Inventory Management in Dental Care - Customer Testimonial

Dr. Ashraf: 0:01

When some of the younger dentists start talking to me about their problems or need an inventory system. An inventory system is not just about counting. It's also about managing your cost and then therefore being able to give a service with a competitive price. This changed my mind that I needed to automate my process. There was so much paper and at the end you couldn't evaluate. It's just so much data. And I'm a two room clinic. I don't have a management staff. I've got like about 2 or 3 people working with me, so there's not much time for me to actually go in and do analysis to my business pricing and cost analysis. It's very difficult to do it. I used to do it once a year and it would take a ridiculous amount of effort.

Richard: 0:46

Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of planet Odoo. I'm your host, Richard Shall, and today we're taking a deep dive into a topic that many might not immediately associate with Odoo the dental industry. With us today we have Professor Ashraf from Integrated Dental Clinics in Cairo, Egypt. Professor Ashraf will help us explore how modern software solutions like Odoo are changing the game, even in sectors where you'd least expect it to. So if you've ever been curious about the intersection of healthcare and tech, this episode is for you. Hello, Professor Ashraf. Thank you for joining us today. How are you?

Dr. Ashraf: 1:20

Hello, Richard. It's good to be on.

Richard: 1:22

Uh, well, great. I think we, uh, you have a success story with us. But why don't you tell us more about your, uh, your business, the Integrated Dental Clinics?

Dr. Ashraf: 1:30

Well, um, I've been I've had a dental clinic for about, uh, since 1995. So I've been through, uh, many, many phases. So we had the phase of, uh, uh, working with paper. Um, so and then we and then I moved on to, uh, having a management information system in, in 2002. So at the time, we didn't have some well-developed softwares. I had developed my own, uh, I used an Excel sheet and I started doing, uh, analysis using pivot tables. And then, uh, once cloud computing started, then I started moving this to the cloud so that I'd have redundancy. And then I started looking around for, uh, um, um, some, some sort of software to use to, um, to improve my inventory and my purchasing procedures. And that's, that's what I got introduced to Odoo.

Richard: 2:22

And you're and it's just a regular dental clinic, so regular checkups, like I'd Right. Is that correct?

Dr. Ashraf: 2:29

Yeah. Yeah. Straight. I mean, we have I am a I am a specialist in endodontics, but my practice is general. I practice in all all branches of dentistry.

Richard: 2:39

Amazing. And you're the owner as well.

Dr. Ashraf: 2:41

I'm the owner and I'm the primary clinician. But I do have about 5 or 6 other, uh, clinicians which do which do work at the clinic.

Richard: 2:48

Amazing. And how did you guess you got into it? Because you're also a professor. I see, so I'm assuming professor of dentistry.

Dr. Ashraf: 2:53

A professor of dentistry. But I do have some background in, um, health management. I have a diploma in management. So that's what actually pushed me to get into management information systems.

Richard: 3:03

Ah okay. Great. And so I imagine most of your inventory is much of, uh, smaller equipment and pieces. Is that correct? Tell me more about that.

Dr. Ashraf: 3:11

I mean, this is one of the big, big problems in, in dentistry is that we have we Um, uh, so but it has at least 6 or 700 different types of, of um, of, of units of equipment. So it's, and they're all very small. So it's really difficult to, to inventory that.

Richard: 3:31

And how did you manage it beforehand. I mean just eyeballing it or how did that work.

Dr. Ashraf: 3:36

Well, initially when the clinic was in its infancy, I didn't see the problem But once we started moving up and also the companies themselves became more, uh, oriented with the digital digitizing their processes, I felt that we were being ripped off, especially when, especially when it was regards to purchasing because they were ahead of me on on the on the pricing of equipment and the pricing of materials, which I, which I was not, I had to I did it by phone. We'd never have the ability to compare between last month and this month. So it was really it was like a haphazard process.

Richard: 4:15

And what kind of issues did that cause?

Dr. Ashraf: 4:17

Well, I remember one, um, one situation maybe about ten years back, uh, I had I was dependent on her for nearly everything. And she would purchase. And she left because she got pregnant and she had to leave. So, uh, and then when we we went in after, um, uh, after her, because I wasn't following up on a day to day, I found some of the items had 7 or 8, um, uh, um, units, and we don't need more than 1 or 2. So there was there was a ridiculous amount of redundancy because nobody was following up, and it was very difficult to follow up on the on the numbers of the inventory that we had.

Richard: 4:56

I'm hoping you never actually ran out of, uh, crucial equipment that you needed.

