How Heartland Dental Deployed SAP to Reduce Complexity Across Its Network
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Key Takeaways
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Heartland Dental has streamlined its operations by standardizing its SAP landscape and integrating core enterprise data across a network of over 1,800 dental practices, enhancing operational efficiency and data visibility.
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The implementation of SAP S/4HANA and other connected SAP applications has significantly reduced manual processes, enabling real-time decision-making and improving coordination among clinical support teams.
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As the company prepares to transition to SAP S/4HANA Cloud and utilize the generative AI assistant Joule, it emphasizes the importance of data governance and unified definitions for fostering future automation.
Heartland Dental has scaled its operations by standardizing its SAP landscape and unifying core enterprise data across a highly distributed network of dental practices. By implementing a connected set of cloud-based SAP applications, the organization reduced operational silos and established a single, consistent source of data truth. This shift has enabled the company to provide advanced analytics and insights directly to dental practitioners on various devices, enhancing their ability to deliver high-quality care
The company, which is one of the largest dental support organizations in the United States, began its SAP-led digital transformation in 2018 with a focus not on ERP replacement, but on building a scalable integration and data foundation using SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP).
Today, Heartland Dental supports more than 1,800 dental practices and over 20,000 team members nationwide, operating at a scale comparable to a large enterprise. As the company expanded its footprint, leadership began to confront structural limitations common in distributed healthcare organizations. Core business functions such as finance, HR, procurement, and planning were spread across a growing mix of systems, making it hard to standardize processes without limiting local flexibility. Over time, disconnected applications and inconsistent data definitions reduced visibility and made coordination across the organization more time-consuming and costly.
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Designing an End-to-End, Data-Driven Enterprise Architecture
To address these challenges, Heartland Dental consolidated its enterprise backbone around SAP S/4HANA, supported by SAP SuccessFactors, SAP Ariba, SAP Concur, and SAP Analytics Cloud. These applications were implemented as a connected operating layer to standardize core processes and establish enterprise-wide visibility.
At the foundation, SAP HANA and SAP S/4HANA provide a real-time system of record for transactions and data, while SAP Business Technology Platform supports integration and extensibility without disrupting the core ERP environment.
For end users, SAP Build Work Zone serves as a centralized entry point to critical applications, while shared services delivered through SAP SuccessFactors, SAP Ariba, and SAP Concur simplify common administrative tasks.
Robert “RJ” Jerome, senior vice president and chief digital officer at Heartland Dental explained, “Just like we take the administrative burden off our supported doctors, SAP takes the tech burden off us, so we can focus on supporting doctors and their teams.”
Translating SAP Investments into Day-to-Day Operational Impact
Taken together, Heartland Dental’s SAP landscape changed how work gets done across the organization on a daily basis. Standardized processes and shared data models reduced the need for manual reconciliation and ad hoc reporting, allowing teams to spend less time validating numbers and more time acting on them.
SAP S/4HANA enables clinical support teams to work from consistent definitions and timely data, which has improved coordination across functions. This has shortened planning cycles and made performance discussions more actionable for the company.
At the same time, centralized platforms combined with shared services have simplified routine administrative activities. By consolidating access to applications and standardizing workflows, Heartland Dental has been able to support day-to-day operations at scale while keeping local teams focused on running practices effectively, rather than navigating fragmented systems.
Looking ahead, Heartland Dental’s next major milestone is going live with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition, while also extending its use of SAP’s generative AI assistant, Joule, to move beyond insight and toward greater automation across the business.
What This Means for SAPinsiders
Standardized cloud ERP cores are becoming the backbone of scalable, multi-entity organizations. As companies grow through expansion or acquisition, fragmented systems quickly become a barrier to visibility and governance. SAPinsider research shows that while only about one in five organizations surveyed report being fully live on SAP Cloud ERP, 54% are already at some stage of deployment, underscoring how quickly cloud ERP adoption is moving from evaluation to execution.
Real-time planning and analytics are moving from finance-only tools to enterprise decision platforms. By embedding SAP Analytics Cloud on live S/4HANA data, Heartland Dental enabled continuous planning across the business.
Data governance today determines AI readiness tomorrow. Unified definitions, governed data models, and platform-based architectures are foundational for advanced analytics and AI. Organizations that establish these foundations now are better positioned to adopt intelligent automation and decision support later.
