How Shared Practices Group Built a Procurement Operation That Scales

Shared Practices Group has always been a growth-oriented organization. Founded by dentists with big plans and vision, SPG has gone from 2 to 46 practices in a matter of four years. All de novo, and still 100% dentist owned and operated.

That kind of growth is always positive but has a tendency to surface the operational gaps that smaller organizations can afford to ignore. Procurement was one of them. 

As SPG's footprint expanded, offices operated with a degree of independence that made sense early on.

"The processes really varied significantly across all of the offices," said Danielle Garrett, SPG's procurement manager. 

Individual locations ordered from their preferred suppliers, not from a list of approved vendors. There was no central review before orders were submitted, and accounting's visibility was limited to order totals on spend reports, not the line-item detail needed to understand what was actually being purchased.

The team recognized early that this approach had a ceiling. What worked at 15 locations would not hold up at 40, 60, or 80 locations.

As Danielle put it, “We were able to see that our current process was no longer sustainable.”

There were multiple areas the team wanted to grow and improve on, but the leadership team understood the kind of infrastructure that growth required. When procurement and accounting aligned on the need for a centralized system, the founders were receptive. SPG evaluated several platforms and chose Method because it addressed the areas that mattered most: centralized ordering, budget enforcement, formulary visibility, and direct supplier connections for invoice reconciliation.

The first year was a transition period. New systems take time to adopt, especially across dozens of locations with established routines. By year two, the platform was fully embedded, and by year three, the team was seeing the results of their efforts: a procurement system that could scale with them. 

Today, Danielle manages over 120 individual orders on a single “order day,” which covers clinical, lab, and front office orders across 46 locations. Despite being a team of one, Method makes that workload manageable.

On these order days, she reviews every pending order from a single screen. Budget status and formulary compliance for each order can be reviewed quickly and easily. If an order comes in over budget or outside formulary, she can reach out to the office, get it resolved, and move on in minutes, as opposed to hours. And when an order needs revision, she can push it back to a draft rather than declining the order outright, so the office can adjust their existing order cart and resubmit.

Invoice reconciliation follows the same pattern. Accounting pulls invoices directly through Method's supplier connections, so there’s no need to log into multiple supplier sites to hunt for invoices or item numbers. Every order comes with the product image, number, and description in one place.

For leadership calls and finance reviews, Method's reporting gives Danielle everything she needs without pulling data from multiple sources beforehand.

"With Method being incorporated, it takes a lot of the repetitive things I had to do previously off my plate." — Danielle Garrett, Procurement Manager

In essence, the procurement process for the dental practices was simplified, and everyone, from the office manager and dental assistants to the leadership of SPG, noticed the benefits and results.

18% Reduction in Supply Spend
‍From year two to year three of using Method, once the platform was fully adopted and features like inventory tracking were in use, SPG saw an 18% reduction in supply spend across the organization.

‍8% expedited order rate 
‍A structured order schedule and approval workflow replaced the as-needed ordering pattern that had driven up rush shipping costs. Expedited orders now represent just 8% of total orders.

‍17% of purchasing is now private label
‍When SPG started using Method, only 3% of their purchasing was private label, well below their desired benchmark. They wanted the practices within SPG to retain more of the money they earned, and one of the best strategies to do that concerning procurement is to increase the amount of supplies purchased on private label. With better formulary visibility and the ability to see and compare product options across all suppliers in one place, Danielle was able to steadily shift that number upward. Today, private label purchasing sits at 17%.

‍120+ orders across 46 locations reviewed and approved by a single procurement manager on one order day
‍Perhaps the clearest indicator of how far SPG's procurement operation has come: Danielle reviews and approves over 120 orders across 4 locations on a single order day, by herself. SPG’s use of Method makes that possible.

‍A Procurement Operation Built to Grow With SPG
‍Shared Practices Group set out to build something that could scale, and procurement is no longer the gap in that plan. With Method, they have the visibility and structure to keep growing without the operational drag that comes from procurement left unmanaged.