Week Two: Ready to Go

This is the second entry in an ongoing series following South Barrington Dental Care through their transition from Dentrix to Dentrix Ascend, told in near-real time by owner Dr. Allison Bartley, in her own words. 

Yesterday we ran the full-day guided training. This was the moment we'd been building toward since we signed on. All the onboarding, setup, and conversations about what was coming culminated in one day where my team got their hands into the sandbox, worked through real-world scenarios with our trainer, and started to build the muscle memory that's going to carry us forward. 

I was pretty nervous walking into it. There's this gap between abstract knowledge and actually doing the thing, and that gap can feel pretty wide when you're hours away from going live. But here's what I noticed: the gap is smaller than I expected. 

The team came out of it with a confidence that surprised me in the best way. We're rating ourselves at an eight out of ten for readiness. That means we know enough to get through a full day. We've seen the workflows. We've run through the scenarios. We know where things live in the software, and we know what we don't know yet. And honestly, knowing what you don't know is half the battle in a situation like this. 

My assistant came out energized. She went from being someone who never used our old system to suddenly understanding because this new one speaks her language better, and she knows it’s going to make her job easier. And that shift truly matters more than any feature comparison ever could. 

My receptionist went through the whole day and kept saying, "Oh, this is easier than I thought it would be." She'd been bracing for impact, and instead she found a system that actually streamlines a lot of the things that were clunky before. You could see the weight lift. 

And me? I'm excited and nervous at the same time, which I think is exactly the right emotional place to be. Excited because I can see how this is going to work for us, but nervous because tomorrow we turn this on for real.  

But here's what I keep coming back to: we've got this. Not in the "I'm certain nothing will go wrong" sense (something will go wrong; it always does), but in the "we know enough to handle it" sense. We know enough to solve problems together. We know enough to call our support team if we get stuck. We know enough to stay calm when things don't work the way we expected on the first try. 

That's why we’re at an eight, and that's what readiness looks like on day one. 

Tomorrow morning, we go live. And tonight? Tonight we wrap up the day with Lots of drinks, munchies, and showing off our skills at Top Golf. 

More soon. 

— Dr. Allison Bartley, Owner, South Barrington Dental Care