Transcript
Taylor Ryan (00:00) hey, Dora. Oh, I think you’re on mute.
Dora Tao (00:07) Sorry about that. Hey, how are you?
Taylor Ryan (00:09) How was your break? It?
Dora Tao (00:12) Was good. Yeah, we actually went to Hong Kong and Japan, so I was gone.
Taylor Ryan (00:17) For a week.
Dora Tao (00:19) But I just got back yesterday?
Taylor Ryan (00:21) So back, nice. Are you like totally jet lagged?
Dora Tao (00:25) Surprisingly, I’m okay. I think because we took an overnight flight back. So I slept a little bit, and then we got in at like two Ish P. M. So then tried to like stay awake as long as possible.
Taylor Ryan (00:35) Yeah.
Dora Tao (00:36) Yeah, I was awake for a couple hours last night but I still probably got in a solid like six, seven hours which I feel like is pretty good. Yeah.
Taylor Ryan (00:43) For like first day back. Yeah, we’ll take it. I’m sure like this weekend, hopefully, you can catch up on sleep and readjust, but that’s good. You have a baby, right?
Dora Tao (00:54) Yeah, yeah. So we brought her which was the biggest challenge but fun it was.
Taylor Ryan (01:00) Fun. How old is she? Did you say 18 months?
Dora Tao (01:02) 16 months?
Taylor Ryan (01:03) 16 months? Okay. How did it go? Was it the first like big trip with?
Dora Tao (01:08) Her? I know we were so nervous. I was so nervous. We’ve traveled with her before, but most of the, we’ve done a couple of flights like this was probably her like fourth flight, but first, like long international flight, all the other flights have been like three or four hours maximum. She did really well on the flight there. She did very well, which was good because that was the longer flight. That was like a 15 hour flight. And then coming back, it was just nine hours and she did not do as well, but it’s okay. We survived.
Taylor Ryan (01:35) We made it. We.
Dora Tao (01:36) made it. Yeah, I’m sure. We annoyed the people sitting in front of us but it, you.
Taylor Ryan (01:41) know people get it. You know, like people the you’re in a shared space and like, yeah, I’m.
Dora Tao (01:47) like everyone either has kids or has family or a nephew, like everyone understands.
Taylor Ryan (01:51) Totally, exactly. I know I don’t have any kids but a lot of my friends are like starting to have their first. My, one of my best friends actually just found out that she’s pregnant with her second… but I, yeah, like even though I don’t have kids whenever I see parents on flights, I definitely feel for them. So, yeah, it’s.
Dora Tao (02:10) hard, I mean, it’s like we already, you know, it’s already hard for an adult to sit still for like right 18 hours and get over a jet lag and try to sleep like sitting up. It’s already a whole thing. So, yeah.
Taylor Ryan (02:20) And they’re all like, you know, they’re so little like their ears and like their, you know, sinuses aren’t like fully developed. So, I’m sure. Like they’re uncomfortable.
Dora Tao (02:28) Yeah. It’s a whole thing.
Taylor Ryan (02:30) Yeah.
Dora Tao (02:31) But we made it, which is what, what’s important was it?
Taylor Ryan (02:34) Your first time to those places, no, we.
Dora Tao (02:37) Had we had just gone to Hong Kong last summer? We had, we just, I mean, the real impetus was my husband was on spring break. He’s worth an education. And then, we had a lot of like credit card points to use. Basically nice. Yeah. So that worked out. But yeah, no, we’ve been to both. I hadn’t the last time we went to Japan was like 10 years ago. So it was definitely, really different, but, yeah.
Taylor Ryan (02:57) I’m sure. Yeah, awesome. Yeah, those are two places very high up on my list. We were actually gonna try and go. My sister in law, she gets a sabbatical from work. She works for a tech company and they.
Dora Tao (03:11) do sabbaticals. Amazing. I have friends who I’m like that’s so lucky I.
Taylor Ryan (03:14) know. And so, yeah, and so like she is going, to, she’s like taking a month and just like going all around Asia and we were like gonna try and make it, we were gonna try and go to taiwan and Hong Kong, but we like couldn’t make it work. So we’re gonna try and go later this year. I really hope that, we get to go, but they’re gonna be in Japan, so.
Dora Tao (03:35) Oh, well, all three, taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, all of those are, amazing places to go.
Taylor Ryan (03:40) Yeah.
Dora Tao (03:40) I.
Taylor Ryan (03:42) I, yeah. If I, if I end up going, I’ll definitely reach out to you for.
Dora Tao (03:46) Yeah, yeah, we were actually just in taiwan last month or two months ago for a friend’s wedding. So I was also without and this time we didn’t that time we did not bring our babies so nice. Yeah.
Taylor Ryan (03:56) Wow.
Dora Tao (03:58) That’s awesome. I will say we did not plan to do two Asia trips in the span of like two months as not. That is very out of the ordinary. It was just the way that life worked out this year.
