How Heartland Dental optimized procurement to drive growth

As the largest dental support organization in the nation, comprising over 3,060 supported doctors in more than 1,800 offices across 39 states and the District of Columbia, Heartland Dental is a driving force in the U.S. dental industry. Heartland Dental's doctor-led culture and support model helps empower its supported practices to deliver quality dental care while efficiently navigating the complexities of the healthcare industry.

Heartland Dental is also a rapidly growing organization. After record growth in 2023, the DSO worked to build on that momentum by collaborating to open approximately 90 new de novo practices throughout 2024. This rapid expansion created challenges in operational efficiency, particularly concerning procurement.

The challenge of procurement efficiency amid growth

Throughout its expansion, Heartland Dental realized a plethora of rogue Amazon and Amazon Business accounts were accumulating across the support network. In the absence of a central procurement management system, procurement teams found it difficult to streamline processes, achieve visibility into tail spend purchasing, and pursue volume discounts when possible. Leaders recognized that to sustain the organization’s growth and maintain operational effectiveness, they would need a centralized solution to effectively manage strategic sourcing needs without affecting existing workflows. “We encountered typical procurement challenges associated with decentralized organizations like ours,” said Angelina Davito, Senior Director of Strategic Sourcing at Heartland Dental. “Fragmented spend led to inefficiencies in purchasing and accounting and resulted in limited visibility into overall expenditures.”

To address these inefficiencies and the procurement process, Heartland Dental began exploring opportunities in this area. “Eliminating the use of multiple separate personal or business accounts would also enable Heartland Dental to gain insight into purchasing patterns that could be used to help optimize spending,” according to Tim Faber, Senior Manager of Clinical Operational Support at Heartland Dental.

Progress through consolidation and integration

Amazon Business provided a comprehensive solution to Heartland Dental's procurement challenges. Through a full technology integration, Heartland Dental was able to centralize its procurement process for approximately 20,000 employees. Critically, the transition to a national account with Amazon Business enabled integration with Heartland Dental’s procure-to-pay system, SAP Ariba. “We had several suppliers on our Ariba Guided Buying platform, and Amazon [Business] is a nice fit with those other suppliers,” said Nicole Young, Clinical Supplies Manager at Heartland Dental. “With all of our suppliers integrated in Ariba Guided Buying, it makes Heartland Dental and our supported practices more efficient — from ordering to invoice reconciliation."

With the help of Punchout, it is now best practice for Heartland Dental purchasing teams to place Amazon orders through the Ariba Guided Buying, a feature of SAP Ariba that helps users make purchases through a streamlined, consumer-like shopping experience. Punchout gives purchasing teams easy access to Amazon Business to help achieve procurement efficiencies. For employees who have difficulty breaking the habit of purchasing directly from the Amazon site, education is provided on how to utilize the Guided Buying.

The company also promotes the use of Single Sign-on, which is a game-changer because it makes it easy for employees to complete necessary purchases. Once users are logged into Heartland Dental’s Ariba system, they simply navigate to the Amazon tile and are automatically logged into Heartland Dental’s Amazon Business account available for use by Heartland Dental employees and supported practices. “The Single Sign-On Ariba Guided Buying with Amazon Business allows supported offices to place orders that will automatically be allocated to their particular office rather than the use of a credit card requiring a monthly expense report,” Faber added.

Furthermore, Heartland Dental has adopted e-invoicing with Amazon Business, which enables customers and suppliers to present and monitor transactional documents electronically. "The benefit to using e-invoicing is that we no longer use credit cards when making Amazon purchases, saving the company and supported offices time on credit card allocations and payments,” said Young.