One of the biggest struggles in managing a practice with team members is making sure everyone in the office is on the same page. With all the practice operations, marketing, and patient care tasks that need to be done to keep your practice running smoothly and growing, it’s critical that every team member is working in real time with the most accurate and up-to-date information about what needs to be done.
Not having an efficient way to ensure every person on your team is on the same page, with real-time and accurate information about what to do and how to do it can cost your practice thousands of dollars in wasted time, money, and lost business opportunities. Given how big a problem this can be for many practices, many dentists are surprised to hear about how simple and cost-effective Google Drive is as a solution to it.
Here are three ways Google Drive can help you get even better results for your dental practice.
1. Use Google Drive to keep all documents and information for your practice in one secure, central location.
Google Drive is Google’s cloud storage, document-creation, and file-sharing service. Part of its suite of software solutions, which includes email, calendar, and other services, Google Drive allows individuals and businesses to create, store, and collaborate on documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and forms online in a manner that according to the HIPAA Journal, is indeed HIPAA Compliant. Google even gives you multiple options to sync and access your files from your computer, so every computer in your office can access files with the most up-to-date information.
2. Use Google Drive to avoid wasted team-member time.
So many things can go wrong when team members are not on the same page. For example, two team members could be duplicating efforts, both working on the same project at the same time. The opposite is true, too, in that two team members could both believe the other is performing a task, causing nobody to do it.
With Google Drive, you can create a centralized task list using Google’s built-in spreadsheet program, Sheets, that indicates who should be working on a task, when it should be done, and any instructions you need to be followed.
You could then train all of your team members to check the task list when they come in every day to make sure they know exactly what needs to be done by them that day.
3. Use Google Drive to organize and improve your systems and processes and improve consistency in performance between team members.
The best dental practices constantly improve their systems and processes to ensure they’re following best practices for each task. Because Google Drive allows you to create folders and subfolders, just like you do on your computer’s hard drive, you can store all of your systems and process manuals in one place and update them when one is improved. Google also allows you to share specific documents or folders with your team members using a unique link, just like you would share a web address with them.
Using the folders and sharing functions, you can make sure all of your systems and processes are in one place and up-to-date and share links to any new or updated processes with your team by email with a link to the updated folder or document. They can then click on that link from any computer that is logged into your office’s Google account to access the file or document shared.
This allows you to make sure every team member is using the same system or process to complete tasks, allowing you to delegate with more confidence that the tasks will be performed consistently no matter how is performing them.
Are you using Google Drive to get better results in your dental practice?
If not, what are you using to ensure everyone on your team is on the same page? How much money would it save (and make) you if everyone on your team was on the same page in real time, knowing exactly what needed to be done by them and how? How great would it be to avoid duplicated efforts or tasks falling through the cracks due to miscommunication issues? What would it be like to confidently delegate tasks knowing every member of your team knew where to look for the most up-to-date system or process needed to perform every task in the office? Google offers a number of options for your practice to work together on Google Drive to help you achieve all of these things.
To learn more about these and other ways to improve your dental office, sign up for your 14-day trial to Delivering Wow U. You can also join my free Dental Marketing and Profits Facebook group where thousands of dentists and I help each other build better practices. Also, if you want to learn more about how Facebook can help you target the right people with your ads, check out my free guide: Facebook for Dentists: The Definitive Guide to Regularly Attracting New Patients to Your Dental Practice right here.
This article originally appeared on DeliveringWow.com.