Episode 15 - SMART SUPPLY MANAGEMENT: UNLEASH THE POWER OF METHOD

Karen Wood welcomes Alison Farber, Vice President of Sales and Partnerships at Method Procurement. They discuss the evolution of dental supply ordering from clipboards to sophisticated software platforms. Alison explains the concept of procurement and its importance in managing costs and efficiency in dental practices. The conversation covers how Method's software simplifies the procurement process by automating price checks, tracking orders, and managing budgets, significantly reducing overhead costs. Alison also describes the flexible implementation of Method's solutions, including inventory scanning, budget tracking, and comprehensive reporting features. The episode emphasizes the immediate and long-term financial benefits of adopting modern procurement practices for dental offices.

HOST: Karen Wood manages the VDA Member Perks program. She has been in the dental field for over 20 years, having experience as a dental assistant, managing a periodontal practice, and working with dental teams as a sales consultant and trainer.  

GUEST(S): Alison Farber is the Vice President of Sales and Partnerships at Method Procurement Technologies, where she leads sales and partnerships to help dental practices modernize procurement and accelerate growth. Beyond the dental space, she’s actively involved in supporting local start-ups. She serves as a mentor to emerging leaders, sharing her experience to help the next generation of entrepreneurs thrive. Outside of work, Alison is a busy mom of two, an avid paddle sports enthusiast, and a terrible gardener.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

VDA members use promo code “VDAMEMBER25” to receive a free scanner and 50 tags valued at $200.

Method – methodusa.com

VDA Member Perks: https://www.vdamemberperks.com/ The Virginia Dental Services Corporation (VDSC) was created as a subsidiary of the VDA to recommend products and services to the members of the VDA. By utilizing the VDA Member Perks-endorsed vendors, VDA members can enjoy the peace of mind that comes with using recommended companies, take advantage of special benefits, and receive discounted pricing, all while supporting the VDA. Since 1997, the VDSC has been pleased to provide over $3.7 million in funding to the VDA, VDA Foundation, VCU School of Dentistry, and others. 

EPISODE CREDITS:

Producer: Paul Logan

Host: Karen Wood

Guest(s): Alison Farber

Post-Production/Editor: Shannon Jacobs

Subscribe, share, and send your feedback and topic ideas to thefulcrumpodcast@vadental.org.

The information, opinions, and recommendations presented in this Podcast are for general information only, and any reliance on the information provided in this Podcast is done at your own risk. This Podcast should not be considered professional, medical, or legal advice.

Music in this episode from Epidemic Sound

Transcript

[00:00:17] Karen Wood: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Virginia Dental Association's Podcast, The Fulcrum.

[00:00:23] Karen Wood: My name is Karen Wood, and I'm the Director of Operations for VDA Member Perks, which is the VDA Member Benefit Program. Our endorsed vendor partners provide discounts on products and services, as well as an elevated level of support and attention to the VDA members that use them.

[00:00:38] Karen Wood: Today we are discussing something very near and dear to my heart. Believe it or not, that is dental supplies. Much of my dental career was spent in dental sales, and it started with a rookie position selling dental supplies. I had my customers that I would visit to bring new product info to handle any questions, returns, and number one, check the clipboard to place an order for them. For those listening that are on the younger side, offices used to keep a clipboard in the lab or sterilization area, and if supplies were needed, dental team members would write them on the clipboard or tape a piece of the box from the supply that they were low on. That evolved into spreadsheets to track the commonly ordered supplies and the preferred vendors for certain items. As distributors expanded the ease of use for online ordering. Now, an office could go to all their different vendor websites and place the orders for what they need from each one and spend time, price checking each one and looking for deals or quantity-based savings.

[00:01:28] Karen Wood: Huge improvement, right? Of course, with one major exception, the number one overhead expense in a dental office is payroll. This is a hidden cost for ordering supplies. And now here we are today with our friends from Method Procurement to make sure all VDA members know the advantages of moving from just ordering supplies to using a modern platform for supply procurement for inventory management. They have created software that price shops for you, checks for back orders, tracks orders. Can control spending with budget limits and so much more. All done in one spot. We are very excited to have had Method join the VDA Member Perks program as an endorsed vendor partner, and today we have Vice President of Sales, Alison Farber.