Taylor Ryan (04:08) Totally. No. I hear you especially with weddings and yeah, can’t control that? Exactly. Awesome. Well, welcome back. I’m happy to hear that it was a good trip. Yeah, I felt bad like sending you. I meant to send you a calendar invite before you logged off last week, but I was like I’ll just send her an invite and see if this works and figured you would let me know if we needed to move things around. But yeah, I mean, I like no, like real big agenda for today. I kind of want to just check in with you and like, you know, I know we talked before you left about pricing and I think like the feedback from your VP was that it was a little bit higher than what you all were hoping. And I know you called out like the medallion core line item and the implementation line item. So like I know I mentioned, you know, like that’s not at all meant to be our best and final pricing offer by any means like that’s. You know, really just a starting point for us. So I, you know, I typically from here where I’d recommend going is like set up a call for me, you your VP and my VP, and like give you guys a discount like represent pricing with discounting, knowing that like, the points of contention are the implementation fee and the medallion core line items. So that was my thought. I wanted to get your feedback on it and see if like there’s any more context that you hadn’t shared like, you know, over email or text that I should keep in mind or if you think that’s a good next step? Yeah.
Dora Tao (05:43) For sure. So I’ll be honest and I was supposed to have my one on one with my manager this morning but then he rescheduled to tomorrow. So I didn’t actually get a chance to like chat with him at all. Yeah, not from vacation to like kind of go over some of the details because I know I knew you and I wanted to meet. But yeah, outside of that, I think, the core piece and the implementation piece are like two of the big questions we have. I think especially because, you know, for the medallion core, we’ve talked a lot about like I don’t really think our providers are actually going to use the platform at all, which I know is maybe different than what other customers that you work with do. Like very much. I think the platform is just going to be used by like us internally like, yeah, or maybe like if we have another teammate etc join the team in the future. So I think that’s the piece where like I think there’s a lot of really cool features but we just might not utilize them like we’re really just for support with the licensing specialist. And then the other piece that maybe is helpful is just from a context of like pricing. I think we had talked about, you know, right now we’re sort of exploring options of like vendors versus like bringing things in house. And I think like bringing things in house will probably be cheaper than this price which I think is like top of mind for our VP as well. Like, you know, hiring someone probably won’t cost this much. Like in this particular role, I don’t know what our budget is to be honest, but I can tell you that it’s probably not that high. So that’s just like one thing I wanted to flag as well to kind of provide that color, but I think it’s a really cool platform. I think maybe next up, I am meeting with him tomorrow, so I can see if he has time to meet with you me. And then you mentioned your VP and maybe we can talk more in detail. Yeah.
Taylor Ryan (07:29) Exactly. And I totally like, I totally hear where you’re coming from.
Taylor Ryan (07:32) I think you raise a good point and like maybe we look at because I don’t think that we modeled out like what? Like, yes, if you hire one person, what are, you know, we’re looking at like 60 70 K. Let’s say depending on where they are. But just like benchmarking… and so like what might be worth modeling out is like, is it actually one person worth of work? Or is it more than that? Like I can use like maybe I can put something in the deck that kind of calls that out because the way that it’s framed right now is more it’s more comparing to like what your current vendor cost is rather than like because the current vendor is not really the alternative in this situation, right?
Taylor Ryan (08:21) Right? Like you’re going to get rid of the vendor and either you’re going to use a different vendor or bring it in house. Is that accurate? That’s our?
Dora Tao (08:26) Yeah, that’s our goals. I would like, we’re basically still using our vendor for now, but I think, right, the goal is either to switch. I mean, I think there is the possibility of keeping, but like if there’s something that’s better, which yeah is in house. And as you know, like hiring takes a long time like there’s just a lot of things that are in the timeline. But yeah, yeah.
Taylor Ryan (08:43) I think like, yeah, and I think the way that I think all of that is very logical and makes a ton of sense. And so maybe I like reframe the way that like let me brush up the deck a little bit so that it’s more catered to like the bring it in house option. And then we can certainly get better on like on pricing. I think I totally hear you. You know, we can talk through like the medallion core. It’s I know that the way that you’re kind of thinking about it is, the providers aren’t going to be logging into the platform. So like those seats wouldn’t you know, the provider experience wouldn’t be as used. But the core piece like it also does include… like all that’s that line item is like where the analytics piece, like some of the dashboarding like those aren’t SKUs, on the platform, the having the 60 providers or however many providers you would end up with profiles in there. And like being able to track all of their licenses in one place. I think like some of that is some of the pricing is supported by like the analytics piece and things like that. But totally hear you that. Like you’re not going to be using it as robustly as say a customer of ours that has providers that they have to manage credentialing licensing and payer enrollment for like exactly.
Dora Tao (10:08) Yeah.
Taylor Ryan (10:08) So, I totally get it like you’re only using a piece of the platform. Yeah, exactly. So, I like, I want to like be up front that the medal like we’re probably not going to be able to completely do away with the medallion core line item, but I know that we can discount to try and get it more aligned with the value.
