When Tauranga Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery (TOMS) went looking for inventory management software for their clinic, they didn’t expect to find the perfect solution on their doorstep. “We were amazed to find a company in Tauranga that was able to provide us with everything we needed and more,” says Dr John Bridgman, who founded TOMS in 2004 with Dr David Chrisp. That company was Tidy International. Tidy provides cloud software solutions to companies all over the world from its headquarters in Tauranga to manage inventory, streamline processes and improve efficiency.
Stickers and spreadsheets
Since 2004, TOMS has grown to become a three-surgeon clinic supported by three reception staff, twelve registered nurses, and one practice manager/accountant. TOMS provides specialist oral surgical services that include removing impacted wisdom teeth and dental implant surgery. Dental implants are small and difficult to keep track of with many different variations, sizes, and materials. Before working with Tidy, one of the nurses used drawers, stickers, folders, and several different Excel spreadsheets to monitor implant inventory. Updating the spreadsheets was a manual task that involved eyeballing the number of implants in each drawer to work out how many implants the surgeons were using, what stock was low, and what needed to be ordered. “We split our implant stock between two different surgeries in the same building,” says Bridgman. “In the past, when one surgery ran out, we could get the implant we needed from the other surgery, but it made it much harder to work out what our actual stock level was. Also, with the old system, we had a few hiccups where we found implants had expired because they had become non-sterile, or we ran out of stock of a particular implant we needed for a procedure and had to use something else instead. So, I figured it was time to turn to technology to help us out.” TOMS trialled other apps and systems to keep track of their implants before turning to TidyStock, one of Tidy’s flagship cloud software applications. “Implants are a critical part of our business so we have to make sure we have stock on hand when we need it,” says Bridgman. “The system that Tidy designed for us is simple to use, it’s cost effective, and everyone sees the benefit of it. Not only does it save our staff time, it’s also much more accurate.”
