Supporting our Customers

Keeping Our Promise as Trusted Partners

We work hard to keep our promise as trusted partners who, through our commitment to innovation, clinical education, and training via the Dentsply Sirona Academy, empower our customers to provide the best possible care to their patients.

Dentsply Sirona Academy

Dentsply Sirona has one of the largest, most comprehensive clinical education programs in the dental industry. Our program helps further our mission of empowering dental professionals and students with the up-to-date knowledge and skills they need to advance themselves and their practices. Through training programs, courses, resources, and self-directed learning – online and at 60 training facilities, dental academies, and showrooms – we promote intellectual curiosity, ambition, and drive for the highest standards of dental treatment quality and safety. In 2020, we provided 7,289 training courses through the Academy, supported by leading clinical experts and organizations training 1,029,000 dental professionals (up from 470,000 in 2019) from 80 countries. More than 75% of participants were dentists, 4% were hygienists, and nearly 20,000 were dental technicians.

Overall, the number of webinars created by Dentsply Sirona increased from 519 in the first half of 2019 to 1,431 in the first half of 2020. A major driver of this shift was Dentsply Sirona China. In 2020, the market rolled out 104 webinars (8% of the global total) and delivered high-quality clinical education to 588,760 attendees – 72% of the global total. Using WeChat allowed the team to reach more customers through an existing channel. Dentsply Sirona made significant investments in 59 training facilities, education centers, and showrooms around the world during 2020, including flagship education centers in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Bensheim, Germany.

The Charlotte education center includes 5 training rooms, a video conference meeting room, 7 fully functional dental operatories, 2 clinical training rooms for hands-on education, a chairside CAD/CAM milling room, a laboratory milling room, a 288-person auditorium, and high-tech equipment. A major expansion of this facility was completed in 2021.

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#Hereforyou Customer Portal

The #hereforyou customer portal was created during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hosted as a hub on the global Dentsply Sirona site, it provided support and guidance to customers.

Along with our partners, we created and made available a wide range of clinical education tools and resources, including:

  • Live, on-demand webinars
  • Solutions and guidance on protecting and managing dental practices during the pandemic
  • CARES Act resources (U.S.)
  • Interactive customer FAQs where customers could submit questions using country-specific contact information
  • During the peak of the crisis, new content for our customers was produced almost daily, particularly by our clinical education teams. Currently, the website is available for the U.S., Canada, Germany, the UK, Benelux, MENA, and APAC.

Project Virtuoso

“Project Virtuoso,” a global train-the-trainer program, was launched during the pandemic to respond to customers’ educational needs. First, the teams created a catalog of 100 on-demand courses that commercial customers could access, releasing around 4 courses a day (mostly in English). Next, in-market colleagues worked with local experts to create webinar content. The final phase will be to scale up content creation, empowering in-market colleagues to identify new training opportunities and create additional resources.

By the end of 2020, the on-demand course catalog included more than 200 courses in English. As new content continued being uploaded, webinar registrations increased 1,728% over a few weeks. The number of webinar participants was also high, reaching up to 7,000 people in a single webinar. In total, more than 377,000 people globally registered for 636 Dentsply Sirona live webinars.

Customer Events in 2020

DS World 2020

As the COVID-19 pandemic moved events online, we quickly pivoted to make DS World, our annual global industry event for dental professionals, completely virtual. Usually an in-person event for thousands of attendees, we adapted our approach and hosted it on schedule, online, in November 2020. At the event, we offered 70 on-demand educational courses by our most well-respected key pinion leaders (KOLs) across all disciplines of dentistry and demonstrated 6 surgeries by specialists. We also showcased the latest innovative solutions from Dentsply Sirona, including new products such as Axeos, Schick AE sensor, Surefil One, and Primemill to ensure our customers were able to work with the best products. The event had 4,575 attendees, more than double the typical DS webinar participation rate.

DS Endo Congress 2020

The Endodontics team hosted a 3-day, interactive virtual event in December 2020, focused on future trends in the dental sector. Around 150 dental professionals attended. The event explored the move towards the digitization of the industry and the potential benefits for the sustainability and accessibility of dentistry.

DS Talk With Clinical Experts

Following the successful establishment of DS Talk in previous years, the concept evolved into an online event series featuring an updated format, bringing together 9 KOLs in each session for engaging discussions. Like the DS Endo Congress, DS Talk focused on the potential of digitization to accelerate progress towards a more sustainable dental industry.

Dental Students

A fundamental part of our overarching commitment to clinical education is supporting, upskilling, and empowering the next generation of dental leaders – both students and those at the beginning of their careers.

