolidation trends continue, those organizations that are more willing to try new ideas will be more likely to win. Improving the efficiency with which your company operates is not normally considered a groundbreaking approach. However, for fast-moving DSOs that are adding new locations and new people on a regular basis, it can be difficult to make sure everyone is following standard operating procedures. Companies that are bringing in new employees and adding new systems and processes can easily lose the ability to see and control what’s going on across all locations. For the leaders of these organizations, streamlining how you manage the basics is a critical and, yes, innovative strategy. Adding new systems before things get out of control will prevent small mistakes that can lead to big and costly problems. As DSOs continue to add practices and grow in size, problems naturally multiply. If executives are forced to devote too much time to putting out operational fires, they may miss valuable opportunities to increase revenue and labor productivity.
But what, exactly, is innovation? As DSOs continue to grow, those that put clear processes in place
18 Fall 2023 Dental Entrepreneur
DentalEntrepreneur.com
