Shawna Sherman, Purchasing Manager for Platinum Dental’s 40 offices, describes leading procurement for the group as it grows.
DSOPro: Tell us about your career and how you got involved in dentistry.
I got into dentistry on the vendor side of things. When I was 16, I started working part-time for a very small company that Patterson Dental owned. My grandmother was the manager there until 1997-ish, and my mom worked there for 31 years as well. I went from there to the lab division of Darby Dental Supply, and then I landed at Henry Schein in 2002. I loved working at Henry Schein and spent 17 years there. I was an outbound sales rep, but I outgrew my position. I wasn’t feeling challenged enough. So, I moved to Utah to do sales for a procurement software company, which I wasn’t a fan of. Platinum Dental had been one of my top accounts at Henry Schein, and when they learned I lived in Utah they asked me to join their team. I said yes because it’s something totally different than what I was used to doing.
I was enrolled at Western Governors University to get my bachelor’s degree in business management but working at Platinum on the Finance team, so I decided to switch my degree to accounting. I just graduated this year.
DSOPro: Describe Platinum Dental, what their services are and your role there.
Platinum Dental has been around for about 12 years. It was started by our CEO, Vince Dilley, who owned a dental recall company at the time and ran a recall at one of the offices he serviced. He was noticing a lot of missed opportunities, and that the doctor needed some help, so he decided, “I am going to see if I can help build up a dental practice and go from there.” There were many struggles on Vince’s part, and I was on the other end of that as his vendor, ensuring they got the pricing needed to drive their high supply costs down as well as assist with helping Platinum’s A/P dept, etc.
I joined the company in 2020 when we were around 14-15 offices in Utah and Colorado. In the last 4 years, we have grown to 40 offices. So, we’ve grown quite a bit and are expecting to grow even more. Initially, I was doing all the purchasing for their locations. I still do all the procurement for supplies, but also oversee all Platinum’s equipment purchases. And I work on the accounting team and do all our vendor reconciliations and coding for our general ledgers to make sure all the items are coded in the correct categories. Because I came from dental, it’s really easy for me to look at something, whether it’s products, equipment, or services, and understand how to correctly classify those items.
I am also on our integrations team as the lead for our home office finance integrations. As Platinum onboards new offices, I take the lead in getting them connected with our AP, our controller, our HR team, and I handle onboarding the support services. I work with our operations director on integrations as well.
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DSOPro: Do you describe your job as procurement?
It’s much bigger than that, but my bread and butter is procurement. Our CFO, Patrick Nelson, often says, “I need you on this.” I have systemized it to a point where Platinum averages 3.5% of our collection every month. So, it’s really stable. We’ve been that way for the last year and a half. As we grow, I’ll probably still oversee a lot of it, but might have people working on the backend, releasing and approving orders, and working with the individual offices. But for now, that’s my job.
DSOPro: Describe your culture and what Platinum Dental is offering those who join your DSO group.
Basically, in every office we partner with, the doctor retains part ownership. With that part ownership, the doctor has more of a stake in the profitability of their practice. They want to do well, and they want to improve. Typically, they’re looking to expand their practice, but they just don’t have the means. We usually see 20% growth in the first 90 days. We do that several different ways, like by adding an associate to work the off days or integrating specialties. Platinum has periodontists, orthodontists, oral and maxillofacial surgeons, and endodontists who are also doctor owners/partners and travel throughout Utah and/or Colorado to our other offices as needed. That is a big way to increase the revenue and the profitability, just by keeping it all in-house.
Often, when a general practitioner refers a patient to ortho or a periodontist, patients often don’t go, or don’t think it’s a big deal that they need an SRP or have periodontal disease. This way, our GPs can track them and say, “Hey, you didn’t make your ortho appointment,” or “How did it go with our periodontist?” and get them on a treatment plan.
Each office works together with the specialists to ensure the patient has the best experience possible. That is what Platinum’s model is all about—it’s patient-driven. We want the patient to feel welcomed and know that we factor in the best patient experience. I am very thankful that I work for a company that is very much all about the patient.
DSOPro: Do you bring in technologies that new partners may not have?
We partnered with Glidewell and purchase scanners for every new office. We always look at our offices’ equipment and see what we might need to upgrade. If we need to get a CBCT versus a 2D pan, we do the upgrade. If their chairs or the office is outdated, we spruce it up and make it look more modern and up to date. Doctors coming out of dental school are looking for technology, so Platinum wants to stay with the times and be able to recruit good doctors as well as provide patients with a good experience by having the newer technology available in our offices.
DSOPro: Tell us about your experience using CureMint.
I was fully against using any procurement software and never planned to implement one with Platinum. I’ve met with many companies over the 4 years I have been here. However, when my boss went to the ADSO meeting last year and had lunch with a procurement rep, he told me I might want to call him.
Most procurement software is focused on price. You type in the item, and their software will search for the lowest price through all the manufacturers that make it. However, my concerns were never about price. Coming from Schein, I price negotiated quite well so that wasn’t my biggest go-to.
My biggest go-to was time. As we grow, I want to be able to keep up with all our offices in an efficient manner. Brandon McCarty, CureMint founder and CVO, came in and demonstrated it for me. He said, “Let’s save you time. You can order from every vendor you partner with from just this one place.” So, I don’t have to log in and approve all these orders from everywhere else. I was a little hesitant at first, but we brought on four offices to give it a try. After a 3-month trial and feedback from our offices, I now have all our offices as well as specialty using the system. It allows me to create budgets, create custom catalogs, and add or delete items from them within seconds. It’s super simple and I can have multiple users approving orders.
