by Finding the right partner in business is critical to the success of your organization. Many dental organizations are in need of supporting players for office roles, which are often outsourced internationally to call centers at a reduced pay rate compared to hiring someone in the United States. With a partner like SupportDDS, these supporting roles are filled, or insourced, by men and women who are considered employees of the practice they are working with.
Blueprint Smiles Dental Group is a general practice based dental support organization that was formed in 2013, with six dental locations operating in the metro-Atlanta area. Dr. Dipesh Patel, CEO of Blueprint Smiles, started this partnership with SupportDDS about two years ago after several members of his team decided not to come back to the industry. He said, “We started working on our technology infrastructure so that we could imagine having an office without the need of a front. We were exposed to the idea of outsourcing and decided to partner with SupportDDS.”
Dr. Patel partnered with SupportDDS because of their experience supporting the dental industry. This experience gives the team at SupportDDS unique insights into what the dental industry needs, without requiring the dental organization to build out an infrastructure for new team members. Today, Blueprint Smiles has 12 teammates across SupportDDS, including Dr. Patel’s executive assistant Mellisa Mashiki.
Dr. Patel said, “My work life would unravel if Mellisa wasn’t in it. Mellisa has evolved her role so many times in our organization and now she works directly with me on all the projects I have on hand. I tell everyone she’s my Swiss army knife.”
As a result of the success with SupportDDS, Blueprint Smiles has been able to increase the pay of its domestic team, increasing retention across the organization. “As a company, we believe that if you have the same team for a longer period of time, your systems are more productive. I think that’s the secret with ROI – if you’re trying to save a dollar, you can probably figure it out. But if you can reallocate that dollar and get good people, it will positively impact your ROI.”
Regarding his relationship with SupportDDS, Dr. Patel said, “It’s what you can bring to the table first that is going to determine the output you get. If you have an infrastructure in place, a leadership structure in place where you can support remote teammates in another country, then the output’s going to be great because essentially that’s the same reflection of how you probably function here. If it’s chaotic here for you, it’s going to be chaotic there, right? Because now you don’t have that person sitting next to you at the office to teach them and coach them directly. If you don’t have structure in place here, then it’s going to be a little bit harder to try to train somebody remotely.”
