The fol­low­ing insight was authored in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Ama­zon Busi­ness and orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished on Mod­ern Health­care.

As the largest den­tal sup­port orga­ni­za­tion in the nation, com­pris­ing over 3,060 sup­port­ed doc­tors in more than 1,800 offices across 39 states and the Dis­trict of Colum­bia, Heart­land Den­tal is a dri­ving force in the U.S. den­tal indus­try. Heart­land Den­tal’s doc­tor-led cul­ture and sup­port mod­el helps empow­er its sup­port­ed prac­tices to deliv­er qual­i­ty den­tal care while effi­cient­ly nav­i­gat­ing the com­plex­i­ties of the health­care indus­try.

Heart­land Den­tal is also a rapid­ly grow­ing orga­ni­za­tion. After record growth in 2023, the DSO worked to build on that momen­tum by col­lab­o­rat­ing to open approx­i­mate­ly 90 new de novo prac­tices through­out 2024. This rapid expan­sion cre­at­ed chal­lenges in oper­a­tional effi­cien­cy, par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cern­ing procurement.

The chal­lenge of pro­cure­ment effi­cien­cy amid growth

Through­out its expan­sion, Heart­land Den­tal real­ized a pletho­ra of rogue Ama­zon and Ama­zon Busi­ness accounts were accu­mu­lat­ing across the sup­port net­work. In the absence of a cen­tral pro­cure­ment man­age­ment sys­tem, pro­cure­ment teams found it dif­fi­cult to stream­line process­es, achieve vis­i­bil­i­ty into tail spend pur­chas­ing, and pur­sue vol­ume dis­counts when pos­si­ble. Lead­ers rec­og­nized that to sus­tain the organization’s growth and main­tain oper­a­tional effec­tive­ness, they would need a cen­tral­ized solu­tion to effec­tive­ly man­age strate­gic sourc­ing needs with­out affect­ing exist­ing work­flows. ​“We encoun­tered typ­i­cal pro­cure­ment chal­lenges asso­ci­at­ed with decen­tral­ized orga­ni­za­tions like ours,” said Angeli­na Davi­to, Senior Direc­tor of Strate­gic Sourc­ing at Heart­land Den­tal. ​“Frag­ment­ed spend led to inef­fi­cien­cies in pur­chas­ing and account­ing and result­ed in lim­it­ed vis­i­bil­i­ty into over­all expenditures.”

To address these inef­fi­cien­cies and the pro­cure­ment process, Heart­land Den­tal began explor­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties in this area. ​“Elim­i­nat­ing the use of mul­ti­ple sep­a­rate per­son­al or busi­ness accounts would also enable Heart­land Den­tal to gain insight into pur­chas­ing pat­terns that could be used to help opti­mize spend­ing,” accord­ing to Tim Faber, Senior Man­ag­er of Clin­i­cal Oper­a­tional Sup­port at Heart­land Dental. 

Progress through con­sol­i­da­tion and integration

Ama­zon Busi­ness pro­vid­ed a com­pre­hen­sive solu­tion to Heart­land Den­tal’s pro­cure­ment chal­lenges. Through a full tech­nol­o­gy inte­gra­tion, Heart­land Den­tal was able to cen­tral­ize its pro­cure­ment process for approx­i­mate­ly 20,000 employ­ees. Crit­i­cal­ly, the tran­si­tion to a nation­al account with Ama­zon Busi­ness enabled inte­gra­tion with Heart­land Dental’s pro­cure-to-pay sys­tem, SAP Ari­ba. ​“We had sev­er­al sup­pli­ers on our Ari­ba Guid­ed Buy­ing plat­form, and Ama­zon [Busi­ness] is a nice fit with those oth­er sup­pli­ers,” said Nicole Young, Clin­i­cal Sup­plies Man­ag­er at Heart­land Den­tal. ​“With all of our sup­pli­ers inte­grat­ed in Ari­ba Guid­ed Buy­ing, it makes Heart­land Den­tal and our sup­port­ed prac­tices more effi­cient — from order­ing to invoice reconciliation.”

With the help of Pun­chout, it is now best prac­tice for Heart­land Den­tal pur­chas­ing teams to place Ama­zon orders through the Ari­ba Guid­ed Buy­ing, a fea­ture of SAP Ari­ba that helps users make pur­chas­es through a stream­lined, con­sumer-like shop­ping expe­ri­ence. Pun­chout gives pur­chas­ing teams easy access to Ama­zon Busi­ness to help achieve pro­cure­ment effi­cien­cies. For employ­ees who have dif­fi­cul­ty break­ing the habit of pur­chas­ing direct­ly from the Ama­zon site, edu­ca­tion is pro­vid­ed on how to uti­lize the Guid­ed Buying.