[00:02:08] Alison Faber: It's nice to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

[00:02:09] Karen Wood: Oh, we're, I'm excited to talk about some supplies.

[00:02:13] Alison Faber: So, you were the clipboard girl, huh?

[00:02:14] Karen Wood: I, I, I don't wanna see a clipboard ever again. So just explain to our listeners what procurement actually is and why it matters.

[00:02:24] Alison Faber: So, procurement for the uninitiated is really the entire lifecycle of bringing materials into and out of your practice. So traditionally we're just talking about the materials, the inventory on shelves. But really when you think about traditional procurement, it is sourcing your goods. So, finding your trusted vendors that bring those materials in, it's making sure that you're responsible for all of those cost centers in your organization, both direct costs. So that's how much you're spending on those items and also indirect costs. So how much it's taking your staff to actually do those types of things and activities. When we're thinking about procurement, the whole goal is to have responsible spending and responsible sourcing and ordering and being as efficient as possible for your practice. So that's kind of the, in a nutshell, that's what we're talking about for procurement. So, inventory is definitely a portion of that, but it really is about making it something that you're, you're cognizant of as a business owner to make sure that you're being responsible with your spending and not just using supplies.

[00:03:32] Karen Wood: Right. So, walk us through a day in the life of an office that uses method and what your process looks like. We're familiar with our own spreadsheets or five tabs from different, you know, vendors open. To shop and go back and forth and look for deals or shipping. Getting that free shipping is important. And it takes a lot of time, and I know that you have a lot of different options for inventory management that you know, offices can choose from. So, touch on that a little bit as well.

[00:03:57] Alison Faber: Sure. Yeah, so I mean, I, I love how you explained it.

[00:04:00] Alison Faber: So, practices that don't use a procurement solution, right? We're trying our best to do what's best for the practice. Which is one, we absolutely need our supplies. And then two, we, we wanna be responsible spenders, right? We wanna shop around, we all in our daily lives shop around. Either we're clipping coupons before we go to the grocery store, or now we have the apps and things like that. But maybe you go to multiple websites, multiple stores before you make those purchases. A lot of times we see the same behaviors and the same responsibility. Fiscal responsibility in a practice.

[00:04:30] Alison Faber: However, for every minute that you're spending, that's minutes of overhead costs that are going into that employee that is doing those activities. And so that's problem number one. And then problem number two is as we're shopping around, we're managing, maintaining spreadsheets or something along those lines.

[00:04:48] Alison Faber: Prices fluctuate often. And they, there's a lot of variability, especially right now. At the time of reporting this, tariffs are still a big thing that's happening. So pricing is all over the place and it's changing literally every hour. So, there's still missed opportunity. Even though you're going through all of those exercises, you're still probably not doing as well as a a computer, a software algorithm could be doing for you.

[00:05:17] Alison Faber: So that's sort of the magic of what we do. When method is implemented into practices you bring in all of the vendors that you already shop from all of those existing relationships. You're not cutting out your account manager that you have a relationship with. You know, you still have your direct line to the fulfillment warehouse, but really what it's doing is it's bringing all those accounts in.

[00:05:39] Alison Faber: And then at a press of a button saying, hey, here's the materials I need. Method is actually going through and saying, hey, here's the vendors you should source those things from. Here's the pricing, here's the stock availability. Here's everything that you need to know, and here's the most optimal way to purchase your supplies and new materials.

[00:05:55] Alison Faber: And so, by being able to do that, you're getting best of both worlds. You're still getting all of your goods, you're still doing all of the things that you need to be doing, but at the end of the day, it's bringing in, a lever of efficiency that really only software and computers can do in this day and age.

[00:06:13] Karen Wood: And in terms of back orders or outta stock items. I was an office manager at the time of COVID that word we all hate. But it was insane. I would love to have had Method when, when that was going on because you order something and at that point pricing wasn't even a consideration. It was just getting the product. You wouldn't even know that they were on back order. How does, how does Method notify you or is it just swing those product lines over to another vendor that has it in stock.

