It is a truism that in business, if you are not going forward, then you are going backwards. Sitting still is not an option if you want your practice to succeed and to thrive.
While many practice owners know that this is true, the realities of running a busy clinic, managing a team of staff, meeting the needs of patients, and ensuring that all of the nitty gritty tasks around paying the bills and keeping the doors open can sometimes get in the way of actually growing the business.
Finding the time to monitor the performance of your business and your team, and to keep abreast of the needs of your patients, and potential new patients - is hard and can feel a whole world away from the clinical practice that is the core of the business.
It is an area that many practice owners need help with, but some simple tools can really help to make a difference to how much you understand about your business and begin to demystify the process of identifying what you need to be doing to promote growth & development.
Practice management software is a key weapon for any business growth strategy. The correct software monitors and tracks every aspect of your practice performance, from appointment book heat-mapping and chair occupancy, through treatment type popularity and ADY per clinician and recall uptake.
The best software augments these core reports with a whole range of wider metrics to allow you to develop granular insights into how specific treatments, clinicians and promotions are performing. Lead analysis will also show you where your new patients are hearing about you and how their spend with you is profiled over time.
But you probably don’t have the time to get into the detail of this, to extract the data that you need from your system, and then to understand what it really means and to identify any trends in growth, shrinkage or stagnation. Having access to the information that you need is not the same as being able to use it purposefully or strategically.
That’s why this rich data should be easy for you to access, with quality practice management software presenting the data in a dashboard of graphs and tables that provide a range of easy to read snapshots of performance over time.
With a quick glance as you scroll through your performance metrics you can focus in on key areas and begin to understand the critical factors that underlie particular success or underperformance. This kind of dynamic visual overview is a powerful tool to keeping a busy practice owner or manager abreast of the core fundamentals of business performance.
The dashboard is not only an essential tool for easing the growth planning process, it also makes the ongoing monitoring of performance against targets a quick and easy process, based solely on actual data. If your practice management software isn’t delivering critical data to you in an easily accessed and understood format then you are really making life more difficult for yourself than you need to.
The optimal solution to accessing performance metrics is to use a Cloud based system which will allow you to login from your phone at any time to access real-time information at a glance and really ensure that you keep fully on top of what is happening in your business and what impacts your strategic decisions are having.
It is clear that when it comes to business growth and development for dental practices, knowledge really is power. The more that you know about what is happening in your business across the widest range of metrics, the easier it is for you to identify your areas of strength and weakness and to develop clear and measurable strategies for attracting and retaining patients, maximising spend, and improving outcomes across the board.
The right practice management software is at the heart of this - providing accurate data, but which is really easy to understand and access. With this powerful tool you can really set about unlocking the full potential of your business.
To find out more about how Aerona can help you to achieve this, please contact us today to request a demo!