Shelby, NC · Western Piedmont · Cleveland County
A part-time CIO for Shelby, NC firms.
Cleveland County plants and the offices on Shelby's square, where one long-serving employee often knows how the systems connect.
Systems common in this market. The figure is city population.
The market
What Shelby looks like from here.
Shelby is the largest town in Cleveland County and home to its courts and county offices, about 45 miles west of Charlotte along US-74. The old courthouse on the square now houses the Earl Scruggs Center, and the streets around it hold law offices, accountants, and insurance agencies. Plants along the highway make paper products, metal parts, and textiles, and the regional hospital supports a ring of clinics and specialist practices.
A Shelby manufacturer often runs an older ERP system, the software that tracks orders, inventory, and invoices, which one long-serving employee understands better than anyone. Microsoft 365 was added later, and the weekly reports are still pulled into spreadsheets by hand. When that employee plans to retire, the owner finds that no written record explains how the pieces connect. The applications assessment writes that record before anyone changes a system. The AI rule follows, because staff already ask public AI tools to draft quotes that carry customer part numbers. The same pattern holds in Kings Mountain, Boiling Springs, and Lawndale, the county's other business centers.
What we would expect to find here. In Shelby, the larger risk is knowledge held by one person. We write down how the ERP system, Microsoft 365, and the weekly spreadsheets connect, then set the AI rule for quotes and part numbers.
Shelby is a service area, not an office. One team, based in North Carolina, works in your own systems.
Where this has run
A profile close to this setup.
Reporting was three exports reconciled by hand.
Light manufacturer · ~120 staff
Industries in Shelby
Who we work with here.
Start here
- Applications assessment — Assessment
- AI Use Policy — Advisory review
- Base dashboard deployment — Deployment
Where we work
Around Shelby and across NC.
Where are you based and do you work remotely?
Third Shift Group LLC is based in North Carolina and works with firms across North and South Carolina. Most of the work runs remotely, against your Microsoft cloud account and your systems. Policy meetings and leadership sessions can be on site where that helps. See where we work for the regions and towns we cover.
Our ERP system is twenty years old. Do we have to replace it?
No. The applications assessment records what the system holds and how staff use it, then says whether reporting can read from it as it is. Replacing it is a separate decision, made later and in writing, with costs you can compare.
Start here
The first step is the same in every location.
Advisory first, in Shelby as everywhere else: a written assessment you own.