What you need to know

• National Dental Care is undergoing an online transformation, as it works with its digital agency Nightjar to replace a disparate network of standalone dental websites, with a unified model.
• And it is already paying dividends, with a perfect SEO score driving stronger bookings, and ensuring maximum efficiency in search advertising spend.
• It's much more than just a tech change though, the company has been careful to invest in its staff as well to make sure they can make the most of the changes.
• And for both dental practice leaders and company executives, consolidated analytics provide a unified view of the performance.

If you think pulling teeth is hard, imagine consolidating 80+ dental organisations across the country, each with their own unique ways of publishing to the web, and accounting for the day's takings.

That’s the problem National Dental Care (NDC) set itself to solve. This has seen it consolidate the sites of each practice into a single way of working, but it has also future-proofed the business by enabling it to build new sites in the future under the auspices of one master site.

The fast-growth business is driving growth not only through acquisition undergoing a fast, rapid pace of growth, fuelled by adding high-performing dental practices across Australia to its commercial arsenal but also by investing in ongoing training and clinical improvement.

The wide coverage of the network of dental practices gives NDC a strong bedrock asset. But it comes with a serious potential drag on growth – disparate systems and ways of working – a problem made potentially harder with every new acquisition.

The decision was taken to design and engineer a master site that would not only facilitate faster growth of new businesses into the group but would create a more unified way of working.

Complex integrations of this kind throw up plenty of challenges. According to Chloe Harding, NDC's chief marketing officer, “It was critical that new website template work for all 80+ practices.”

She tells Mi3 Australia, “Each practice has slightly different needs, and we needed the flexibility within the template to support and celebrate each of our practices.”

Harding describes the implementation as fairly complex and challenging, but by engaging the right stakeholders at each stage of the process NDC ensured the end result met the objectives for all practices.

A transformation project like this involves much more than wiring together different tech. Cultural and organisational issues are equally critical to success.

“The other key consideration for us was how to bring each practice on the journey and effectively demonstrate the benefits of the new platform and how it added value to both the support teams and providers,” says Harding. “We created digital showreels to showcase the features and functionality of the new platform, which was used to sell in the platform in a one-on-one setting.”

On top of these actions, NDC also undertook a country-wide roadshow and presented a website showcase to practice teams. 

Business impact

The project is already delivering wins both for customers and for the business. Harding says customers across the network are already experiencing significantly faster load times and more responsive websites.

And just as importantly, she says, “An improved user experience, with content easier to find and digest.”

For the business, digital marketing, customer engagement and productivity have both improved.

NDC achieved 100 per cent search engine optimisation (SEO) scores according to Lighthouses SEO audit scans and Harding says NDC is seeing “Increased 'Book Now' clicks for priority practices.”

Getting the SEO right was a significant change for the business and one that improved the efficiency of search advertising spending.

Ahmed Meer, the co-founder and innovation director at Nightjar which was brought in as the partner on the project, says prior to the transformation NDC couldn’t control its SEO value.

“There were myriad problems because they just couldn't keep control of SEO value… NDC wasn't able to consolidate offers into different practices, or have master offers that were grouped. So the organisation was hamstrung by this inability to have one central repository where it's pushing out promotions, offers, consolidating treatments, plans and their practices.”

On the commercial side, the business now finds it much easier to create shared treatment pages and ease of updates, saving time and cost. Maintenance of sites is also easier, with time savings across the network.

Consolidation of data was another core goal of the project.

“Nothing was plugged into Salesforce. That was another key element. Everything was then put into Google Tag Manager for a data-driven approach. Everything's completely event-driven now and then from there everything is pushed into Salesforce from one entity," says Meer.

With one code base now in place, NDC is optimising over time. One of the bugbears for management teams of companies that grow quickly through acquisition is getting a timely and ideally real-time read on how the amalgamated business is travelling.

That’s especially tough when the acquisition targets are small to mid-tier firms with a varied and eclectic way of reporting.

Consolidating the technology across the network not only addresses this issue for the leadership, it means everyone across the organisation can work on the same commercial operating principles.

Asked about changes to analytics and reporting, Harding tells Mi3, “We have developed custom real-time dashboards for each practice site, providing deeper insights into key metrics and the performance of onsite content. These dashboards are user-friendly and can be easily shared across the organisation.”