[00:06:43] Alison Faber: Yeah. And you know, it's interesting during COVID because we actually came into market right at the beginning of 2020. And so, we were there during all of COVID and that actually kind of it, it was terrible timing, but also perfect timing for us because we saw the marketplace at its absolute worst, right? And so, we were really able to build and iterate from there. One of the very first things that we did was that we have a connection that we have proprietary in our software called M Connect, and what that does is that it actually goes through that account. Within the individual distribution partners. So, if you always go to, I'll pick on Henry Schein. You always go to Henry Schein's website.

[00:07:24] Alison Faber: If you log in with your account, it's gonna pull over that account specific information. So that is, if you have negotiated pricing, it'll pull that through. But also, mostly these distribution centers have your accounts tied to local warehouses, and so it pulls that information through as well. So, then it's gonna pull over that stock status directly from those websites into the platform to say, hey, this is available in that local warehouse, or this is on back order, or this has limited availability and it's only able to be, you know, given to these certain states. So, it's that level of complexity that really a good software should be able to to work with and work for. Otherwise, to your point, it's just a shot in the dark. If you have like a list and you say, okay, these are the things I need. Who knows when you're gonna get those materials. So having something that's up to snuff and is being able to think about those things for you is really important.

[00:08:17] Karen Wood: So, let's say that I am low on prophy paste. Does everyone have a login to Method to be able to add things? And then how does the ordering work?

[00:08:24] Alison Faber: So, really good question. We, we have a lot of flexibility up to the practice because every practice order's a little bit differently. So, some places it's one person's responsibility. Other places it's everybody for themselves. And sometimes there's a hybrid where we might still do you know tagging, putting things into a box, you know, putting the empty case into a box and having somebody sit down with the box and, and make sure that they're filling out everything. So, we really wanna be flexible and work with the practices where they're at.

[00:08:54] Alison Faber: My favorite approach to this is that we actually this year reintroducing an old favorite from the nineties, and that's inventory scanning. So, it's an option that we have, basically we indexed every single unique item within Method with a QR code. And that works across different vendors. And so, as people are going through and noticing that they have items that they need to resupply, they just need to scan the item or scan the QR code, and then that puts it automatically into the shopping cart. So that when it comes time to check out, everything is sitting there waiting for them to check out. And so that makes it really easy to have multiple people go through purchasing, have one person be able to just go through the list. However, we're adapting to the practice. We don't really have to change how you do it. We just need somebody to sit at the computer and run the checkout process. So, it's really nice to be able to fit things in. So, you don't have to change your process that much because that's one thing we don't wanna do is change the process that the staff are already trained on.

[00:09:58] Karen Wood: Right.

[00:09:58] Alison Faber: And comfortable with.

[00:09:59] Karen Wood: Right. So now is that a, a handheld scanner that you provide or is this an app through the phone?

[00:10:05] Alison Faber: We provide handheld scanners. You can also use a iPad or something like that with a camera on it. So, both are low cost. We don't sell it be to try to make money. We sell it just to make sure that it's something that is going to work and it's a system that's reliable for the practices. I know a lot of practices, they don't like people using their personal devices when they're on the floor, so most people prefer to use the scanners.

[00:10:31] Karen Wood: And if you are accustomed to that old clipboard method or you had a, you know, sheets of things, can the QR codes be listed out ?

[00:10:39] Alison Faber: Yep. Absolutely. When we onboard people, and I should mention that you know, software I live and breathe it every day. It's, it's very easy for me. I know a lot of people, especially at practices, they're a little intimidated when you have a new software or something. So, we train everybody and we actually sit with them and onboard and help them navigate the shopping experience, help them create those like easy to access lists of the things that they buy the most.

[00:11:06] Alison Faber: And then what we do is that we'll use those lists that we import for them. And then we'll use that to generate the, the new sheet on the clipboard so then we can have them print it off or, you know, make tags or whatever. And then you're good to go because then you just have a brand-new sheet that has the Method, QR code. So, you just switch that on the clipboard and you're off to the races.

[00:11:27] Karen Wood: Nice. And what about budget spending? I know that I was reading on your website that you can set limits for certain things. Does someone have a, you can fill up the cart as much as you want, but at the end of the day, someone's gonna be pressing send on that order. And they have administrative rights to edit the cart. Is that correct?

