According to dental supplies company GPSIDental, there is an unwritten rule that all dental clinics should aim to spend no more than 6% of their annual expenditures on dental supplies.
It’s usually easy to stick to this percentage, but as time goes by, we often stand idle as the costs increase and the percentage starts to climb to over 10%. When it exceeds this level, it will greatly affect the overall profitability of your dental office, which should sound alarm bells.
Resist the temptation to Hold a Lot of Supplies
There is a very simple approach that can stop this from happening. It is possible to easily cut costs by ensuring that we don’t purchase needless amounts of stock, to the point that there are loads of boxes of gloves in your store cupboard! I know for a fact that I have done this before, but it is a habit that is easy to get out of.
Appointment of a “Purchasing Manager”
You don’t need to hire someone else to do this job – just add it to an existing employee’s responsibility. It turns out that if a person is responsible for purchasing supplies for your dental clinic, they will be more likely to track all purchases you make in the practice and ensure that you don’t overspend. If more than one person buys supplies on a regular basis, it is difficult to track purchases and costs will rise rapidly to unsustainable levels. When you allow all staff members to purchase supplies, they will likely over order to ensure that they have enough for their own personal needs, as they think that they would prefer to have too much than too little, so as not to be inconvenienced by under ordering. If you provide a small bonus to the “Purchasing Manager” for meeting budget, this will motivate them to maintain a tight reign on the supply spend, and this is a technique which is known to work very well. Just make sure that they don’t cost cut too much to the extent that there are not enough dental supplies for the staff to do their job, as this could adversely affect patient care and affect the day to day running of the dental practice, which is something you want to avoid at all costs.
Shopping at Superstores
It is usually not necessary to buy all essentials from a professional dental supply company, as some supplies can usually be purchased at supermarkets such as Wal-Mart, and the cost of things like pens are a fraction of the cost at Wal-mart compared with a supplies company. These small savings add up over time. A good mantra I always use is a “ABC”, which stands for “Always Be Costcutting”. If you can practice this behaviour, your employees will quickly learn from you and do this themselves, saving the dental office money.
Use the online dental supplies website
When you order online, dental representatives do not need to come to your dental clinic to accept supply orders, as all orders are placed online by you. These dental representatives charge a large percentage for organizing the delivery of your expenses, so you can save a lot of money by using a dental supplies website such as GPSDent.com, as they cut out the middle man allowing you to get your dental supplies at the best possible price.
