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Lightyear Case Study: Teladoc Health

Facing network and billing challenges, Teladoc partnered with Lightyear to revolutionize their network procurement, inventory management, and bill payment.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

20%+

cost savings identified via Lightyear circuit cost data

60%+

time savings through automated telecom bill payment

Automated and optimized

network inventory management
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COMPANY WEBSITE

Teladoc Health

FOUNDED

2002

WITH LIGHTYEAR SINCE

2023

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Teladoc Health, a leader in telemedicine with an expansive network, partnered with Lightyear to tackle network inventory and bill management challenges. Discover how they utilized Lightyear’s software to streamline their telecom operation.

Meet the Client

Teladoc Health is the leader in virtual care, with 5,000 employees globally. In the past year alone, Teladoc facilitated 18 million virtual visits, serving over 90 million members. To deliver their telemedicine service, Teladoc manages a robust network spanning 100+ circuits across their office and data center footprint.

To better understand how Teladoc managed its network footprint before and after working with Lightyear, we sat down with a few members of their technology team. We spoke with Luc LaFontan, Teladoc's VP of Technology, whose responsibilities include End User Services, Infrastructure Services, and Service Management. Joining him were Michael Patukonis, Sr. Director of Infrastructure & Engineering, who owns Teladoc’s IT infrastructure operations, including the network, and Jay Mack, Sr. Infrastructure Engineer, who manages Teladoc’s telecom operations and serves as the company’s primary liaison with Lightyear.

A Sizable Network Lacking a Single Source of Truth

From 2015 - 2020, Teladoc experienced hyper-organic growth from the growth of telemedicine, while also undergoing a number of sizable strategic acquisitions, resulting in a complex network landscape—an amalgamation of various, separate company operations. Teladoc’s network had to serve both on-premises office infrastructure and service delivery to customers, making comprehensive network management critically important.

Luc had previously worked with Telecom Expense Management (TEM) solutions, but found himself lacking an accurate “source of truth” for Teladoc’s network inventory, making network operations more difficult. Without an accurate inventory record, troubleshooting problematic circuits was more difficult, circuits would auto-renew when they shouldn’t, and all sorts of other issues would permeate the team.

Everybody kept sending me Excel spreadsheets and asking how many circuits we have and what they cost. We couldn't budget effectively and lacked a comprehensive view of our inventory. Different groups maintained different spreadsheets, creating a fundamental challenge in determining a single source of truth.

Luc LaFontanVP of Technology - Teladoc Health

Alongside pain tracking network inventory, telecom bill payment proved problematic as well for Teladoc. Keeping track of telecom invoices as the network grew led to missed payments at times, causing misbillings and other avoidable additional costs.

Network Visibility & Cost Savings

Luc recognized the urgent need to consolidate and organize their network inventory. After finding Lightyear, Teladoc began its journey with a subscription to Lightyear’s Network Inventory Manager (NIM), which acts as a digital system of record for a company’s network.

Once onboarded, NIM delivered immediate value by offering fingertip access to over 30 key data points per network service, including circuit IDs, static IPs, and contract details. All of this is delivered in a sleek, intuitive user interface.

When someone on the network team needs information like a circuit ID, they can quickly access it directly through NIM. It's been incredibly useful.

Jay MackSenior Infrastructure Engineer - Teladoc Health

Additionally—and to the team’s surprise—NIM also delivered proactive cost-saving capabilities. Circuits would now get reshopped prior to renewal with proactive renewal notifications, avoiding costly auto-renewals. Further, through comprehensive cost audits, Lightyear identified potential savings across Teladoc’s existing circuits.

Streamlined Billing and Operations 

Following initial success with NIM, Teladoc expanded its use of Lightyear's platform by implementing Lightyear’s Bill Consolidation offering. This move addressed their previously noted telecom bill payment challenges.

Michael Patukonis highlighted the transformative impact he has seen with billing in only his first 4 months in the role:

When you think about operational expenditure and the labor hours that would go into bill processing from start to finish including triaging, verifying, routing through procurement systems, and seeking approvals—Lightyear now does this all for us. By using Lightyear we are saving money just in terms of the time spent managing that process across multiple vendors.

Michael PatukonisSenior Director of Infrastructure & Engineering - Teladoc Health

A True Partnership 

Looking ahead, Teladoc anticipates further collaboration with Lightyear as they navigate upcoming circuit renewals and re-shop opportunities as well as international network expansion.

Teladoc’s technology team feels that it has found a true telecom partner with Lightyear:

The Lightyear team is consistently consistent. Anything we need from them they never drop the ball. We're never chasing them. Compared with vendors across many different disciplines, Lightyear makes us feel more like a partnership than a customer.

Michael PatukonisSenior Director of Infrastructure & Engineering - Teladoc Health

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