[00:11:44] Alison Faber: Yeah. They do. And you know, I wanna touch on budgets a little bit because there's, there's a couple of things that I wanna you know, talk about with spend. I think I've. I, I talk to a lot of practices that when we're talking about supplies, they don't even know, you know, how much should I be spending on supplies or can I really reach that number?

[00:12:01] Alison Faber: So, our rule of thumb is that if you're above 6%, and really if you're above 5%, you're missing the boat on where you should be for hitting your supply budget. So, when I say 5%, I mean 5% of your collections. So that's a really nice rule of thumb as where should you be? If you're above 5%, you really should be thinking about strategies. Now, e-procurement is one of the best things that you can do. If you're still not quite sure what you need to do. If you're an independent practice you know, that's why we're here. You guys have a lot of relationships to drive that spend down. There's also buying groups. There's talking to your vendors. There's a lot of ways to reduce your costs. We're very tapped into that. I'm happy to talk people through what those different strategies are to bring those spending costs down within a, a reasonable budget. 

[00:12:52] Alison Faber: Once we reach that 5%, back to your question, we have budgets reinforced within our software. So, this comes with both versions of our software essentials, which is good for like a single location, practice, and enterprise, which are more for group practices. But you can run those budgets for the week, the month, the quarter, the year, all the above. And what's unique about Method is that before you hit buy on the shopping cart, it's going to tell you how much that amount is going to stack up to your existing and remaining budget for that set period.

[00:13:27] Alison Faber: So, there's no hiding from that budget. There's no oops or, oh no, I went over again. When you're actually looking at all of your receipts at the end of the month, you're actually able to kinda look at that and really do a gut check of, do I really need all of these supplies right now? Am I staying in budget? Am I going to go over, okay, if I'm going to go over, why am I going to go over? Is it a one-off or is it a trend? So, it really helps you kind of get into that mindset so that it brings your, your supplies and your purchasing into more of a strategic thought process as opposed to something that's just a little bit reactionary. Or something that's just kind of a means to an end.

[00:14:06] Karen Wood: Well, on that with the tracking, let's talk about reports. Like what kind of reports is an office gonna be pulling on a monthly, quarterly basis that you guys provide?

[00:14:15] Alison Faber: Yeah, so there's a lot. We have within our essentials version, which again is more for the solo practitioner, we come with paired in reports, things like how many orders you're placing, how much you're spending, how much you're spending by supplier, which is a big one especially for open to negotiation or maybe you're thinking about changing who your suppliers are.

[00:14:37] Alison Faber: And then we also have an average savings. Report, which is the blended average across all of your available suppliers, and then what you paid. So, then that really is telling you whether or not method has been a smart investment for your practice. So, we try to be very upfront with everything that you might need in order to look at your business and your expenditures.

[00:14:56] Alison Faber: Beyond that, for our group practices, we have an entire power bi reporting suite. And that's really for those in-depth reports. And what we're looking at there is whether or not you're trying to establish a formulary and what that compliance is gonna be. where budgets are for all of your locations. how much house goods you might be purchasing.

[00:15:20] Alison Faber: So, if you're trying to make an effort to switch from manufactured goods over to private label, something that we've coined called gap orders. So those are orders that are less than $250. Usually at that threshold we see shipping being incurred accidentally. A lot of practices make the mistake of treating supply ordering like Amazon Prime, so the not realizing that there's a little bit of shipping charges that get put on some of those order minimums.

[00:15:47] Alison Faber: So, we really try to make a whole bunch of reports available to those practices baked in. But then in addition to that, we have over 250 data points within the software that the practice can actually manipulate and use to, you know, usually it's used to accompany other data reportings that they're looking at.

[00:16:10] Alison Faber: So, we have. Pretty much the whole gambit of whatever you're needing, wherever you are from pre-baked, like, hey, these are the basic things that you should be looking at, all the way to here's all of the data that you could possibly imagine. So, you can manipulate that and use it however you're looking for it.

[00:16:26] Karen Wood: Well, it sounds like there's a lot of vendors that you have. Relationships with, so you're probably gonna be introducing some, you know, new options for supplies. And I remember during the shutdown when, when scrambling, we were opening accounts with all these different vendors. How does that work with Method? Are they still having to go outside of method to open up the account or how, how is that get handled? Just, just on a logistical basis?