Dr. Ashraf: 4:59

Well, well, the the point is, they did she did that because she knows that we Because she was managing too many things. It was very difficult for her to do an inventory on a weekly basis or on a monthly basis. It would require a lot of paperwork, which would take exhaustive amount of time, especially, like I said, 6-7 hundred different types of items being, uh, being uh, inventoried weekly or monthly. It's just it's just too much.

Richard: 5:24

I imagine. And so was most of your purchasing done like via phone, WhatsApp? How did that work?

Dr. Ashraf: 5:31

Well, um, obviously in the last few years we set up a lot of WhatsApp groups, that way we can follow up the process. And if there's I can also delegate. And when I have a WhatsApp and like a group of WhatsApp where we're following, I can delegate to somebody else. And if there's a problem, I can just go back and see the conversation and see if something needs to be tweaked. And then once we've done that a few times, I just pull my hand out of the out of the issue so I don't have to deal with it. Um, that's with regards to WhatsApp, but mostly it's by telephone. Obviously, Odoo made a very big difference when we started having call for tenders. That was very, very useful. I had asked for that change when I first started. I said, okay, we can make a call for tender, but I can't compare between the different vendors. Uh, what about and then obviously while the Odoo 16, we got that. So that was uh, that was a real big that was a game changer for us. That made a big difference. I could send out the same tender to various vendors and then pick from the pricing that I got.

Richard: 6:31

Right. And just to kind of refresh my memory, like, what was the the straw that

Dr. Ashraf: 6:38

Um, initially the, the reason why I moved into the. Is like like I said in about 2002, where I had taken a diploma in healthcare management, and we had taken a module in management information systems and logistic management and, and and so forth. So this this changed my mind that I needed to, um, automate my process. There was so much paper and the end you can't you couldn't evaluate. It's just so much data. And I'm a two room clinic. I don't have a management staff. I've got like about 2 or 3 people working with me. So there's not much time for me to actually go in and do analysis to my business pricing and cost analysis. It's it's it's very difficult to do it. I used to do it once a year and it would take a ridiculous amount of effort.

Richard: 7:25

I can only imagine, uh, I mean, the digital age, it's definitely a very And so I imagine there's plenty of other, like, industry specific softwares out there just for your type of business. What made you pick Odoo over them?

Dr. Ashraf: 7:36

That's a really good question because, um, at the time when I was looking wasn't satisfied with the purchasing and inventory modules of these, of these programs, even I do have a I have a, I have an in-house, uh, software for the dental procedures and things like that, but I don't use its built in software for purchasing an inventory. It isn't specific enough for me.

Richard: 8:05

I imagine it's also much more expensive because it's industry specific. Is that correct?

Dr. Ashraf: 8:09

Well, actually no. No, not not so much. Um, in in Egypt here it's not so expensive because the, the pricing is designed for Egypt. Now if I, if I went and bought a product from, from outside of Egypt, then it would be probably more expensive than Odoo. So I would say it's about the same price as Odoo now per year, which is is amazing for that Odoo could actually compete because you've got multiple, um, things like the CRM and, and the maintenance modules, and I'm not using all the modules because some of them are not relevant to my business. But um, generally, if I wanted to, I could use it.

Richard: 8:47

Okay, great. And, uh, one kind of conception I had in my head was that, uh, industry specific platforms also ended up being harder to customize, should you need to. Is that exactly true?

Dr. Ashraf: 8:59

Or they're they're impossible to customize. They are designed so that my business will will conform to the to the idea that they have with the workflow. And sometimes I don't like their ideas, I just can't. So I have to skip using it. I have to I can't, I can't modify now Odoo has, has has a really big advantage where it will allow you to modify your your workflow depending on your requirements. An example of this, which took a very a very long time for us to adjust was I have um, for instance, uh, a type of filling material. Okay. This type of filling material it has, there are multiple companies which produce this filling material. So in Odoo I have to, uh, every item with its separate brand has to have a considered an item. What I did was and I used the variant when I have variants as a brand. So but the only problem I had was is that when you came to restock or create an automated reordering rule, it had to be on the, the, the item itself. So I'd have to shift from one brand to the other when the brand wasn't available. Because the market is really fluid, it's not stable. So I asked Odoo how we get around that and we managed to find a workaround.

Richard: 10:16

Amazing.

Dr. Ashraf: 10:16

That would be impossible with a with a with a industry specific software.

Richard: 10:21

That's very good to hear. And so then if I recall correctly, your main, uh, pain points was inventory management and procurement, correct?

