Real Time ROI: Evident’s lab management software

The Lab

Rocco’s Dental Studio is a crown and bridge lab that specializes in implants and cosmetics. Kristie Rocco opened the lab at the Wohlford-Ting house in Escondido, Calif., with her husband in 1981. The family-owned and operated lab has 18 employees and uses the most modern technologies and techniques to provide doctors and patients with high-quality restorations and customer service.

The Product

This Web-based dental lab management system offers unlimited access, convenience, and communication tools. There’s no need to install software or upgrades, and labs can access Evident from any computer that is connected to the Internet. The software features automatic backup with no disruption, and you can easily email documents. Other benefits include: there’s nothing to install; it can be used on Macs or PCs; the software integrates with other technologies such as phone, email, and email-to-fax; you can use the system from anywhere, and updates are automatic.

Beyond that, Evident has documentation and protocols to assist any size laboratory with DAMAS, FDA, and ISO compliance. Evident can save dental labs hundreds and in some cases thousands of dollars a month with the Evident Dentist Gateway and credit card processing. All streamlined and intuitive to the user, these tools are designed to help any dental laboratory save money.

The Results

After a visit from a lab consultant, Kristie Rocco realized it was time to upgrade her lab management software.

At the time, Rocco’s lab management software was pretty basic, so basic it wasn’t doing much of anything to help manage the lab. The software lacked many beneficial functions that could really boost the lab’s efficiencies and productivity. The choice was clear. Rocco took the consultant’s advice and began the search for a new lab management software.

She soon narrowed her choices down to two companies with similar offerings. Evident’s customer service and level of knowledge won her over, and she began using the company’s cloud-based lab management software last December.

“We decided to go with Evident and we’re very happy we did,” Rocco said. “Right away they walked us through the basics and we were able to import a lot of our old database into their database even though they were totally different.”

As with any transition like this, there were a few kinks along the way, Rocco said, but the team at Evident was helpful and happy to help her troubleshoot. The team even helped her correct some billing errors that came up in the first month. Rather than her going through her client list name by name to find the source of the glitch, a process that could have taken days or even weeks of her time, Evident helped her figure out the problem and correct it. They helped her find a solution and find it quickly, saving her and her lab a lot of time and money.

The management system is customizable, something Rocco sees as another benefit no matter what size lab you have. But before you can truly get started, you have to take the time to look at your lab and really think about what you want your lab management software to accomplish. You have to think about billing, how you want your clients to perceive you, how you want to do your reporting. You have to decide what software features will help make your lab more efficient and more productive.

“You have a lot of choices,” she said. “You can make it as simple or complex as you want.”

One of the software’s best features is its ability to create production reports, she said. The employees now have a schedule that shows them who is accountable for what every day. Rocco can look up a case and find out exactly who’s working on it and where it is in the process. That means if a doctor calls for an update on a case’s status or to request a quicker turnaround time, she can quickly and easily get that information and determine if that’s possible. Before she’d have to search through the lab to find the case before she could update the doctor. 

“The reports can give other information into how active accounts are if we’re increasing or not increasing use in certain lines of materials or products we’re using,” she said. “For me, the detailed information I’m getting on my labor cost going into the product, what I’m charging for it and my PNL information is probably what I’m most happy about at the moment.”

Another benefit? Rocco, and any of her employees, can access the system from home. All they need is access to the Internet via a computer, iPad or smartphone and they can get into the system. She doesn’t have to worry about a big server or having to call the IT department when something goes down. It’s all there on the cloud whenever she needs to access it.

“You don’t need to get a computer geek to get you online. This is pretty simple to set up,” Rocco said. “Your smaller lab could set this up in a week and a big complex lab, if two or three people were put in charge and put their heads together, they could also get set up in a week.”

Evident constantly updates the software and introduces new modules, and they don’t charge you extra for each one, Rocco said, another great benefit. The system is fairly inexpensive, and with all the features it offers labs will quickly see a nice return on their investment.

Beyond that, this is a system you can tweak to meet your needs. Rocco wanted to see how much time each employee was putting into each case so she worked with Evident to set that up in her system, and now that’s something she’s able to do. Once you understand how to use the system and work with their customer service to set your ideas in place, there’s really so much you can do with this software, she said. They’re always willing to help and give you different options until you find the one that works best for your lab.

And she’s not done yet. Once she gets Evident’s credit card processing in place she’s going to add Evident’s Dentist Gateway to her system. This feature enables doctors to log in for the most up to date information on their cases and to pay online. This just gives her another easy, effective way to communicate, something that is so key to this industry.

So far, Rocco is pleased with her new lab management system and encourages other labs to give it a try, regardless of size.

“It’s something you can grow with,” she said. “There’s always new things that you can do with it.”