Called in to evaluate and turn around a struggling IT environment. What leadership had scoped as a 5-year roadmap was complete in 18 months.
Called in to evaluate and turn around a struggling IT environment for a manufacturing company in North Carolina, Keith led the end-to-end transformation of their technology infrastructure.
Years of deferred investment had left the organization with outdated systems, no meaningful management support for IT initiatives, and a relationship between IT and the rest of the business that had largely broken down.
The ERP system had a reputation as a poor fit. External consultants had quoted $6M to replace it with larger platforms. A structured assessment found a different story: the problems came from internal process misuse, not from limitations of the software itself.
By re-aligning warehouse, shipping, receiving, and materials processes to industry best practices, the existing system was able to handle what the business actually needed. The ERP stayed. The $5.8M didn't go out the door.
Re-aligned warehouse, shipping, receiving, and materials processes to industry best practices.
Prepared and tested an upgrade in a cloud-hosted environment before committing.
Migrated three ERP-related physical servers into the cloud as part of the upgrade.
The company did not fully understand how exposed they were. Backups were only retained for nine hours, and nothing was being backed up for critical cloud services including Office 365. A ransomware attack or a single hardware failure could have resulted in unrecoverable data loss with no practical path to restore operations.
A quick win was deployed immediately while the permanent solution was architected: portable storage to extend the retention window. The permanent solution addressed every gap.
Most of the network equipment was unsupported by manufacturers with no active support contracts. In the event of hardware failure, prolonged downtime was highly likely. The consolidation removed that risk, simplified the environment, and positioned the organization to shift additional workloads to the cloud.
Reduced server footprint from 20+ servers across 4 hosts to 5 servers across 3 hosts, all on supported hardware.
Replaced aging switches, routers, and firewalls with Fortinet gear to improve visibility, throughput, and reliability.
Implemented dual WAN firewalls with auto-failover so that a single connection failure no longer stops the business.
The absence of a documented Disaster Recovery Plan was a major gap. A formal Disaster Recovery and Incident Response Plan was developed in collaboration with an MSP — distributed to every department that needed it, then tested through a tabletop exercise before it was ever needed in production.
A regular review cycle was established to keep the plan current as the environment and the business continue to evolve.
The IT team had been cut off from the rest of the company. They lacked real tools, had no metrics to show their performance, and had no way to demonstrate value. Frustration had built up on both sides.
The goal was to get IT reconnected to the business, give the team structure, and make performance visible. Ticket trend analysis identified peak demand days and times, enabling smarter staffing decisions. Leadership received the first-ever KPI report on help desk performance.
The organization was relying on an on-premise file server that was rapidly running out of storage and becoming unreliable. On-premise file shares and collaboration data were migrated to SharePoint Online, enabling mobile and remote-friendly access through Microsoft 365 integration. Better performance, better user experience, and long-term scalability.
The surveillance system was fragmented across multiple NVR and DVR units with many cameras malfunctioning. HR and leadership had no reliable way to retrieve footage for safety investigations. Failing cameras were replaced immediately as a quick win, then the full system was standardized on a unified Everon / ADT IP-based platform with improved camera placement and easy footage retrieval.
"When I arrived: nine-hour backup retention, 20+ servers on unsupported hardware, and consultants recommending a costly ERP replacement. 18 months later: 14+ day backup retention with offsite copies, server footprint cut from 20+ to 5, a tested DR plan in place, collaboration moved to the cloud, and the ERP intact because the real problem was how the team used it. The issues were real. Most just were not where anyone expected."
Share a bit about what you're dealing with and Keith will follow up within one business day.
30 minutes to understand your situation and figure out if there's a fit. No commitment.