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Cutting Through the Noise: Inside Jill Nesbitt's One-of-a-Kind Technology Strategy Session at Dykema 2025
If you weren't in the packed conference room at Dykema's 2025 Dental Technology Summit for Jill Nesbitt's interactive workshop, you missed one of the most candid—and actionable—conversations in the dental industry this year.
The session brought together senior leaders from Heartland Dental, Jefferson Dental, Cordell Group, Premier Dental Partners, Advanced Dental Brands, Dentology, Freedom Dental Health, and others. In a conference hall full of vendor booths and sales decks, this was a rare vendor-free zone where CEOs, CTOs, COOs, and Rev Cycle leaders could compare notes without worrying about the pitch.
The Live Polls: A Real-Time Pulse Check on DSO Technology
What set Jill's workshop apart was the live polling—gathering instant, anonymous responses from every executive in the room. The data points uncovered were eye-opening:
PMS Sprawl Is Real – A surprising number of DSOs reported running four or more PMS systems. This fragmentation creates major challenges for analytics, automation, and team training.
Analytics Duplication – Most DSOs are still paying for two separate analytics solutions—one for office-level dashboards and another for executive insights.
Data Quality Is a Chronic Pain Point – Multiple executives called out "dirty data" as the biggest barrier to confident decision-making, with significant time lost to cleanup.
Implementation Hesitation – While some DSOs had rolled out Overjet, Denticon, or Dental Intel in the past year, several admitted they hadn't completed any major tech implementation recently, signaling a more cautious, ROI-focused environment.
Top Priorities for Investment – Margin improvement, narrowing down RCM tool options, and elevating patient engagement tools topped the list.
Five Key Themes & Insights
RJ (Rob Jerome), Chief Digital Officer at Heartland Dental, shared their enterprise approach: "Several years ago, we embarked on what we would call an enterprise data strategy... We invested in commercially available software platform, industry leading software platform, and then adjust it and build out metrics that frankly didn't exist in the industry."
He described their comprehensive solution: "That platform pulls together data from approximately 40 different systems, primarily practice management software... We're taking all that data and deploying suggested action to the office level through a work collaboration platform, which is a little different than an analytics platform."
Yesterday: DSOs juggled multiple dashboard tools—one for offices, another for executives—resulting in fragmented reporting and manual reconciliation.
Today: The leaders in the room are exploring data warehousing plus AI-driven analysis that feeds actionable insights directly to team members who can act on them.
The Shift: Instead of producing reports that managers have to interpret, the next wave of tools will tell the team exactly what to do—like contacting a specific patient with unscheduled treatment while they still have insurance benefits remaining.
Ron Kerensky, CIO at SGA Dental, put it bluntly: "We've been driving by the rearview mirror. Now, with daily, integrated data, we can finally make forward-looking decisions."
Speaking about their move to Omniscient Platforms, Kerensky explained: "We have a great BI environment that we think is probably one of the top ones in the industry, but the data is delayed, and so we were literally pulling things out of face sheets... For the first time we're able to act like a real IT shop because we have real data. We kind of solved our data problem."
2. Automation as the Fastest Route to EBITDA Growth
Automation emerged as the most immediate and measurable opportunity.
Insurance Verification & Plan Build: New solutions can automate up to 80–90% of the process, reducing costs by over 50% and eliminating heavy reliance on overseas vendors.
Direct EBITDA Impact: Every dollar saved in operating expense translates directly into EBITDA—boosting both profitability and valuation.
M&A Implication: Tech investments that replace outsourced functions make PMS migrations smoother and improve due diligence optics.
Jill's challenge to the room captured the automation imperative, referencing Chae Kim from Denticon's philosophy: "Automate the $h!+ out of everything." She continued: "If you can automate a task reliably, why not free up your people for higher-value work? That's not just cost savings—it's scalability."
3. Voice AI & Real-Time Benefits
The next battleground for efficiency is inside the operatory.
Voice AI: Saves 5–10 minutes per patient by automating charting, treatment planning, and clinical notes—reducing after-hours work and improving documentation quality.
Real-Time Benefits & Adjudication: Live insurance data can dramatically reduce AR, improve patient collections, and eliminate the need to purchase old AR during acquisitions.
The consensus in the room: These tools work, but adoption is a behavioral challenge. Training and change management are essential to win over providers who are used to legacy workflows.
4. M&A as a Technology Strategy Driver
While overall DSO transaction volume has slowed, quality platforms are still in high demand—and tech maturity is now part of the valuation equation.
Investors want DSOs that can show operational leverage from technology—not just growth from adding locations.
Tech strategy can be a differentiator in a crowded field, helping answer the critical investor question: "Why this DSO?"
Tom Creegan of Raymond James, co-hosting the session, reinforced this point: "The fundamentals around why dental are still intact. The question is—can you prove value creation? Your technology strategy can answer that."