Germany

Dentsply Sirona’s International Special Clinic Solutions team donated equipment for students at universities in Mainz, Gießen, Heidelberg, Regensburg, and Frankfurt. The team also donated CEREC software licenses and online curricula to the University of Göttingen so students could continue learning how to construct crowns, partial crowns, and bridges at home.

U.S.

BrownGirl RDH (Registered Dental Hygienists) is a U.S. non-profit set up to shift the mindset about who works in the dental industry, remove cultural and economic barriers, and build pathways to dental careers. During the summer of 2020, Dentsply Sirona U.S. donated $11,000 to the organization. This was enough to cover all costs for 1 semester of a 3-semester dental hygiene degree at a community college.

Throughout 2019 and 2020, Dentsply Sirona collaborated with the Boston University Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine (GSDM) in support of a state-of-the-art digital dentistry technology center. Our support allowed the university to update and expand its treatment center and outfit 100 patient-treatment spaces in its predoctoral Patient Treatment Center with Dentsply Sirona Teneo dental chairs. In recognition of our support, the center was named in Dentsply Sirona’s honor. The new Dentsply Sirona Patient Treatment Center features integration of the most advanced digital dentistry technology and reflects our leadership in clinical education and patient care. 

Upon receiving her award, Breanna Ormon, BrownGirl RDH grant recipient 2020, said, “I want to thank BrownGirl RDH and Dentsply Sirona for the scholarship. It has given me a tremendous amount of inspiration and self-confidence. With less than 3% of hygienists being African American, being awarded this scholarship feels like winning the lottery to me. This scholarship brings me closer to reaching my dreams of being a part of that 3%. Again, thank you and I will make you proud.”

Contest and Awards

SCADA Awards

Since 1959, Dentsply Sirona has sponsored the Student Competition for Advancing Dental Research and Its Application (SCADA) in partnership with the American Association for Dental Research. In the last 62 years, SCADA has grown to become a globally recognized program with more than 8,500 participants from 28 countries and more than 130 renowned dental schools. The 46 U.S. entrants submitted a complete portfolio for review to an international panel of judges, and 6 winners were selected.

Global Clinical Case Contest (GCCC)

The Global Clinical Case Contest (GCCC) is an annual event designed to award outstanding achievements in esthetic dentistry by students from all over the world. In 2020, the final round took place virtually on September 23. The first prize was awarded to Emil Abiev, of the Moscow State University of Medicine of Dentistry. Over 760 students from 140 global universities participated in the 2020 contest, and over 4,600 students had taken part by the end of 2020. 

Of the competition, Prof. Dr. Rainer Seemann, member of the GCCC judging panel, stated that, “The competition sends out a clear signal: the cooperation between Dentsply Sirona and universities around the world is essential to connect with the most talented dentists of tomorrow – most especially during these difficult times.”

Women in Dentistry

At Dentsply Sirona, we’re committed to engaging the most talented experts and KOLs in support of innovation and clinical education. Currently, about 1 in 5 experts employed by Dentsply Sirona are female, and we’ve created several female-focused Key Opinion Leader (KOL) development programs, including the Smart Integration Award and the Female Speaker Development Program, as well as a KOL database of our female talent.

Looking to the future, we’ll continue seeking input from female dental professionals to guide our innovation efforts and help us develop case studies, testimonials, and on-demand educational content for the Dentsply Sirona Academy.

Smart Integration Award

To celebrate and honor the steadily increasing number of women entering the dental profession, Dentsply Sirona launched the biannual Dentsply Sirona Smart Integration Award Program in 2019.

The award recognizes women in the industry for their visionary treatment concepts and ideas on digitization in dental practices. By inviting innovative female dentists and lab technicians from around the world to engage and grow with Dentsply Sirona, the award helps create a more gender-balanced, progressive network of KOLs for the company.

The first Smart Integration Award for women in dentistry, held in 2019, highlighted digitalization in dental offices with a focus on the heart of the dental workflow: the treatment center. In total, 24 female dentists from 7 different countries submitted entries. After the awards ceremony, the dentists participated in a 2-day education program – the Expert Development Program – to continue their journey toward a digital and smartly connected dental career in partnership with Dentsply Sirona. 

Dr. Ginal Bilimoria, Smart Integration Award 2019 winner (New Zealand), when asked about her award, said, “The concept of the award intrigued me. It was about efficient, intelligent, and integrated workflows using smart networked processes; something I was interested in. I love the idea of the award being open to women from all over the world. When a group of women get together to discuss dentistry, the dynamic is often quite different as we open up and share more easily about our struggles and successes.”

The next awards ceremony is scheduled for Fall 2021, and global entries can be submitted as photos, video, text, or sketches. 

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