Dr. Ashraf: 10:28

Yes, yes.

Richard: 10:29

And so tell us more about how Odoo helped you streamline these processes and

Dr. Ashraf: 10:34

Okay. So, uh, with the purchasing, it was basically pick up the telephone and And then they would send us whatever they had. And because sometimes because we import most of our dental products, not always, not always the same brand as available. So I come in and they would send me a different type of filling material or a different type of gloves or whatever. And this was a big issue because some of them I didn't like using. So there's also this, this amazing, um, thing in Odoo where you can actually prevent them, or you get a warning when somebody tries to make a procurement of a specific product. Now, considering you had 700 products and I'm very picky with my materials. So in the end, um, I would find, uh, stuff I didn't like coming. So when we, I told them whenever I tell them, okay, guys, this one don't bring this one anymore. They remind themselves they put a warning when they try to procure it. They just it tells them, no, you can't procure it.

Richard: 11:33

Ah, yes, I know that feature.

Dr. Ashraf: 11:34

That was that was very, very interesting. Like I said, uh, also when we had to streamline, I want to minimize my inventory so that I don't have a lot of inventory. And that would increase cash flow. The only way to to compensate a bad inventory is by having excess material so that you don't get a drop in, in, in production or service providing. So what I did was, was I started using the reordering rules so that I would be I lost weight, I wouldn't have excess inventory. So then that's what I did. And that that really made a difference because I ended up having a lot more cash per month instead of, um, putting them into materials which sometimes used to expire because, um, we just didn't control how much of that we were using and, and so forth. So also, one of the very interesting things in Odoo was the when we used to do the evaluation using the, the charts and the pivot tables, which are automatically generated, I was able to know how much I was spending per every six months. And then we started streamlining our reordering rules so that that really made a big difference.

Richard: 12:35

So the reporting was really like night and day for you.

Dr. Ashraf: 12:38

Oh yeah, definitely. This was amazing. I mean, I would sit there, oh my God, this is exactly what I wanted. So when I, when I wanted to to evaluate pricing because in the service sector in our job we don't um, when we come to price, it's, it's per unit time. So how much material do you use per hour. And that, that that's how we calculate my pricing. So say a procedure takes three hours. I add on a variable cost of three hours and a fixed asset cost of three hours so that I know how many, uh, um, how much the, the actual product cost. Because you can't say this will take half a gram of filling two pairs of gloves. You can't do that. It's it's not reasonable. It's not like a product. So this was very useful when I, when I wanted to know how much did I use per, per year. And then I would just take for instance the average number of procedures divide it by the average number of procedures. Then I know how much each procedure, uh, cost me really actually costs me it.

Richard: 13:32

That's fascinating. And kind of, uh, turns inventory into an art. Kind of cool. And so if I recall correctly, the purchase tender was kind of a game changer for you as well. Is that correct?

Dr. Ashraf: 13:43

Yes. This really was a very exhausting. Before the Odoo 16, we used to have to send out the same one. We would copy, we would make a duplicate in the purchasing, and then we would send it out to our vendors, but then we would have to compare it manually. So I just take the three papers in front of me like that and I'll tell the guys, all right guys, see which one's cheaper. That one okay. And then they'd have to do a new purchase order for each of the separate, um, vendors. And that was really exhausting. And sometimes they used to just, uh, not do it because it was so much of a of a hassle.

Richard: 14:14

I imagine. And so how has having an integrated system like this for managing

Dr. Ashraf: 14:23

The first thing, the most obvious thing is that when I'm well paid, treat my

Richard: 14:29

That's fair.

Dr. Ashraf: 14:30

So so so if I end up not being, uh, not making profit, then I'm generally as end up cutting corners for your patients. That's going to affect your patient health. So the the more financially healthy my establishment is, the more my patients will get a better service, that's for sure. On the other hand, I don't use Odoo for for scheduling, although it has an amazing scheduling system, but it's not integrated into a dental dental specific calendar with with procedures. So it's it's not really it can be, uh, used, but then I'd have to sit there and, um, and readjust it completely to integrate. And that's quite difficult. I know that there are some, uh, upgrades or some, some independent companies have been doing dental software linked to Odoo, but I've never used them. So, so so they it doesn't really, um, I don't really use it for scheduling, but, um, with regards to cost, it does make a difference on my on my cost and on my practicality.

Richard: 15:30

And because it's kind of removed some of this, uh, headaches out of your the direction you're taking it?

