On social media, we often use the #ourcustomersrock hashtag. Serving the best companies in telecom means we get to work alongside some truly incredible folks. The ‘Customer Spotlight’ is a perfect way for us to introduce them to the entire Equinox community! The latest spotlight shines on 26-year telecom veteran Mike Leedy.
Mike began his telecom career at the same company where he still works today. In 1999, he assisted in the original evaluation and recommendation of TeleLink. In his current role as Vice President of Billing Operations, Mike oversees a group whose primary responsibility is to ensure 100% of every end user billable charge is assessed and taxed correctly. So, they’re in the system daily. TeleLink mediates numerous call detail feeds from his network and his underlying carriers, standardizes the data, and transmits it to multiple different billing, costing, and CABS vendors. According to Mike, “When it comes to call records, ‘dups’ is definitely a four-letter word to my group. TeleLink not only lets us verify we receive every billable CDR to process, but also that we never rate the same call twice. Since it is very common for a call to originate on our network and terminate on another carrier, which generates two CDRs, this is a valuable business assurance benefit for us.” The company also relies on TeleLink’s record storage warehouse for subpoena compliance and mines this data to aid in troubleshooting. The Translations team, headed by Neil Alvarez, uses TeleLink’s reporting to provide meaningful usage metrics to stakeholders both in and out of the organization. Neil says, “TeleLink lets us view all the parameters related to a call, so we get a complete timeline of how and when events happen, which is super helpful for analyzing chronological events.”
In 2014, Mike was also involved in assessing and implementing the Protector fraud management system for his organization. Dana Lenarz, the company’s Manager CFS and Accounts Receivable, uses Protector daily for fraud prevention, detection, and notification. She explains that Protector’s ability to build and dynamically update usage profiles is invaluable. And, the system’s reports let her quickly see any anomalies that warrant investigation.
According to Mike, “Outstanding customer support, comprehensive training, thorough knowledge of the telecom industry, and superior product(s) that are fully customizable and deliver at every level,” set Equinox apart from other vendors. In particular, Mike and his team work with Eric, who “has been instrumental to my team in the success we have had with an unparalleled run of 7 billing migrations in an 8-year span from 2005 – 2013”. Mike also adds that Equinox completes routine programming requests in just a few hours as opposed to days/weeks.
Outside of his telecom job, Mike is an avid Pittsburgh Steeler fan and long-time season ticket holder. He also enjoys hiking and traveling. He and his wife, Karilynn, live in northeastern Ohio near Hammondsville just a few miles from where he was born and raised. She has her Doctorate in Nursing, is a Family Nurse Practitioner, and teaches for an online university in California. They both adore their Bernedoodle, Kauai.
We appreciate Mike’s support of all things Equinox and value the relationship we’ve established with him and his team. His telecom experience is an asset to the entire user community!
