The local team making a difference to dentistry

ADAWA’s latest member benefit is one that’s tailored specifically to the Australian dental industry. A digital stock management and ordering system, Invedent is a Perth-based business with an inspiring back story

Luca Tizzano and Bailey Moore are not your typical Gen–Zers. At 23- and 24-years old, respectively, the duo have launched a WA-born-and-bred start-up that’s set to improve the way you run your dental practice.

For Luca, the dental industry is in his blood, so at an age where most of his peers are only starting their careers, he already amassed a wealth of experience and understanding of how dental practices run. Luca’s dad is a dental prosthetist who runs five practices, and from an early age, Luca and his three brothers were encouraged to be a part of the family business. At 17, Luca was working as a dental technician, and it was during his time in multiple practice locations that he became aware of the challenges and inefficiencies in managing stock.  

“I was essentially running my own lab across a couple of locations, and from there, I got more responsibility with managing the stock and ordering – and I realised we were running into problems on a weekly basis,” he says. “We had no visibility of what was in stock at any one time, meaning the stock would run out unexpectedly and we would either be calling the suppliers to find out the stock was on backorder, or we would be spending a lot of money on freight to get it the next day. Having these problems, like so many other dental practices, was costing the business money and I wanted to solve the problem.”

Meanwhile, Bailey, who has a background in IT, experience in education, and a degree in computer science, was looking for a new challenge. “I was working with UWA’s marine department and built a system that catalogued their marine samples that were taken around the world,” Bailey says. “It was previously a process that was very manual, paper-based, very time-consuming and something they dreaded doing. After finishing that, I was thirsting for another project, which is where Luca and my paths crossed.”

With Luca’s practice knowledge and Bailey’s tech-savviness, they realised that Luca’s pie-in-the-sky idea of a software solution to manage dental practice stock was a great business idea. “We went out to practices from North Perth to Maddington, and when we would go into the stockrooms they would just be a mess,” Bailey says. “Nothing was organised. Items were missing, and every practice tracked and ordered stock differently. It was at that point wwee knew the business idea could make a real difference.”

Inspired to jump into the process, Luca quit his job working for his dad. “It was a difficult time because my dad had always envisioned his four sons as part of the family business,” Luca recalls. “But I couldn’t stop thinking about this idea. My dad has run his own business for 40 years, my Mum is a dietitian and has her own dietetic practice, so it was inevitable that I would also want to start my own business.”

Together, Luca and Bailey created a digital stock management and ordering system specifically for dental practices. They joined with brothers Grant and Steven Merriel as advisors, as well as a small team of dental nurses to help onboard practices, and Invedent was born.

What is Invedent?

“Invedent is a user-friendly software application that takes the headache out of managing and ordering your stock,” Luca explains. “On a daily basis, dental practices run out of stock before they know they need to buy more – they have no visibility or tracking – and stock ordering is a time-consuming process. With Invedent, you can scan your products in and out; the software tells you exactly what is running low, and you can just press a button, generate your order, and send it directly to your supplier. It completely simplifies and streamlines the process – and that is just the beginning. We have so many enhancements in the pipeline of how we are going to further save practices time, money and stress relating to their inventory.”

The benefits

The dental practices currently using Invedent have saved, on average, six hours a week on stock management.

“Some practices have really bad processes,” Luca explains. “They’re ordering three or four times a week, depending on the size of the practice. We really streamline that  by getting them to order once a month or once a fortnight, depending on the size of their stock room.”

The software takes very little time to set up, with Luca saying a practice can be set up in a day because it’s so simple. Invedent also has a very thorough support system in place.

“We put practices through our onboarding process, where we hold their hand through every step from configuration, data upload and ongoing use” he says. “Practices are also provided with physical wall posters, online step-by-step guides, live chat access to our team and more. An entire practice can be trained on the application in just a 15–minute call.”

Luca adds the system is not just built for your general dental practice. “It’s built for every type of dental practice you can think of,” he says. “We’ve got practices with one dental chair, one dentist and one receptionist – to practices with 16 locations under one company.”

“No one likes managing the stock and ordering,” Bailey adds. “Invedent removes a task that employees dread doing. They’re sinking hours into such a tedious and manual-intensive task. We automate that to give staff more time for patients and improve the practice itself.”

Feedback

The feedback the Invedent team has received has been overwhelmingly positive.
“It’s like going back to the days when we didn’t have our practice manager software, and a receptionist would write down appointments in a scrapbook,” Luca says. “Then your practice manager software came out – your Dental for Windows and your Praktikas – and you look back and cannot imagine a life without those systems; Invedent is the exact same but for stock management.”  

The feedback the team receives is also taken directly into consideration and used to continually improve the software. “Because we’re on the ground and in the practices on a daily basis, the feedback that we get is directly acted on,” Luca explains. “We have a huge amount of buy-in from practice staff because in one week they say: ‘I would really like to see this in the app,’ and the next week, they’ve got it. It’s extremely satisfying and motivational. It gets us out of bed in the morning knowing that we can go into a practice and really understand their problems and solve them quickly.”

With the feedback of participating practices, Bailey says they’re constantly improving the software, with many updates in the pipeline; the most recent improvement. being the ability for a practice to scan the barcode of a product, the application reading the expiration date and displaying it with real-time alerts in the applications.  

“The more people use the software, the smarter it gets, as it is learning how to predict the volume of stock you’re going to be using over a period of time,” he adds. “As practices use the software, it will continue to improve and adapt to the practices type and volume of stock.”

Partnership with ADAWA

Luca and Bailey are excited that Invedent has been added as the latest member benefit for ADAWA members.

“The partnership with ADAWA aligns to both parties’ goals and objectives,” Luca says. “At the end of the day, the association is there to help its members by providing support services, ongoing guidance, industry updates and more. Partnering with an organisation like Invedent helps ADAWA achieve these outcomes for their members by presenting vetted providers that meet their high-level standard..  

“We welcome every ADAWA member to try out Invedent through our 60-day free trial to see why so many of their peers love the system and have been able to get a lot of value from it. Every single practice who obtained a free trial has continued to use Invedent on an ongoing basis.

“After the free trial, the cost is only $59 a month and with ADAWA membership, you get a 10% discount.”

What’s next?

Invedent has already started to expand into practices across Australia and is receiving interest from the UK and US. However, Luca and Bailey want to ensure they have a strong solution in WA before they think about further expansion.

“We are a WA born-and-bred business. Everything is based here,” Bailey says. “We are very keen on it being a WA-based solution – solving the issues for WA dental practices first.”

“We have a really good team streamlining and automating the stock tracking and ordering process as much as possible,” Luca adds. “Our drive is to save WA dental practices as much time as possible, which will in turn save them a significant amount of money as well.

“The feedback we are getting from a lot of dental practices is that they’re excited about being part of the journey,” he says. “Many industry professionals we speak to constantly say: ‘I cannot believe this did not already exist for Australian dental practices’ or ‘This is exactly what I have been looking for,’ It’s quite humbling to hear that from industry leaders because we have spent so much time getting this going, and to see the results from practices is very exciting for us as a business.”

To find out more about Invedent, go to www.invedent.com/adawa

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