Dental Intelligence takes its proven successful financial forecasting model to the next level with Drivetrain

The Challenge

Struggling with the complexities that come with growth

Managing all the complex administrative and back-office processes required to run a successful dental practice today is about as fun as a root canal. But Dental Intelligence is changing all that. 

Dental Intelligence is helping thousands of dentists manage and grow their practices with end-to-end automation services that simplify all aspects of patient insurance and billing. All this,  while also improving the patient experience with apps that streamline scheduling, payment, and other services patients today have come to expect from their healthcare providers. 

In addition, the Dental Intelligence platform also provides analytics, helping practices access and leverage their data to streamline processes and better understand business performance. Since its launch in 2013, more than 5,000 Dental Intelligence customers have reported an average increase of more than 50% increase in top line growth within the first 12 months of using the platform.

While Dental Intelligence customers enjoy the many benefits and features the platform offers, behind the scenes, Kasey Curtis, VP Finance & Accounting, and his teams were spending a lot more time than they wanted to on their financial forecasting. 

While their current financial forecasting models were accurate and worked well, importing the actuals data they needed into those models was a Herculean task. 

Here’s how Curtis described the process:

All this, he said, added up to a lot of duplicated work.

As is often the case with fast-growing SaaS companies, Dental Intelligence had also outgrown the financial model it had created in Excel. It had grown to more than 50 MB in size, and with multiple users accessing it at any given time, had become slow to refresh and prone to crashing.

Streamlining a proven, but increasingly unwieldy financial forecasting method 

Curtis knew he needed to build efficiency into the process, but how to do that wasn’t a simple question. The forecasting methodology that Dental Intelligence developed was proven and  provided highly reliable, accurate forecasts. So, the last thing he wanted to do was introduce a new tool into the process that might break it. Nor did he want to add more to the already-heavy workload his finance team was carrying.

Something had to give, though. While the financial forecasting method and financial models that Dental Intelligence built in Excel spreadsheets worked well in the early days, they were now unwieldy and inflexible, and each new request from stakeholders took an increasing amount of time to complete. 

Curtis was sure he could solve these problems through automation, so he went looking for a solution that was simple enough that it wouldn’t require adding to the company’s headcount. That’s when he found Drivetrain.

‍

The Solution

How Drivetrain Helped

Curtis had a very specific list of features they were looking for – Dental Intelligence needed a solution that could streamline its cumbersome financial review and forecasting processes by automatically importing actuals data in real time. He also wanted to retain and refine the company’s tried and tested forecasting methodology, so he needed a solution with a lot of flexibility built in. By the time he contacted Drivetrain for a demo, he was already pretty sure it would meet all of these requirements. He just needed to see the platform in action. 

During the demo, Curtis and his finance team were particularly impressed with how easy it is to import and consolidate data from multiple sources. Having easy access to their data direct from the source and the ability to drill down deeply into that data in different ways was another one of the company’s top concerns.

The Dental Intelligence team also liked the flexibility Drivetrain provides for financial forecasting and modeling and found the familiarity of its “Excel-like” interface very appealing. With spreadsheet models, Dental Intelligence was never able to “harden” formulas they contained. However, having this ability in Drivetrain, they knew they would be able to retain the best of the forecasting method that worked so well for them and continue to improve on it without worrying about breaking anything. 

Dental Intelligence didn’t waste much time looking at other solutions, and by the end of the Drivetrain demo, they were completely onboard with the platform. Since then, Dental Intelligence and Drivetrain have worked together to map a path for successful implementation that continues to deliver great results. 

Accelerated financial review process

Before Drivetrain, Dental Intelligence’s financial review process took nearly two days once the accounting team closed the books. Now, the entire process takes just a couple hours.  

The company is also saving a lot of time in terms of validating the data. Before, every time there was a change in the data, it took at least two hours to ensure that change was accurately reflected in both the finance and accounting files. Now that the company has its systems integrated with Drivetrain, they can update and sync all the files in just about 30 minutes. Any changes to the underlying data are automatically updated in Drivetrain. 

Having all its data available in real time on the Drivetrain platform means that the Dental Intelligence finance and accounting teams can always be confident that the data they’re working with is accurate and up to date.   

Better-optimized resources

One of the reasons Dental Intelligence chose Drivetrain was, as a growing startup, the  company didn’t want to have to hire more people to help with processes that could otherwise be handled through automation. 

With its finance team already working at maximum capacity, what Dental Intelligence needed was a robust and truly comprehensive financial planning and analysis (FP&A) tool. They found that in Drivetrain. 

Empowered by the Drivetrain platform, Dental Intelligence has put its manual processes and work-intensive Excel models in the rear-view mirror. Now, the company’s high-functioning finance team is able to achieve its targets and stay on track with greater ease and a lot more efficiency without having to hire additional people. 

Granularity & flexibility in forecasting 

Dental Intelligence’s finance team knew exactly what they wanted and how they wanted it — they only needed a robust FP&A solution to achieve it. 

Drivetrain’s familiar Excel interface and flexibility with integrations enabled the finance team to retain their successful forecasting methodology while at the same time, made it fast and easy to drill down into their data deeper than they ever could with their spreadsheet models. Now, the company is able to generate all-new insights to inform its business decisions.

Streamlined & secure financial reporting

Kasey has also found Drivetrain’s financial reporting capabilities significantly streamline the development of monthly updates and packages for board and investor reporting. 

Dental Intelligence is now leveraging Drivetrain’s fine-grained role-based access controls (RBAC) to provide the company’s investors access to the entire repository of Dental Intelligence data to explore their questions, without the need for Kasey’s team to create custom reports and presentations. With the ability to assign read-only access, the company can confidently share information with key stakeholders without worrying about any inadvertent changes to the data.

Impact

Key Results

With Drivetrain, Dental Intelligence was able to level up its proven financial forecasting methodology with the ability now to:

• Update and sync all of its finance and accounting files in 30 minutes via automated data integration and validation.
• Quickly drill down deeper into the data for key financial insights to inform strategic business decisions.
• Complete the financial review process in just two hours without manual intervention, enabling the finance and accounting teams to achieve their targets without new hires.
• Add additional metrics and models without reworking the basic model structure.