[00:16:54] Alison Faber: Yeah, sure. That's a really good question, and this is a little bit different between method and other, other solutions that are out there. So, we as a procurement company have relationships with just about a hundred different suppliers in the United States.

[00:17:09] Alison Faber: As part of that, we make sure that all of these suppliers are authorized by manufacturers and they don't sell great products. That's really important for us because we wanna make sure that there's a very clear chain of custody. For the uninitiated chain of custody means that all of those materials that you get delivered to your practice, we know and your vendors know who shipped them. Where have they been stored? Have they been stored properly? Are they being managed in good ways basically, so that you are not carrying in say, any sort of inherent risk. You know, God forbid there's a safety recall or something like that, and you're affected you know, which items are part of that recall and you can do something about that.

[00:17:54] Alison Faber: That's why it matters to us that we have qualified vendors that we work with. Now, outside of that you know, a hundred different vendors, that's a lot. When we onboard new customers, we recommend that you actually bring your relationships with you and shop with those. So, when you go through the shopping experience, it's only with those vendors that you have accounts with.

[00:18:21] Alison Faber: Now, that being said, because we have that connectivity with all of those other vendors, there are some vendors that we have in our system that you have visibility into what's available on their website so that you can kind of do a gut check within the marketplace. Then sort of choose and reach out to those vendors and then bring them into method.

[00:18:40] Alison Faber: So that way it's kind of giving you a, a guided experience of, hey, here's the vendors that we work with, but then it's up to you to open up accounts, make sure the relationship is there make sure your billing is in order, make sure the fulfillment works for you. All of that fun stuff because at the end of the day, a procurement system really should be your facilitator. But we are not the ones that are handling the goods, paying for the goods or anything along those lines.

[00:19:05] Karen Wood: Yeah, I mean that, that makes a lot of sense. So, I'm assuming returns will be handled the same way.

[00:19:08] Alison Faber: Yeah, we kick off the returns, but then they go over there because how you handle returns at the practice are gonna, it's gonna be different for, for each item really.

[00:19:18] Alison Faber: You know, is it damaged? Do you need a replacement? Is it something that maybe you can use that you wanna partial credit for? You know, so that's, that's definitely part of things that we don't, we don't handle, but we help facilitate.

[00:19:29] Karen Wood: So, Allison, let's talk about the impact this has on a practice. Obviously, we've talked about cost savings, but how else does this effect, you know, especially the office manager, whoever's placed in those or supplies and tracking that spend.

[00:19:42] Alison Faber: Yeah. You know, I, I, I love the the, you know, the why should we care? Question because when we're, you know, when you're in a practice, when you own a practice or you're helping run a practice a lot of times there's so many things that are a priority, right? Supplies is not one of them, nor should it be.

[00:20:01] Alison Faber: If it is, you have a really big problem. And I like to think about this in two different ways. One is. This is something that you should not have to DIY, and you shouldn't have to be bothered with. This is one of those places where you can pop in a software and the problem basically takes care of itself.

[00:20:18] Alison Faber: Isn't it nice that you don't have to manage spreadsheets? You don't have to worry about who's ordering. If you're the doctor that's ordering, please stop. You're the most important person at your practice, and you are also the person that is bringing in the most revenue. This is something that should be given to somebody else and you should trust them to be able to do it.

[00:20:34] Alison Faber: With a software, you're creating those guardrails so that it is something that you can help control and get oversight over in a very minimal amount of time. And this is something that you can just, you don't have to think about anymore. Set it and forget it. The other reason why I personally am a procurement nerd I've been in procurement for many years now.

[00:20:57] Alison Faber: This is actually my second company that I've worked with that's in procurement is the direct impact to revenue. So, a lot of the things that the practice is focused on and rightfully so, right, we're talking about marketing to bring more patients in the door. What type of cases are we doing? Are we getting as much collections out of these as as possible, right?

[00:21:16] Alison Faber: There's so much revenue cycle management that we need to do in order to keep the doors open and, and keep that money coming in. Saving a couple hundred dollars or a couple thousand dollars really isn't worth it in the scheme of things unless it's easy. But when you're looking at cost savings every dollar that you save is actually a dollar.

