When I sit down with a practice and look at their procurement, it is rarely the individual cost of supplies that stands out. It is the procurement approach as a whole.

Many dental teams continue to spend valuable time comparing prices, managing multiple supplier relationships and reacting to day-to-day stock issues. The result is a fragmented purchasing environment with limited buying power and a significant amount of staff time absorbed by tasks that should take seconds. The consequences are not just financial; they are operational.

This is not a reflection of how practices are run but rather how procurement is based on standing orders and habits.

The future is not more price checking

The practices achieving consistent, meaningful reductions in supply costs are not the ones checking prices most frequently. They are the ones that have built a procurement process with real consistency and clear ownership. The future is not more price checking, it is systems that make procurement easier to manage and more sustainable as a practice grows.

What larger dental groups and DSOs have understood for some time is that buying power comes from consolidation. Meaningful leverage comes not from constant switching, but from fewer, better-managed supplier relationships that are easier to sustain long term.

The assumption has been that you need to be a certain size before procurement is worth addressing properly. Dentstock was built on the conviction that this is not true. Independent practices and smaller groups deserve access to the same infrastructure as DSOs: consolidated supplier management, negotiated pricing, and clear visibility over what they are spending and where.

We’re not asking practices to sacrifice clinical standards to spend less. We're supporting them with understanding their choices, managing supplier relationships properly, so leverage works in their favour.

Technology enables, but process drives results

Technology plays a role in making this work. Our platform brings order tracking, spend visibility and supplier management into a single view. But technology alone is not the answer. Without consistent processes and clear ownership behind it, procurement can remain just as reactive and time-consuming as before. The practices that see the greatest improvement are those that treat how they buy with the same importance as how they grow.

Procurement is a profit lever 

Running a financially resilient dental practice has become more demanding. Costs are up across the board, and the margin for inefficiency is narrower than it was. In that context, how a practice manages its buying is no longer a back-office consideration. It is a core part of financial performance.

Practices working with Dentstock typically report savings of 15-25% on their current supply costs, alongside a measurable reduction in the hours spent on ordering and supplier management each week.

One practice saved over £21,000 in a single year. These are not marginal gains. They are the kind of improvements that change what is possible for an independent practice or an emerging DSO.

Looking ahead

This weekend we’re exhibiting at the Dentistry Show for the first time, and the conversation’s I’m most looking forward to having are practical ones. What it actually looks like when a practice reviews its buying properly, what the opportunities typically are, and what a more structured approach delivers over time.

That structural advantage has historically been out of reach for independent practices and smaller groups. Dentstock was founded to change that and I look forward to continuing the conversation with colleagues in Birmingham. Join us at Stand P20 at 11.30am on both the 15th and 16th May, where I’ll be talking through how to manage rising costs in your practice.