Dr. Ashraf: 15:39

Um, my next phase was to start incorporating the CRM because, um, once, once I the jobs with regards to the finances I started looking at internally to my internal customers. I knew I was going to start going back and seeing some of my customers that had come, but had not taken services. So I was going to set up two of my, my younger dentists to to interact with these, maybe bringing in some business from within and then, uh, starting to use the CRM to bring business from without. That was also from not from within our client list. So but generally because dentistry, it's a medical profession, uh, um, the excessive marketing externally is not really, um, it's not, it's not like it's frowned upon, but it's not it's not really the, the, the best way to go around. Yeah. Um, because most, you know, at least my clients are a high end clients. So they will go for, uh, a Facebook ads and Instagram, uh, posts. Generally, it had to be a PR, it has to be 1 to 1 discussion.

Richard: 16:43

Yeah, yeah. Okay. That makes sense. Got a couple more questions for you. Uh, one of them is actually from a personal experience, I was back when I was in sales, I had a conversation with a dentist, and they had an interesting, uh, request when it comes to inventory management because they wanted to essentially line their shelves with scales, puts the products in baskets on the scales, and then have reorder trigger based on the weight of what's left in their do. So that's interesting. That's very interesting. And we don't have that capability at the moment. It's quite a fun project to look into. But what are your thoughts on that. Is that something you think is viable?

Dr. Ashraf: 17:17

I mean this this goes back to how you evaluate your your cost. Um, I've seen some programs which evaluate cost by trying to measure how much of each filling they use and how much, but this is really exhausting and not practical because sometimes you can use more than another, another case. You can't, uh, estimate cost per case. Yeah, you have to estimate cost per procedure, per per specialty and then divide that by the by the different to to give your dentist some latitude to overuse a material sometimes or to underuse it sometimes. But if you, if you put it into a niche where you have to establish the exact amount of grams, I don't know. I my my experience tells me it doesn't seem practical. Maybe the dentist that you were talking to had a really large volume of dental patients. He had maybe 15-20 rooms, so maybe for him it was more practical to evaluate weight. I don't know the practicality of something like that. Having a scale and measuring, um, the product doesn't seem sensible to me, but I mean, maybe if I see it working, I'll change my mind.

Richard: 18:25

Great answer. Okay, great. And would you recommend like a good inventory management system for other dentists as well?

Dr. Ashraf: 18:31

I've been actually I've been actually trying to push Odoo in some of my lectures Um, uh, when we start, when some of the younger dentists start talking to me about their problems related, their, their, their, uh, their growing pains related to starting a business, I'm telling them, you guys need an inventory system. And an inventory system is not just about counting. It's also about managing your cost and then therefore, being able to give a service with a with a competitive price. And because dentists aren't very oriented to the businesses and stuff, they don't understand how effective it can be. But some of them, when they start becoming more busy and having more busy clinics, they realize, um, most of them that I've talked to immediately get stuck in the inventory specific softwares. That's but but like I said, I've tried I've tried all the ones available in Egypt here and they're not they're nothing compared to Odoo.

Richard: 19:25

And have you considered becoming an Odoo partner so you can implement Odoo for

Dr. Ashraf: 19:29

I did mention it once to to the Dubai people over there, but I say, I don't I don't know how, uh, how that can work out. I told them I have no problem lecturing for Odoo because I love it so much and it's so amazing. So, uh, for me, I told them I just I don't know how that could be developed into a working relationship. I could I don't know.

Richard: 19:49

Sure, that makes sense. Um, I guess, are there any last words or anything else

Dr. Ashraf: 19:54

For people who don't have Odoo, you're missing it. And for people who do try to use every part of that program to improve your business, I mean, whatever, whatever you can. I've gone through all the, the, the modules and for me, whenever I can find a module that will even give me a hint of improvement, I start to use it.

Richard: 20:14

Amazing. Great advice. Well thank you Ashraf, I appreciate it your time.

Dr. Ashraf: 20:17

Thank you so much. Thank you Richard. It was uh it was nice being on the podcast.

Richard: 20:21

Of course. It's good to have you. Well, there you have it, folks. What a captivating conversation we had today, and a massive shout out to Professor Ashraf for letting us in on how Odoo transformed Integrated Dental Clinics into what it is today. Don't you find it fascinating when technology makes waves in the most unexpected places? To our awesome listeners, thanks for joining us for yet another episode of Planet Odoo and if you've enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to share it with your family, friends, and enemies if you wish, and I'll catch you next time for sure. And remember, stay awesome!