Heartland Dental: Unifying business applications and data to deliver in-depth insights that help supported dental practices succeed
Explore Heartland Dental’s journey with SAP
Heartland Dental provides business support that helps free dentists to focus on caring for their patients. But a fragmented IT landscape and manual processes made it difficult to see how supported practices were performing. To address this, the dental support organization built a unified SAP solution landscape—connecting business applications and data.
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| Healthcare | Effingham, Illinois | 21,500 employees |
ROI based on time efficiencies.
reduction in overall spend.
week saved on month-end closings.
Chief Digital Officer, Heartland Dental
Helping dentists take their business to the next level
Heartland Dental’s mission is to support doctors and their teams as they provide the highest-quality dental care and experiences. Since it was founded in 1997, the company has grown to become one of the leading dental support organizations in the United States, supporting more than 1,900 dental practices in 39 states and the District of Columbia.
To help achieve operational excellence and deliver optimal customer experiences, Heartland Dental wanted to better understand performance at both the dental-office and enterprise level. However, with fragmented systems and manual processes pulling data from 40 different data sources, it was difficult to get timely insights or make informed decisions with confidence.
To tackle these challenges, Heartland Dental chose to replace its patchwork of systems with a unified foundation built on SAP solutions. Doing so would connect processes across the business and bring data together into a single trusted hub, giving dental offices and senior executives actionable insights to ultimately help practices grow.
Chief Digital Officer, Heartland Dental
Creating and providing access to a single source of truth
Heartland Dental sought a connected foundation that could scale with its rapid growth and prepare the business for a future of AI-driven innovation. The company unified its business applications and data with SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) to integrate, automate, and extend AI-driven business applications and processes across its 1,800 dental practices.
Heartland Dental deployed SAP HANA Cloud as its central data hub, linking more than 40 SAP and third-party systems through SAP Integration Suite. This created a single, trusted source of connected data across line-of-business processes including finance operations. SAP HANA Cloud also underpins numerous enterprise applications such as the SAP SuccessFactors Incentive Management solution, which automates and optimizes sales compensation to drive revenue and performance.
Drawing on this unified data foundation, the company’s finance organization replaced its on-premises ERP with an SAP Cloud ERP solution. This transition centralized the operation of business functions, which were previously decentralized at the individual dental-practice level.
SAP Cloud ERP also connects with SAP Ariba solutions to streamline procurement processes and with SAP Concur solutions to enhance expense management and compliance and improve efficiency and oversight. By adopting a fit-to-standard approach, the company avoided costly customizations while gaining a scalable ERP foundation.
To give team members a unified digital experience, Heartland Dental introduced Heartbeat Engage, its proprietary solution developed with SAP Build Work Zone, advanced edition. This cloud-based solution consolidates technology systems into a single, role-based experience. It presents information from SAP HANA Cloud and integrates with a variety of third-party and home-grown applications—helping ensure that each practice gets consistent, proactive support.
With ERP processes and data connected in SAP Business Suite, Heartland Dental expanded its use of the SAP Analytics Cloud solution, a key capability in the SAP Business Data Cloud solution that the company had been running at scale since 2019. This enabled it to distribute analytics through intuitive dashboards across the organization—from senior leadership to field operations and dental practice teams. Digital boardroom capabilities give senior leadership a clear view of business performance, while role-based landing pages and visualizations equip field and operations staff with the metrics to develop tailored support plans for each practice.
“The landing page for regional operations managers provides so much great information in one easy place for a comprehensive snapshot of the business,” says Rob Jerome, chief digital officer at Heartland Dental.
And thanks to the planning capabilities in SAP Analytics Cloud, the planners across Heartland Dental’s business units can work on an integrated plan, simulate scenarios, automate forecasts, and drive the company’s financial goals.
Chief Digital Officer, Heartland Dental
Empowering dentists to better meet patient needs
Throughout this transformation journey, SAP Enterprise Support services played a vital role. SAP experts collaborated closely with Heartland Dental’s IT team, sharing best practices and strategic guidance to help ensure a smooth implementation and successful adoption of SAP solutions.
“SAP Business Suite is a piece of the puzzle in the Heartland Dental ecosystem of technologies that enables us to best support our doctors and their teams,” Jerome remarks. “We are well-positioned to drive continuous innovation, work smarter, and scale with confidence.”
With the enterprise data management solution in place, Heartland Dental can now deliver relevant, up-to-date information to different areas of the business much faster. The company has reduced data delivery times by five to six hours and has achieved more than 99% on-time delivery of analytics across the company.
Having in-depth analytics readily available means employees can make more-informed decisions and work more efficiently. For example, access to detailed analytics on pricing has reduced overall spend by 5%, and month-end closing is completed one week faster than before. Reducing the need to manually compile reports has also saved considerably more time and costs while freeing staff to focus on more-strategic tasks.
For the dental practices supported by Heartland Dental, the benefits are equally significant and wide-ranging. Straightforward access to metrics such as calls received, schedule accessibility, and reappointment rates deepens reviews of the patient experience. Meanwhile, field managers can quickly gauge the health of each practice in their region, provide targeted recommendations, and offer training in specific areas to help dentists grow profitable businesses while delivering exceptional care.
Driving future growth and efficiency with generative AI in SAP solutions
Heartland Dental’s move to a unified SAP solution landscape allows the company to run core business processes on a single, standardized ERP system that can flex with the company’s rapid growth, help simplify operations across 1,800 profit centers, and deliver real-time visibility into performance at each level of the organization. Looking ahead, the company is planning to expand Heartbeat Engage to other operations roles and ultimately to the employees in its support office.
By unifying systems and surfacing data in personalized dashboards, Heartbeat Engage will make it simpler for business assistants, field managers, and operational leaders to access the insights and tools they need in one intuitive experience. This will help ensure each practice gets consistent, proactive support to grow thriving, patient-focused businesses.
“What’s really next for us is AI,” shares Jerome. “There’s a tremendous amount of opportunity in our business for automation and process efficiencies through generative AI, and we’re very focused on that. We’re excited about the embedded AI technologies coming to our SAP solutions.”
From automating manual workflows to generating predictive insights that guide better decisions, Heartland Dental sees AI as the next catalyst to unlock efficiency, empower employees, and elevate the experience for the doctors and patients it serves.
Want to know more about Heartland Dental?
Automating and Streamlining Compensation Management to Scale Operations Quickly and Help Practices Shine (SAP Customer Story)
Empowering Dental Practice Business Assistants with Heartbeat Engage and SAP Build Work Zone (SAP Innovation Awards)
Heartland Dental Increases Business Assistant Productivity and Decreases Turnover with SAP BTP (SAP Video)