During his M&A perspective segment, Creegan noted: "'Why dental' is not good enough – investor experience has been mixed and 'why THIS DSO' is critical... Exciting time in the space – particularly as related to the potential for IT to drive increases in productivity and profitability – the adoption of IT will accelerate growth of DSOs."
5. Vendor-Agnostic, Outcomes-First Thinking
Perhaps the most unique aspect of Jill's approach is what she doesn't bring to the table:
No vendor contracts
No one-size-fits-all tech stack
No chasing shiny objects
Her methodology starts with reverse-engineering from measurable outcomes—EBITDA growth, P&L efficiency, operational performance—and only then identifying the tech to achieve those results.
"Technology isn't the strategy—it's a lever. The strategy comes first."
Caesar from Eagle Head Alliance shared his experience with emerging analytics platforms: "We did do a demo of Clarifi Health, and it wasn't for us. We were too small, I think, to really take advantage of the technology. It's very impressive what they can do with data. But I would certainly recommend anyone who's curious to go see them."
He noted the size requirements: "Someone at least, I would say probably 25 offices or more, I think that's their sweet spot, and then larger."
Caesar also highlighted a common challenge: "Our data is dirty, and part of the challenge we have is reporting with dirty data and being able to rely on the results of any analysis we do."
The Technology Landscape: What's Changing
1. Data Analytics Evolution
Incumbent Players: Jarvis Analytics, Dental Intelligence, Practice by Numbers, Sikka.ai remain dominant for office-level dashboards.
New Executive-Level Solutions: OSdental, ClariFlHealth, and Pronto are focusing on AI-driven insights that pull from multiple data sources—not just PMS data.
Custom Build Providers: Omniscient Platforms, Kolla, HeyDonto, and others are offering more affordable data warehousing solutions with AI analytics capabilities.
2. Automation Opportunities
Insurance Verification: Solutions like Planet DDS, DentrixAscend, Zuub, AirPay, and Revtech are automating 80-90% of plan build processes.
Real-Time Benefits: Overjet ReviewPASS, Optum Real, and AdraVision are pioneering real-time claim adjudication—potentially transforming cash flow and patient experience.
3. Voice AI: Silicon Valley's Entry into Dental Operations
Established Players: Bola AI and Denti AI with Scribe continue to lead clinical documentation.
The Silicon Valley Shift: Perhaps most notable in the current landscape is the recent entry of venture-backed AI startups with serious technical pedigree. Avora, emerging from Y Combinator—the same accelerator behind Airbnb, Stripe, and Dropbox—represents a new category of AI-first companies building agent technology specifically for dental workflows. Rather than adapting existing voice technology, they're developing sophisticated AI agents that layer intelligence on top of scribing capabilities.
Similarly, DayDream has attracted backing from Palantir's founder, bringing enterprise-grade AI infrastructure expertise to healthcare operations. This signals that the same technical talent that built large-scale data platforms for government and Fortune 500 companies is now seeing dentistry as a compelling vertical for AI application.
This trend represents a fundamental shift in the dental technology landscape. Historically, dental software companies have added AI features to existing products. Now, we're seeing AI-native companies with deep technical expertise specifically choosing dentistry as their initial market—a validation of both the sector's data richness and automation potential.
Other Emerging Players: Kiroku, DentalBee, Alta AI, and ClariFlHealth continue to expand voice capabilities, but the entry of Silicon Valley talent suggests the sophistication of dental AI is about to accelerate significantly.
The Numbers: ROI That Matters
Insurance Verification Automation
55% cost reduction vs. overseas outsourcing
$863k yearly savings for a 40-office DSO
$6M value creation at 7x EBITDA multiple
Real-Time Benefits Impact
$10k-$20k per office improvement in cash flow (reduced AR >90 days)
$400-$2k/month/office savings in collections efforts
$65k/year reduced dependency on specialized insurance coordinators
Voice AI Efficiency Gains
5-10 minutes saved per patient in charting and clinical notes
Elimination of after-hours documentation = happier providers
Real-time coaching and compliance improvements
The Takeaway
In a year where AI hype is at full volume, Jill's session was a masterclass in clarity.
The message to DSOs was consistent:
Audit your current tech and processes
Focus on high-impact, ROI-positive changes
Build a flexible, vendor-independent architecture
Align every investment with a measurable business outcome
For those in the room, the value was as much in the peer discussion as in the slides. For those who weren't, the deck—and especially the poll results—offer a rare, unfiltered look at how the most operationally-minded DSOs are thinking about technology in 2025.
Get the Full Deck & Poll Results
Want to see the complete findings, vendor landscapes, and ROI models from the session?
📩 Email: Jill@OptimizeDent.com
📄 Download the Deck: [Contact Jill for complete presentation materials]
This article is based on Jill Nesbitt's interactive workshop at the 2025 Dykema Dental Technology Summit. Jill provides independent, product-agnostic dental software implementation services with 20 years of dental operations experience.
