A capable IT firm with no one directing its work.

The work

What we did, and why

Ninety people, a competent outside IT firm, and no one whose job was to decide. The IT firm did what it was asked to do; no one was setting the order of it. The AI tools were the same story in miniature. Three bought department by department, none reviewed, each renewing on its own date.

The policy and the assessment went first, then the dashboard. The ERP, the CRM, and accounting were connected in the company's own Microsoft cloud account, with license, vendor, and subscription spend sitting next to the operating numbers. That was the first time those costs had been read in one place. It changed the conversation from "IT is expensive" to three specific contracts with renewal dates.

The vCIO Program tier began the following month. The leadership meeting works from the dashboard: what changed, what it cost, which decision is due. The IT firm has a written priority list and a scorecard, and problems come to the vCIO rather than to the owner's inbox. Dashboard maintenance and the AI security subscription run on the same monthly rhythm. The maintenance note opens the meeting instead of the anecdotes: connections checked, a change fixed, the payroll export watched. The automation plan is agreed with leadership rather than with IT. Reorder alerts shipped first because the dashboard showed how often stock was restocked late.