Method Procurement Technologies

10 Procurement KPIs DSOs Should Be Tracking 🎯

Procurement KPIs are what a DSO should use to track purchasing performance, cost control, and supplier reliability across every location.

These ten carry the most weight, and we’ll dig into what each one means and how to account for them.

Read more: https://www.methodusa.com/resources/10-procurement-kpis-dsos-should-be-tracking

Most dental practices assume that cutting supply costs means hunting for a new distributor or spending hours negotiating.

The reality is more straightforward and more frustrating, once you see it clearly.

Practices that run lean supply budgets are not doing anything exotic. They have built a system. They know what they buy, how much they use, and what it should cost across multiple sources.

That combination alone, applied consistently, can reduce supply spend by 30 to 40%.

Read more: https://www.methodusa.com/resources/dental-practices-save-on-supply-costs-switching-vendors

Spend management for DSOs: 6 Sources of Rogue Spending 🚨

“In a DSO, rogue spend is unusually hard to see because it is distributed. It does not arrive as one large unauthorized purchase that a controller would flag. It arrives as hundreds of small, reasonable-looking orders spread across locations, each one under the threshold that would in other cases trigger a second look.

That is why it should be considered an overarching spend management problem versus an individual issue. You cannot approve your way out of spending you never see.

The first step is knowing where to look, and in a multi-location group, the same handful of gaps show up again and again while being that much harder to trace.”

Read more: https://www.methodusa.com/resources/spend-management-for-dsos-6-sources-of-rogue-spending

When an inventory management spreadsheet stops working for a growing DSO 👇

“A spreadsheet can carry a single practice for a while. One person updates it, one person reads it, and any gap between the sheet and the shelf gets caught fast because there’s only one shelf to check.

That changes the moment a second location opens. Now two people are updating two files on two schedules, and no one outside those two locations can see either one. For a growing DSO, that risk shows up as stockouts at one site while another sits on backstock nobody reports, and it often isn’t caught until a patient’s appointment gets rescheduled.”

Read more: https://www.methodusa.com/resources/inventory-without-spreadsheet

Case Study: Signature Dental Partners Keeps Supply Spend Under 5% at 100 Locations

“Signature Dental Partners tried three procurement platforms before finding Method. What made the difference was finally having the visibility and transparency to guide its 100 practices toward better purchasing habits, without forcing a change in how they prefer ordering supplies.”

Read more: https://www.methodusa.com/signature-dental-partners-keeps-supply-spend-under-5-at-100-locations

How to Use Data to Negotiate with Suppliers 🤝

It’s no secret that being prepared and well-informed about where your supply budget is going will save you thousands of dollars in the long term.

The difference in the price you pay is often based on your level of organization and preparedness.

Arriving at the negotiation table with a well-developed, data-driven approach creates leverage that your suppliers can’t ignore

Read more: https://www.methodusa.com/resources/how-to-use-data-to-negotiate-with-suppliers

Blog: Spend under management explained: What is it and why DSOs should care 🤔

—

“Managed spend moves through a defined process. It is sourced against known pricing, routed through approvals, and recorded in a system where someone can see it. The rest is spend that happens, gets paid, and disappears from view.

Spend under management can cover every supplier and category, or it can be broken out by location, region, or product group, so leadership can see which parts of the organization buy with discipline and which do not.”

Read more: https://www.methodusa.com/resources/spend-under-management-explained-what-it-is-and-why-dsos-should-care

Case Study: How Motor City Dental Partners Keeps Supply Spend at 3.5% Across 50 Locations 🤔

Motor City Dental Partners has been managing the supply spend process since they were at five locations. As they scaled, they wanted to maintain visibility and control over their supply spend process.

That’s when they found Method. Now their procurement process is scalable with the visibility and controls they wanted at 50 locations and counting.

Read more: https://www.methodusa.com/motor-city-dental-partners

Rush orders happen when a practice runs out of a supply it did not plan for and pays a premium to get it back in stock fast.

For a single location, a rush order here and there feels acceptable.

Across a multi-location group, those off-cycle purchases add up to a budget leak nobody owns, and nobody planned for.

The good news for any operator looking at supply spend: this is the most fixable line item you have.

Read more: https://www.methodusa.com/resources/why-dental-practices-rush-orders