[00:21:36] Alison Faber: Whereas if you're looking at earning more money, every dollar that you earn, you're actually only bottom lining maybe 20, 25 cents of that dollar when you take all the operational overhead out of it. That's one why I love this and why I'm a nerd about it. The second reason why I like this is that if you're thinking about making changes to your practice, if you're looking at doing some sort of fundraising or you're thinking about selling, or you wanna bring in a partner or any of those things, a lot of times you need to get that bottom line up very quickly.

[00:22:05] Alison Faber: This is one of those things that you can institute, and you immediately start seeing the impact on your bottom line as soon as you do. As soon as you turn it on, those are real dollar cost savings that go back into your bottom line. And as soon as you turn that on, that's going to compound because every month that you do it, you're seeing that return.

[00:22:26] Alison Faber: And you're also, because that shopping around ability you're also protecting yourself from being charged too much. So now all of a sudden, you're not only saving money, but you're avoiding future costs. The more you do that, the more it compounds on itself, and that's more found money that you could put back into your practices, back into your bottom line, back into those things that matter.

[00:22:48] Alison Faber: So, it really becomes cyclical for your business. So, at the end of the day, you know, this is something that you don't have to care about. You put it in. It works for you; it starts delivering immediately. It's giving you money so that you can put it back into the things that you actually do care about and actually do matter for you.

[00:23:07] Alison Faber: I think that's actually kind of magical. It's nerdy. Sure. But it is nuts.

[00:23:12] Karen Wood: I opened this up with saying I was excited to talk about dental supplies, so there you go. But I, I think it's an interesting point that you bring up that most offices or or team members wouldn't think about 'cause that's not how they run their household on a cost savings basis.

[00:23:26] Karen Wood: And then, and you're spending all this time trying to save a dollar on, or $2 or $5 even on an item. The amount of time the employee is spending doing that is bringing that, bringing that savings down. So that's a, that's, I mean, a different way to look at it. And it's a much more savvy way to look at it.

[00:23:45] Alison Faber: Yeah. As a consumer, I hate coupon clipping because it's taking me two minutes to save 25 cents.

[00:23:50] Karen Wood: Right.

[00:23:50] Alison Faber: Right. And, and so if we think about that from a, from a practice level, not only that, but also like. I'm the most valuable person in my household. I shouldn't be clipping the coupons, right? I should be handing like, you know, income wise, maybe it's something that one of my kids should be doing, you know? And, and then that way they can actually do it. So, I mean that's probably a terribly forced analogy. And I'm sorry out there to anybody who, who might be offended. But you know, that's one of those things that at a practice, let's go ahead and turn this over and trust our staff to get the things done and you know.

[00:24:26] Alison Faber: When we're talking about supplies and we're talking about, you know doctors, practitioners with their supplies, they like what they like, you know, they have a, a relationship, they have an experience with some of these materials and sometimes that's hard to let go of. So having a system in place that is reinforced, that helps you let go of that a little bit more too.

[00:24:46] Alison Faber: Right. They're not going to buy the wrong bonding agent if it's in the system and it's saying, hey, this is the one that you need to buy. Good. We can restrict them so that they can't buy anything else. Great. You know, if there's a certain material, a certain kind of bur that you prefer a certain manufacturer, great.

[00:25:02] Alison Faber: Put that in there and then lock it down and then hand it off. Put the budgets in place so that people aren't spending too much. There's definitely ways that you can help control this so that you don't have to manage it, which I think is really, really cool. Because most practitioners I talk to, buying supplies is something that they do at the end of the day when they should be home relaxing. And instead, they're sitting there and shopping on some websites, right?

[00:25:27] Karen Wood: And then that, that five to 6% of your overhead based on collections that hasn't changed. That, that really hasn't changed over, you know, my lifetime of, of working in sales.

[00:25:38] Alison Faber: Well, it's a, it is a, it is a rule of thumb. I would say most practices that are on method are sub 5%. Just because of that level of efficiency. it's not uncommon for us to see from brand new practices that are coming, you know, from no system or, some failed attempts to save usually about a thousand, $1,200 a month. Which is not bad for a software that, you know for our basic package is less than $70.

[00:26:11] Alison Faber: That's, that's a heck of an ROI and then you're seeing that consistently month over month. And then if you're using the data and leveraging it the right way, then you find other areas to save and to other opportunities To make that savings even more impactful for your business.