Taylor Ryan (10:28) Like my goal is, you know, I want to be able to help you move as quickly as possible and like make it a no brainer for your boss to say yes to this, right? Like, yeah, you’ve put in all the work. You’ve spent a lot of time like you’ve spun circles like, you know, and I know there are other options out there. But like given your team’s familiarity with having used medallion in the past and just knowing that like this would be an easy move for you. Like I just want to make it as easy as possible. So if that means like, you know, figuring out what your budget is and discounting there, like whatever that may be. Like I will do whatever I need, to try and get as close as possible. Is that, I mean, you know, is that your ideal world? Like, I know that, you can’t say absolutely, yes, I want this platform. Like there’s a lot. Yeah… helpful. I guess, no, I.
Dora Tao (11:20) Think that is helpful. I think like, you know, everyone’s very price conscious and so like I think our… VP is like, you know, I think at the end of the day like a lot of, a lot of the licensing work is very similar across platforms as you probably know. And so like I think from his perspective, he’s like what can you guys do that? Like our current vendor doesn’t do or like, you know, what an in house person couldn’t do and like, you know, collecting documents, submitting documents, like sounds very easy on paper. And I feel like sometimes VPS are very like they can see it from the big picture. So it’s hard to get into the details. But yeah, no, I think everything you outlined is exactly what I’m thinking like I want to be able to show him that maybe this is a better option. But why is it a better option? And if it is going to be costing more like why? Yeah, because like the platform, the implementation fee, like our current vendor, there is no implementation, you know, there’s obviously downfalls there. Like we don’t see a lot of status updates, etc, but like,
Taylor Ryan (12:18) right there’s they.
Dora Tao (12:20) don’t really use a specific platform or setup or anything like that. Yeah.
Taylor Ryan (12:24) And I think the other thing, like do you think that I think that maybe like getting more buttoned up on like the turnaround times because I know your thought was like 45 days sounds great, but like how realistic is that, yeah, when you were out, like I did go back and spend time with Noah and kind of challenged him on that? I was like, are we touting like, you know, best case scenario or like are these actually averages that they would see in practice given their, what they’re trying to do the licenses in these states? And there there’s like there are there’s like one or two outliers, but almost all of them for 45 days is like a conservatively like longer amount of time than what our averages are based on like the licenses that we process. So, I think like maybe that like that’s the only other thing, you know, when you’re your boss is like, okay, well, what are you doing that the other provider or the other platforms aren’t that’s where my mind goes like and how impactful that would be. I guess that’s the other thing that, you know, maybe I can get a little bit clearer on in the day. Yeah.
Dora Tao (13:30) No. If, if it really is 45 days, that would make a huge difference.
Taylor Ryan (13:34) Okay. Yeah. So then in that case, like let me spell that out more clearly and just, you know, be up front with like the outliers that you can expect so that it doesn’t feel like we’re just giving you a fluffy number to feel good about. And then, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, if you, I’ll work on that. If I know you’re meeting with him tomorrow hopefully. But yeah, yeah. Like, my thing here is we can discount more. My boss is gonna be like, okay, well, can we talk to him? Like, can I negotiate with him direct? Like what does he want? Because then we’ll try and make it happen. Is basically what my boss is gonna say, okay, that.
Dora Tao (14:13) Makes total sense. I feel like, yeah, so I’ll meet with him tomorrow. What else say I, last time I went with him? I didn’t get a chance to like kind of review a lot of the stuff in the deck. So I will plan to show him that. And then I’ll also just mention to him like about meeting and then like the potential for negotiations especially for the implementation fee and then maybe some other stuff around the core that we talked about and then talk about the turnaround times. Yeah. And I’ll keep you updated if depending on what he says and hopefully we can go from there. Yeah.
Taylor Ryan (14:44) Yeah, I just want to like I as long, I just want to, I want to make sure that, you know, that like there are levers that we can pull so that he’s not just like it’s like over budget like let’s just spring it in house. Yeah, because, you know, we can be flexible and, you know, I think like if he just spells out what he wants and like we can have like a pretty straightforward conversation about it, then I think we can get there.
Taylor Ryan (15:10) But I’ll brush up the deck and then you can totally feel comfortable telling him like they can discount more like, you know, I walk Taylor through why the medallion core line item like doesn’t really make sense for us? So you can totally feel free to, you know, set expectations with him that there we will be able to discount like this isn’t going to be the final price.
Dora Tao (15:34) Okay. Perfect. That’s really helpful. Okay?
Taylor Ryan (15:36) Cool. Well, I’ll work on the deck in the meantime, feel free to use the one that, you have, and hopefully I’ll be able to send it over, send over the updated one before you meet with him. But yeah, just let me know if anything else comes up. I know that you’re playing catch up. So I don’t want to take up too much of your time. Okay?
Dora Tao (15:54) Perfect. Thanks, Taylor. I appreciate your time all.
Taylor Ryan (15:56) Right. Thanks, Dora. Bye.