Grzegorz Stawarz for PMR: our business target is 20% of the dental surgeries in Poland

Ten post jest także dostępny w języku: polski

By the end of 2021 we want to be number one on the dental software market, says Grzegorz Stawarz, President of FELG Dent in an interview with PMR. The company was established 6 years ago. It was founded by a Pole, Grzegorz Stawarz, together with his Italian partner Guido Pasquantonio.

Polish programming skills combined with market knowledge from Italy

Programming skills come from Poland. It is here that the cloud team that started writing the program was created. From Italy, the company drew knowledge about the dental market. Guido is a professor of dentistry at Tor Vergata University in Rome, so he provided information on the needs of the dentistry market, dentists, which is the biggest problem for them. It took 4 years to build the programme.

– In 2018, shares from Italy were entirely bought out by Polish investors in order to intensify investments and be able to conquer the market more strongly. It was in Poland that we started to build sales – explained Grzegorz Stawarz, CEO of FELG Dent

Cloud computing is gaining in time of epidemics

After initial cooperation with partners, about 1.5 years ago FELG Dent started to build its own sales in Poland. Currently, the company serves about a thousand dental surgeries in Poland. The software is adapted to both large and small clients. The cloud solution of FELG Dent helps to store data in accordance with the GDPR. The company has developed an application which enables constant access to up-to-date data between several locations operating in a given network of dental surgeries. In the times of COVID-19, FELG Dent implemented a questionnaire recommended by the Polish Dental Association, which the patient can fill in before the visit to the clinic. He also made it possible to conduct a videoconsultation. Currently, the company is working on the possibility of paying for in-patient visits before they take place, as well as making payments for videoconsultations.

– Our solution makes it possible to collect all medical records in one place. It is worth remembering that more and more surgeries want the patient to be more independent, to be able to register for a visit or to fill in a questionnaire before an in-patient visit. May 2020 was a period when dental surgeries understood that only a cloud is important. It was the best sales period for FELG Dent software in history in terms of the number of customers acquired. Sales in this month were twice as high as in the usual month before. We gained from the epidemic. What is more, in September 2020 we observed a record increase in sales value exceeding 500% in comparison to the same period a year earlier – emphasises Grzegorz Stawarz.

In the era of the pandemic, the company has remodelled its way of reaching customers. Very quickly it started to carry out webinars, in which a lot has been said about how to work during pandemic, what procedures to do and what not to do. FELG Dent became a bit of an advisory body inviting important people from the dental industry such as the President of the Polish Dental Association Prof. PhD Marzena Dominiak and many others from the field of economics and law. The company introduced a completely new sales channel, which until now has been a little bit neglected. Currently the company employs about 25 people in Poland and many others abroad. It is worth noting that FELG Dent together with the offered software provides technical support for its customers 24 hours a day, seven days a week, that is all year round. Within the next 2-3 years, the company plans to gain 20% of the dental surgeries in Poland.

COVID-19 has not stopped its foreign expansion

FELG Dent software is present in several European markets. In Italy, the company operates about 200 dental surgeries. In February the company decided to open an office near Milan. Unfortunately, the situation related to the pandemic forced the suspension of this process in June and moving some of the people employed there to the office in Krakow. However, since September, FELG Dent has again launched sales to the Italian market, this time in a slightly modified form. Currently, sales in Italy are carried out using a hybrid method, partly remotely from the Kraków office, partly directly by the sales representatives working in the on-site field.

– The strong market we are building is Israel. Although it is in the second lockdown, the dentistry market there has not been affected by the actions taken to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. We have a partner there – said Grzegorz Stawarz.

The company also has clients on the market in England or Ireland. It also plans to go beyond Europe. One of the goals for next year is the market of North and South America, where FELG Dent wants to gain new customers. The company is constantly developing its solution. It is also thinking about creating software for other medical industries in the future.