How to help your team adopt new technology: Lessons from Trinity Dental
A new system only pays off when people can use it confidently. Trinity Dental’s experience shows how to link technology to a clear purpose and support your team while they get used to it.
Key takeaways
- Explain what the technology should achieve, in terms of work your team already recognises.
- Find out what’s causing uncertainty. Doubts about results, unfamiliar steps and technical faults each need a different response.
- Build repeated practice into the rollout, and make it clear who people can ask.
- Treat new systems as a chance for people to take on broader responsibilities, and keep each role clearly defined.
- Check whether the change is delivering the benefit you wanted, not just whether people are comfortable with it.
Alison runs a dental practice built around technology and continuous improvement, so she knows what new equipment can do.
She also knows that buying it doesn’t make it work.
People have to set aside a process they know well and learn one they don’t.
At Trinity Dental, that effort paid off in an everyday task. Paper-based invoicing used to take up to two days. With Sage, it now takes a couple of hours.
Getting there took more than installing software and below we explain how, as follows:
Watch Trinity Dental’s story, above, to hear Alison and her team talk about patient care, technology and what they want for the practice.
Start with the improvement you want
Alison’s first clinic did well commercially, but it didn’t fulfil her as a person or a clinician. With Trinity Dental, she wanted patients to feel cared for, with the best technology supporting that care.
Her finance systems serve a more down-to-earth purpose, but they connect to the same goal. Before moving to cloud accounting, she made decisions mostly on instinct.
“Instinct is important to have in a business,” she says. “But it’s actually great to have the numbers to back it up.”
Without clear numbers, she kept asking herself whether she could afford the technology she wanted, and whether she could still afford to hire. Better financial information speaks to that worry directly.
You can bring on the best technology, but if you don’t have the right people to actually make those changes, the technology’s just not going to be successful.
Alison Simpson, Director, Trinity Dental
When you explain a change to your team, tie it to a task or customer need they recognise. For example, a new booking system might be meant to cut down repeat phone calls or make appointment details easier to find. Say whose work should get easier and what a good result would look like.
Then ask your team to test that explanation against their own experience. They’ll often point out practical needs you’ve missed, such as how colleagues hand work over or deal with exceptions.
Find out what makes people uncertain
Before deciding how to help someone, find out what is worrying them. Someone who doubts a system’s output needs a different kind of help from someone who trusts the result but can’t remember the steps.
Trinity Dental Operations Lead Adelaine Ginns was used to checking paper invoices, statements and bank records by hand. Moving to Sage meant switching to a digital process after years of relying on documents she could physically examine, and at first she wasn’t sure the new approach could be trusted.
The old process had its own uncertainty, though, and she saw it clearly.
She says: “When we were doing all the paperwork, you weren’t fully confident because you didn’t know if you had everything.”
This is worth remembering. A familiar process can feel safe without actually being reliable. If you help people see the gaps in the old way of working, the new one can feel less like a risk.
Ask a colleague to show you a task they’re unsure about. Where do they hesitate? What would they normally check? Do they know what to do if the result looks wrong?
Their answers tell you whether they need another demonstration, an explanation of how the checks work, or help with a technical problem. Reassurance on its own leaves the real difficulty unsolved.
Make practice part of the rollout
A first demonstration gives people somewhere to start. Day-to-day use then throws up variations, exceptions and questions that training never covered, so allow time for people to work through them with help on hand.
Adelaine became more comfortable with the accounting systems through regular use, and she knew she could ask Alison when she got stuck. Both mattered: repeated practice, and a person who could explain the unfamiliar parts.
Pick a routine task your team will do often. Let them try it, then ask which steps need more explanation. Follow up once they’ve done the task under normal working conditions, where interruptions and unusual cases make it harder.
Agree who will answer questions and how people can reach them. If the same question keeps coming up, a short guide or clearer instructions will probably help. More complex problems may need the supplier.
Build learning time into your plans. If people have to keep up their usual workload while learning a new process, training becomes something they attended rather than something they used.
Help people grow into new responsibilities
At Trinity Dental, staff development is part of the culture. Receptionist Sally Willmott describes Alison as “very pro-training”, someone who “really encourages you to make your world bigger”.
Adelaine is a good example. She joined Trinity Dental as an apprentice dental nurse and moved into broader operational work, including accounting. She now handles most of the regular processing, while Alison reviews the reports and keeps oversight.
Alison says that seeing colleagues do things they never thought they could is one of the things she’s proudest of, alongside patient outcomes and the growth of the business.
Growing doesn’t mean every new task feels easy. Sally is candid about the challenges of new technology, but she’s clear about why she’s sticking with it: “I know when I’ve mastered it, I’ll be able to do so many more things. I don’t want to be left behind.”
Ask people which tasks they can now do on their own and where they still need help. Recognise their progress, but don’t assume confidence in one area carries over to every other one.
Agree who does the work, who checks it and which issues need to be escalated. At Trinity Dental, Adelaine processes and Alison reviews. That split lets people grow without having to guess what they’re now responsible for.
Review what the change is delivering
Pick one technology change you’ve already made and review it from two angles: how your team finds it, and whether it’s delivering the improvement you wanted. People can become comfortable with a system while problems remain elsewhere in the process.
At Triniy Dental, the result shows up in daily work and in decision-making. Invoicing takes hours instead of days, and Alison has the clarity she was missing.
Sage has definitely given me clarity, so it means these decisions are made faster, easier, and yes, with confidence. I know what my numbers are. I know what we can afford. I know if we can invest in new technology.
Alison Simpson
Ask the people using the system three questions:
- What has become easier?
- Which task still feels difficult or uncertain?
- What would help you do that task confidently?
Work through a real example. If someone says a task takes too long, ask them to show you where the time goes. They may be entering the same thing twice, waiting for information, or double-checking something they don’t yet trust.
Agree one action based on what you find, such as more practice, clearer instructions, a change of responsibilities or a look at the system itself. Decide who owns it and when you’ll check whether it worked.
Then go back to the business result. If the aim was to cut repeat work, is it happening less often? If it was to improve customer communication, is the right information reaching the right person?
Final thoughts
For Alison, the investment in technology and in her team leads back to why she built Trinity Dental: patients who feel cared for, colleagues who grow, and the peace of mind of knowing where the business stands.
For your next change, start with the improvement that matters to your business, then plan the support your team will need to achieve it.
FAQs
How can I avoid overwhelming people with too much training?
Organise training around the tasks people need to do first. Give them a usable starting point, then introduce more functions as their responsibilities grow.
What should I do when the same question keeps coming up?
Check whether the instructions are unclear or hard to find. Ask someone to show you where they get stuck before deciding whether a guide, a demonstration or a process change would help most.
How can I tell a training problem from a system problem?
Watch the task and look closely at the point where it goes wrong. If the process is still confusing or unreliable when done correctly, more training won’t fix it.
Should I keep the old process running alongside the new one?
Decide deliberately, weighing continuity, checking requirements and the extra work involved. If you need a temporary parallel process, agree its purpose, who maintains it and when you’ll review whether it can stop.
What should I ask the supplier about staff support?
Ask what training is included, whether it covers your team’s actual tasks, and how follow-up questions are handled. Make sure people know where to get help after the initial introduction.
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