The com­pa­ny also pro­motes the use of Sin­gle Sign-on, which is a game-chang­er because it makes it easy for employ­ees to com­plete nec­es­sary pur­chas­es. Once users are logged into Heart­land Dental’s Ari­ba sys­tem, they sim­ply nav­i­gate to the Ama­zon tile and are auto­mat­i­cal­ly logged into Heart­land Dental’s Ama­zon Busi­ness account avail­able for use by Heart­land Den­tal employ­ees and sup­port­ed prac­tices. ​“The Sin­gle Sign-On Ari­ba Guid­ed Buy­ing with Ama­zon Busi­ness allows sup­port­ed offices to place orders that will auto­mat­i­cal­ly be allo­cat­ed to their par­tic­u­lar office rather than the use of a cred­it card requir­ing a month­ly expense report,” Faber added.

Fur­ther­more, Heart­land Den­tal has adopt­ed e‑invoicing with Ama­zon Busi­ness, which enables cus­tomers and sup­pli­ers to present and mon­i­tor trans­ac­tion­al doc­u­ments elec­tron­i­cal­ly. ​“The ben­e­fit to using e‑invoicing is that we no longer use cred­it cards when mak­ing Ama­zon pur­chas­es, sav­ing the com­pa­ny and sup­port­ed offices time on cred­it card allo­ca­tions and pay­ments,” said Young.

Improved cost con­trol and stream­lined workflows

By col­lab­o­rat­ing with Ama­zon Busi­ness, Heart­land Den­tal and its sup­port­ed prac­tices achieved sub­stan­tial sav­ings oper­a­tional­ly and finan­cial­ly. On the finan­cial front, Heart­land Den­tal and its sup­port­ed prac­tices have greater vis­i­bil­i­ty of office spend through the new cat­a­log man­age­ment approach, which orga­nizes and presents prod­ucts in ways that pro­mote smarter deci­sion-mak­ing. Irrel­e­vant cat­e­gories are removed from the dis­play, allow­ing sup­port­ed offices to eas­i­ly find items that fit their needs.

Also con­tribut­ing to cost sav­ings is the use of the Asso­ci­at­ed Accounts Pro­gram, which gives sup­port­ed den­tal prac­tices the oppor­tu­ni­ty to join a pro­gram set up through Heart­land Den­tal. Now that Heart­land Den­tal and its sup­port­ed offices are par­tic­i­pat­ing through one account, they are eli­gi­ble to ben­e­fit from dis­count­ed Prime Busi­ness Enter­prise rates while main­tain­ing auton­o­my, accord­ing to Faber. The tech­nol­o­gy inte­gra­tion pro­vides Heart­land Den­tal and its sup­port­ed prac­tices with improved aware­ness and over­sight of its strate­gic sourc­ing process­es, sup­port­ing the growth tra­jec­to­ry. Teams are empow­ered to make informed pur­chas­ing deci­sions by using the Ama­zon Busi­ness Ana­lyt­ics dash­board to track trends and con­fig­ure a cus­tomized cat­a­log where buy­ers can eas­i­ly find pre­ferred prod­ucts.

While improv­ing spend man­age­ment, the col­lab­o­ra­tion has also tak­en much admin­is­tra­tive bur­den off the shoul­ders of its sup­ply chain team, accord­ing to Young. ​“This inte­gra­tion has elim­i­nat­ed the need for the sup­plies team to place orders on behalf of sup­port­ed offices as well as com­plet­ing time-con­sum­ing man­u­al allo­ca­tions at the end of the month for each order,” Young said. ​“Heart­land Den­tal sup­port­ed offices can now place orders for items that they pre­vi­ous­ly had to pur­chase local­ly, thus sav­ing them time and hassle.”

Heart­land Dental’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with Ama­zon Busi­ness helped empow­er sup­port­ed doc­tors to focus more on patient care and less on the non-clin­i­cal intri­ca­cies of sup­ply chain man­age­ment. ​“By tran­si­tion­ing to Ama­zon Busi­ness and inte­grat­ing this pur­chas­ing envi­ron­ment into our exist­ing sys­tems and process­es, we have begun to add more cat­e­gories of spend and are now well-posi­tioned to scale effi­cient­ly for the ben­e­fit of our grow­ing sup­port­ed prac­tices,” said Davito.

About Ama­zon Business

Health­care is com­plex. Buy­ing shouldn’t be. Ama­zon Busi­ness is improv­ing the way health­care orga­ni­za­tions source and pur­chase prod­ucts, mak­ing sup­ply chains more effi­cient, stream­lin­ing con­tract admin­is­tra­tion, and bring­ing com­par­i­son-shop­ping to healthcare.