In recent years, advancements in digital dentistry methods and technology have led to significant changes in the market’s demands and practices. This has made it challenging for some dental labs to keep up, let alone stay ahead of the curve.
However, there has been a rise in highly specialized businesses, such as design centers, dental SaaS, and digital milling centers, that contribute to the digitization of dental processes at different stages.
One such business is Alien Milling Technologies in Glendora California. Since the center was founded in 2015, they have been servicing dental clinics and allowing them to provide more accurate, efficient, and immediate dental products to their patients.
In this episode of the Evident Lab-To-Lab Education Series, we discussed with founder and CEO Saro Hatzakortzian core insights about the center’s journey and the indispensable role of milling in the dental industry.
From the Lab to the Milling Center
Saro started his career in dentistry working at his father’s lab, a common starting point for many dental professionals. With his expertise in CAD/CAM technologies, he and his brother noticed a significant shift in the landscape of dentistry, with traditional and analog methods being replaced by modern ones.
Many labs were struggling to meet these demands and transition to match the rapidly digitizing industry, and Saro saw this as an opportunity to bridge the gap.
By opening a milling center, he and his team would be able to provide labs with the necessary tools and services to offload some of their work, enabling them to quickly meet the needs of their patients. So began Alien Milling Technologies, and since then they have grown rapidly to become a leading milling center in the dental industry.
When asked why the center was named so uniquely, Saro explained that it was because of the software and the machines available on the market when they first started out.
Because dental CAD/CAM were still an up-and-coming part of the digital dentistry pipeline, the center was limited to technology and equipment available for industrial purposes– making their resources “alien” to the dental world at the time.
Recently, the dental software and machines available have become more sophisticated. Alien Milling Technologies now uses top-notch software and equipment to deliver quality prosthetics to their clients.
With their firsthand knowledge and expertise of how labs operate, Saro and his team have been able to scale Alien Milling– upgrading and acquiring resources while expanding their client base.
The Importance of Marketing
Of course, this process of growing their client base was established over the course of many years, with Saro taking the lead for a lot of their efforts as their acting Marketing Director.
Armed with tools he acquired early on in his career, his roots in marketing date back to his father’s dental instruments business, long before he joined Alien Milling and gained experience in the lab. Despite this, he took on the role with confidence, leveraging his early knowledge and experience to succeed in the position.
As his expertise accumulated and evolved over the years, he successfully devised a proactive marketing strategy for the milling center. This approach encompasses both online and on-ground efforts, with Alien Milling taking an active role in trade shows to expand their network and simultaneously engaging with their customers through their online presence.
Because he saw how their initiatives positively impacted Alien Milling, he now urges other businesses to also invest time and resources in their marketing efforts. However, he also attributed the milling center’s success to his team and the work they do daily.
All aspects of the business work seamlessly together to gain new clients while retaining existing clients with the quality of work that they do. As digital dentistry continues to overtake traditional methods, this system and this pacing is one that Alien Milling is committed to sustaining through constant innovation.
Milling & The Rise of Digital Dentistry
The shift towards digital processes in the dental industry has been significant in recent years, with more and more labs making the transition. Milling centers like Alien Milling play a crucial role in this process, providing the necessary support to make the shift as smooth as possible.
Alien Milling Technologies offers a wide range of services to dental labs, including digital design, milling, and 3D printing. Currently, the milling center houses cutting-edge and highly efficient equipment that labs may not have access to.
This in turn enables labs to provide patients with consistently accurate dental prosthetics like crowns, bridges, and implants without sacrificing speed. With the use of their portal, Alien Milling is able to mill products with a same-day day turnaround for mill-ready CAD designs, provided they are uploaded before 2PM (Pacific Standard Time).
For orders that require both design and milling services, they dedicate one day to designing and another milling– still offering considerably faster production than most pipelines. Of course, to ensure accuracy, they work closely with dental labs to ensure that every product they produce meets the lab’s exact specifications.
As Saro puts it, “We’re really using human intelligence to run the machines but we’re using machines to at least do the heavy lifting.” This combination of sophisticated technology and human expertise is what drives digital dentistry today.
The Vital Role of Specialized Milling Centers in Digital Dentistry
The ecosystem of digital dentistry has expanded to include more than just labs and clinics. In the collective drive towards digital transformation in the dental industry, it is highly specialized businesses like Alien Milling Technologies that make the shift possible for labs and clinics.
Their success serves as a testament to the importance of innovation and staying ahead of the curve in the field of dentistry. The fact that their clients have experienced significant success because of these collaborations highlights just how much they can impact the trajectory of any practice.
In building the future of dentistry, Evident Digital has also been instrumental in providing labs and clinics with the resources they need to succeed in such a rapidly digitizing landscape. We take the initiative to help each unique business succeed, knowing that in our range of offerings can provide services compatible with practices of any size– helping clinics not only sustain but also scale.
As a comprehensive solution for all things related to digital dentistry, Evident can assist clinics with their specific needs. This can include everything from digital dental designs, lab management software, and digital dentistry equipment to secure and encrypted patient data storage. Reach out and secure your place in the future of dentistry, hand in hand with Evident Digital today.
