Accelerating Dentsply Sirona’s Innovation Engine

Historically, each company invested significantly in innovation, new product development – and the broadest clinical digital education platform in the industry to support practitioners and their patients. However, the company also recognized early on that the advantages of distributed learning are not in the individual laptop, desktop, or mobile device, but in the seamless interaction of hardware, software, and content delivery to create innovative solutions for dental practitioners.

Having now grown to become the industry leader with approximately 16,000 employees, operations in more than 40 countries worldwide and a sales presence in more than 120 countries – Dentsply Sirona sets a global standard for dental manufacturing, technology development, digital treatment, and clinical education.

Every year Dentsply Sirona’s products and solutions reach 600,000 dental professionals who treat over 6,000,000 patients daily. Which translates to a billion patients each year. Practitioners rely on the quality and clinical safety of the company’s products. When empowering dental professionals to provide better, safer, faster dental care, Dentsply Sirona works with them to envision what‘s possible, and the key step to achieving these goals is the education and support provided so that the benefits are realized.

Greater Learning and Training Needs

In 2019, company leaders determined they needed to be able to keep customers and its own leadership and associates even more up-to-date with the latest education, training, or information globally on a 24×7 basis. That’s when Dentsply Sirona turned to Learner Mobile to implement an EdTech platform based on LMS principles but goes beyond responsive design by building individualized experiences for each learner’s phone, tablet, or desktop and maximizes the strengths of each platform. Through Learner Mobile, not only could traditional and compliance curriculum be served up like any LMS, but so is the informal, on-demand, just in-time, micro- and community learning — that other LMS’s couldn’t do.

Compliance Improvement

Learner Mobile’s platform first tackled adoption and compliance, leading to more people completing coursework. In the first year and only two weeks after implementation, Dentsply Sirona’s clinical education manager, Amanda Ballard, said, “We’re only halfway through the month and our engagement score is equal to all nine months of prior use with our old LMS.” At the time, course completions for online product training were up 500%.

Navigating the Pandemic

After the first year, Dentsply Sirona leveraged the Learner Mobile platform to tackle its response to the Covid-19 pandemic by helping to keep its clients engaged with SureSmile, a state-of-the-art digital orthodontic solution, to support their growth during a slower time for many dental practices. Dentsply Sirona was able to rely on Learner Mobile’s powerful analytics that go beyond pure compliance checks to captures real-time data within the system by utilizing AI. From the customizable monthly reporting, Dentsply Sirona saw that, after the initial dip in February-March 2020 when the COVID-19 landscape was most uncertain, it saw a steady increase in SureSmile adoption and engagement trends among its dental professionals that ultimately surpassed original highs within a year.

Next up, taking learner experience to the next level.