Cliff Traill, head of product – dental at Agilio, discusses his top tips to save unnecessary costs of poor asset management.
The hectic pace of day-to-day activity in a dental practice can mean that the processes of managing surgical, operational, and building equipment are easily overlooked by a busy team who are concentrating on delivering patient care.
However, failing to manage these assets can lead to costly consequences such as unexpected downtime, urgent service callouts and frustration for patients and your team, as well as increasing potential risks to safety or breaches of compliance.
And how do you plan for future expenditure if you don’t exactly know what you have today?
In this article, we address the challenges of asset management and share the top tips to tackle them and save you valuable time and money.
The challenges of dental asset management
It seems increasingly common that dental practice managers and owners are acutely aware of the costs associated with purchasing equipment, only to find themselves falling behind on their asset management as more and more dental equipment is purchased and their ability to efficiently and effectively track their assets diminishes.
Many practices tend towards an asset management model that is dismally insufficient for the needs of their staff and patients, only reluctantly servicing equipment when it really needs it.
What practices can do differently
Currently, practices approach their asset management in various ways, meaning there is rarely cohesion and integration with their inventory systems or their billing and accounts departments.
However, without a system to manage their assets, practices can run into difficulties in long-term planning, unreliable equipment, and spending capital on the wrong equipment at the wrong times.
One solution to this predicament is the digital asset management platform Iservice.
The latest addition to Agilio’s rapidly growing product portfolio, Iservice, is the UK’s first dental-specific application that revolutionises how practices manage their fixed assets, from onboarding to fault reporting, servicing, forward planning and financial forecasting.
Key benefits of digital asset management software
1. Instant access to accurate data
With Iservice, dental organisations of various sizes will benefit from instant access to a single-point, comprehensive overview of all their assets across multiple sites, including their age, cost, and projected end of life.
Agilio aims to cover dental-specific asset management needs whilst providing a valuable tool for financial planning and budgeting.
2. Significant cost efficiencies
Resources are already stretched, so when vital, expensive equipment breaks down, the impact on finances, and patient care, can be huge.
With this in mind, Agilio designed Iservice to give practices a powerful tool to manage assets across their estate and benefit from cost efficiencies while reducing potential health and safety risks.
Having a centralised, up-to-date database of assets results in more predictable servicing costs and less surgery downtime due to faulty or broken assets, meaning practices are operational for longer.
3. Forward planning and comprehensive oversight of the organisation
With Iservice, a practice or group can provide real-world, comprehensive data and improved asset reporting to clearly understand their current financial position and better forecast their capital expenditure and service costs.
Practices will be able to prove that they have a log of their equipment and a regular and up-to-date servicing schedule aimed at preventative maintenance. Therefore, CQC/HIW inspections can run smoother, insurance companies are able to provide more accurate quotes and more favourable insurance premiums.
If you’re thinking of selling your practice, Iservice will make your business easier to value and more attractive to prospective buyers.
Manage your assets with ease
Dental practices and dental groups alike stand to benefit from considerable cost savings, increased time efficiencies and reduced exposure to asset breakdown risk with Agilio’s Iservice.
This intelligent, easy-to-use platform handles everything you need to give you peace of mind and make your assets work for you.
To find out how Iservice can transform your business, visit: www.agiliosoftware.com/dental/iservice.
