How my root canal relates to your technology

I bit into a Mounds bar and half my tooth fell out.  Clearly, I had a problem. I was 18 years old at the time, and it had been about 10 years since my last dentist visit (no insurance and no $).   Not to mention, 8-18 were my worst diet years, filled with jolly ranchers, laffy taffy, and Mounds bars and, as I said, no dentist. Not a good scenario.

A day later I found myself in ‘the chair’ with that haunting light over me, hearing deep sighs from the dentist. “Son, we have a problem. You not only need one root canal, you need THREE.” Horrible news, especially for an 18-year old.  But at least I’d found someone who could fix it; someone experienced with helping people get their mouth back in good form, right?

Fast forward 10 years later to a few weeks ago.  There I sat in the dentist chair once again, only to hear another deep sigh from the dentist, “Son, you need a root canal.”

What?  How on earth? I brush regularly, now with a Sonicare toothbrush nonetheless (Link to my Sonicare post), and haven’t had a single cavity in 10 years.  How could this happen?

Turns out the last dentist hadn’t cleaned out the infection properly during the root canal. I won’t go into specifics, but basically tooth #14 has 4 canals, of which the 4th is hard to find.  My previous dentist didn’t find it, which means it didn’t get cleaned out. Thus I have had an infection for possibly 10+ years in tooth #14.

Why hadn’t the dentist gotten to the root of the issue (in every senses of the word)? In short, he wasn’t a specialist. He was a generalist. He was actually a great dentist, but he wasn’t a skilled Endodontic Specialist. In certain cases a specialist is needed and, in this case, the dentist didn’t possess the lens needed to find the 4th canal in tooth #14. Luckily my current dentist knew he wasn’t a specialist in this matter so he referred me to an Endodontic Specialist.  He was the expert and, for him, finding the 4th canal was routine.

In summary:
I had an issue.
I found help.
It wasn’t the right help.
I had another issue.
I found the right help.

How does this relate to your technology?
Glad you asked.  As a CPA firm your technology needs are more complex than SMBs, ie. your clients. Most technology companies are generalists and have 90% of the tools (staff and/or technology) for 90% of the businesses out there. But what happens when your audit application won’t sync? What happens when an update blows up? Most likely a generalist technology company won’t find that 4th canal and may even have no clue how to help you…unless they spend multiple hours looking for a needle in a haystack, which they may or may not find, but will most certainly bill you for.

Why won’t they find it? Like the generalist dentist, they don’t have the right lens. They don’t possess that skill. They are generalists and they may be a great generalist at that…but that’s not what you need. You need a specialist.

*Article was written approx 30 minutes after completing the root canal, I blame typos and non-sense on the drugs!