[00:26:25] Karen Wood: Yeah, and having that budget, especially when you start to think about, you know, stocking up on things. So now one month you're way off the charts, but that was a great deal on patient napkins that never expire, but then it's. It's hard to correlate that with the production that you did. You know the one month you've got, you know, fortunately you got 10 implants and you know, a bunch of other large procedures, and then the next month you're off on vacation for two weeks or whatever, and then you've had this, there's no consistency to match up on what you produce and what you're spending, so, you know.

[00:27:00] Alison Faber: Yep.

[00:27:00] Karen Wood: And that used to be a thought process is just a bulk up and buy once a month. And that way you're only unloading once a month, but then you can't really track things. And like the office I worked at, we were swimming in supply that closet mm-hmm. For the first two weeks of the month.

[00:27:15] Alison Faber: Yes, absolutely. Best practices from what we've seen from practices is purchasing twice a month. That seems to be the sweet spot. Usually first, you know, whatever that big bulk order that's still there, right? But then we wait, wait two weeks, wait three weeks until you notice that you forgot something. Right? Don't immediately go, oh my gosh, this, it takes time to get there. But then when we have that twice a month cadence, then you can start take advantage of, you know, those manufacturer BOGOs or what have you. You can do your bulk orders, but then also with those budgets, yeah, run a monthly budget and then run a quarterly budget. That way if you have a vacation or a down month or something like that, things can stabilize. If you want to order a whole bunch of things that don't expire, then you're gonna run through them. Cool. You can still do that, but also don't do that with goods that expire. I see people do that. It's like, oh, this is a really good idea and we're totally gonna use all of this. And then they have expiration on shelves and then all of a sudden, it's all waste. Right, right. So, there's definitely ways that you should, should think about what you're ordering, why you're ordering, and whether or not it makes sense. But if it has an expiration date on the box, please don't bulk by it.

[00:28:24] Karen Wood: I mean, I can see so many advantages to using this technology that you guys have. And I'm sure you're gonna be hearing from our members. How, how does an office get started with methods?

[00:28:34] Alison Faber: It is as easy as going to our website, methodusa.com and then hitting sign up contact us.

[00:28:41] Alison Faber: What that does is that goes to my team. Somebody will reach out immediately. If you don't schedule a time to meet with us, we will call you. But it also gives you opportunity to get on our schedule so that we're working within what your team needs. So, you get on our schedule, you review the software, you say yay or nay, and then from there it takes us about a day to get your site ready.

[00:29:04] Alison Faber: And so, we'll schedule a training call. We'll take whoever's gonna be on the team that needs to needs to be trained on the software. They'll go with our customer success team. It takes about 30 minutes, maybe 45 for our practice. Gets trained up and then we actually will schedule for when you place your first order so that you have somebody sitting by your side to make sure that you're really ready to go and that you're placing the order and you're super comfortable.

[00:29:30] Alison Faber: So, you know, it's a, it is a three-step process from start to finish. It's not a lot of time. But we really wanna make sure that all of the practices that work with us are feeling comfortable, that they're set up, that we're answering all their questions, that they're super supportive. And then once you go live, if you forget how to order. 'Cause we're only talking about using a software every two weeks or a month. There's a in-app help that goes straight to a guy named Ben on my team. He sits behind me and he's actually there to answer all the live chat questions and we even have the ability to remote into the software to show you exactly where to click.

[00:30:05] Alison Faber: So, we try to make it really, really easy to set up and to run and to, to do all of the things.

[00:30:11] Karen Wood: Great. Alison, thank you for your time and expertise today. We will have contact information for Method Procurement in the show notes. please use the link to learn more and take advantage of the special offer they have created for VDA members. VDA members receive free implementation, but right now, if you mentioned that you listen to this podcast or give the code VDAMEMBER25, you'll receive a free scanner and 50 tags with a value of $200.

[00:30:36] Karen Wood: Please, like, subscribe, rate, and share this podcast. Let us know if you have any suggestions for feature topics, as our goal is to bring relevant and helpful content to VDA members and their teams.

[00:30:46] Karen Wood: Thank you for listening, and we look forward to having you return for the next episode of The Fulcrum.