Thanks to CureMint, we went from a system that took me 2 to 3 days to approve all our offices’ orders to one that now takes less than a day. And I can approve orders from anywhere I am—it’s all in the system. I told Brandon that when my mom was super sick earlier this year, if I had not had CureMint, I wouldn’t have been able to do my job remotely. It has saved me tons of time.
CureMint also has an accounts payable side, which we just implemented a couple of months ago. It used to take me 2 days to get through all our 150-some invoices from vendors. Now it takes less than half a day to approve and send them over to our accounting software so we can get our P&Ls out.
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DSOPro: Are you the only person using the system, or do the individual offices use it as well?
All my lead assistants are set up as users for every location. Each office is responsible for placing their orders. Their budget is visible on the system, so as they order and go to their cart, it lets them know where they are budget-wise. They can order from all our partner vendors on one order. They don’t have to log in to all these different places either. I have custom catalogs loaded on CureMint that are specific to each location
I’m the only person releasing orders right now, but as we grow, I can add more approvers. When the office submits their orders, I receive a notice. I double check to make sure they’re under budget, and then I approve it. On the backside, our invoices are sent to CureMint directly from the vendor and the software does a two-way match. CureMint’s software lets me code all items with the correct general ledger code. When the invoices are reviewed by CureMint, I receive them in my inbox. Then I review that the correct office location, supplies, and totals all match. CureMint also syncs with our current accounting software, which enables me to upload the invoices quickly.
DSOPro: Tell us more about how your systems help your organization.
I am very fortunate, coming from the manufacturer world over to the DSO world. I already had contacts and vendors who I worked with when I was at Schein. I understand how pricing and mid-markets work at supply vendors. So, I was really set up well for this role at Platinum and overseeing everything. I’ve created a plug-and-play system so as we grow, anyone can come in and know what to do.
I created standard operating procedures (SOPs) and our guidelines for ordering that all the offices receive as we onboard them. We have set days that we order and set times that no orders are allowed—unless it impedes production, then we allow those. This helps all the offices know this is how we order, and that all orders flow through CureMint.
We always have our lead assistants do the ordering. The way we do our budgets, it’s an average of 3 months collection, not production. They have a budget tracker in addition to the CureMint one that they can also follow. It’s literally a clear guide of, “This is how you order; this is when we order, and this is what we order.”
I really like my SOP. It’s not just black and white. There is a lot of gray in dental. For instance, I just had an office go over budget. We use Domo for our data, so I can jump into Domo and, say their average is $100,000 in collections but I see they have $150,000 on their schedule this month and I can tell them, “You’re over budget, but based on your projected schedule, I will release this because I know we’re going to collect.” Our collections and production are pretty equal, and they will exceed that $100K average.
It’s always a numbers game. I’m constantly looking at our data and seeing where our offices are based on what they’re ordering. I always tell our doctors and assistants nothing is a “no” until I start diving into and analyzing their office to see how well they’re producing, their profitability, and all that stuff.
I feel very fortunate to be in this position. I told my husband in October 2019, when we first moved to Utah, that my dream job would be working at Platinum Dental and 3 months later, they offered me a job. I work hand-in-hand with Vince Dilley and Patrick Nelson and it’s just a great company to work for.
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DSOPro: From your perspective watching this industry change over the years, describe the progress DSOs have made and how vendors have adapted to accommodate it.
Some vendors caught on right away and adapted. I think Henry Schein may have had an advantage because medical went this route far before dental. They saw it coming and developed what they would call a mid-market DSO market. I think more vendors are getting onboard. I’ve had other companies like Burkhart Dental Supply, Benco Dental, and Patterson Dental reach out because they are following suit. It’s very competitive. And I want to say it’s probably harder because, once you have a system in place that is working, you don’t really want to buck it. I always tell people, “I’m not changing 40 offices. I’ll renegotiate pricing before I do that.”
I think a lot of doctors are seeing the value behind DSOs as the future of dentistry, and that they can focus on the dentistry and let somebody else worry about the admin stuff.
Shawna Sherman started working in the dental industry at a very young age. She was on the sales side of this equation for 25 plus years and has been on the procurement side for almost 5 years. She loved working at Henry Schein and all her customers, but knew she wasn’t being challenged anymore. So, she decided 5 years ago to make a career change and an education change. She enrolled at Western Governors University to earn her bachelor’s degree in Business Administration Management but after she started working at Platinum she decided to change that over to business administration in accounting.
Shawna has been married to her husband Marty for 19 years. She has 2 sons who are 24 and 17 years old and a daughter who is 16. She grew up camping and boating. She loved playing softball and now coaching her daughter. Shawna grew up in Sparks, NV, and lived there until 2019 when her family moved to Utah.
Platinum Dental
Platinum Dental currently has 40 offices throughout Utah, Colorado, Nevada, and Arizona. Vince Dilley, the CEO, purchased his first dental practice in February 2012 after owning a recall company since 2010. Platinum believes in many core values—we aspire for education, teamwork is essential, and we build open and honest relationships. Platinum plans for future growth as we continue to strive to bring the best experience to our patients.
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