Everything else
In the previous post in this little series about integrating technology into dental practice, the considerations that we have had to make and the experience and failures that we've had, I explained how we use Dentally as our practice management system, Dengro as our CRM (client relationship management) system and Xero as our financial management system. All of which bolt together as SaaS software systems, which make the integration beautiful, reduce the amount of time that humans have to spend on repetitive tasks and give us as much data as we need to figure out how we're doing.
In this penultimate post of the series, I just wanted to tell you about everything else, which is another batch of software and technical systems that we use, which filter around everything.
One of the things that you might find interesting is to make a list of your current tech stack, your practice management system, any CRM system you have, your telephone system, what you use for emails, what you use for finance, what you use for storage, what you use for communication etc etc etc.
Our additional tech stack software packages are as follows:
1) Asana
This is an extraordinarily powerful back office tool.
Think of it as a to-do list on speed, which allows us to schedule meetings, keep to-do lists, develop projects and keep track of them, manage people's workloads, manage all our leave forms, manage our training and all manner of systems related to the back office working of a dental practice.
This is master's level tech stack stuff and something that is hard to teach people who don't have a handle on their tech stack but IT companies around the world will use Asana as one of the most powerful tools, and it was recently bought by Salesforce in the United States for an extraordinary sum of money.
As I walked around New York with my family at New Year, there was a massive Asana banner on the side of the huge Salesforce building in midtown New York.
Asana is big news.
This is where our websites are built, and it's our inbound marketing tool.
Again, it's another SaaS software system that clicks and links beautifully with Dengro and with Dentally to allow us to integrate everything that comes from the website into our CRM system and to count it really carefully.
Hubspot is expensive, websites are built in this.
It allows us to look at sales through websites and all manner of other tools, and it allows us to build the best, most functional websites we can.
We previously used WordPress but Hubspot integrates much better in with everything else we have.
3) Storage
We use Onedrive for storage (we also use Dropbox in the academy and that’s a duplication we should probably correct).
4) Video
We use Zoom for video conferencing for some of our patient consultations and this is an extraordinary software that allows us to store videos of the consultations that have taken place and even transcribe them for the notes if needed.
5) Surveys
We use SurveyMonkey for in-house and customer surveys, including our net promoter score stuff that we do at the door with an iPad and for all the delegates in the academy.
We also measure how our staff are doing on a daily basis.
6) Communication
We have Microsoft 365 for all the obvious Microsoft stuff, but also including OneDrive, all our email traffic and forms and various other things that we use for our tech stack.
We have Outlook for external communication, and we only use emails externally, and we have Slack for internal communication.
There could be another full blog post on Slack, which has (it’s no exaggeration) transformed our business, in fact, at the present time, I'm dictating my blog on Slack.
It dials in to everything else, is a SaaS software system that allows us to communicate together for meetings, allows us to have asynchronous video and discussions, and also allows us to have any number of teams in the clinic, including a coffee club, a book club and many other things.
Our tech stack is extensive and therefore is expensive but I'm going to explain in the final blog post of the series the benefits of investing in this type of technology to push your business forwards.
Blog Post Number - 3354