Case Study: Medical Device Company

Note: a COUPLE of GURUS respects our clients’ confidentiality requirements. We have agreed not to disclose this client’s name. 

The Problem

Ever since their days as a medical device startup, this research, development, and manufacturing firm has shown great promise. They recognized a need and invented an ingenious solution, and their small business quickly grew. Early on, they outsourced their IT to a traditional managed services provider who set them up with a small-business server, a helpdesk, and the kind of IT support a small business requires. 

However, with steady growth and FDA approval for their ground-breaking technology, it was clear by 2016 that they had outgrown the capabilities of their small-business IT infrastructure. In practical terms, this meant they needed to radically upgrade their network and security, and find a provider who could better meet their growing needs. But more importantly, to achieve their goals of taking the company public and penetrating overseas markets, they needed an IT strategy. 

“When this medical device firm approached us, they were just making the transition from startup mode to growth mode. They had an IT provider addressing their immediate problems, but not thinking about long term solutions. This IT provider was stuck in an old-school mentality, but their client was not – they had big plans, and they were looking for a partner to provide some strategic insight, IT-wise, into where they were going.” 

Keith Schoolcraft
CEO, a COUPLE of GURUS

The Solution

A key approach of a COUPLE of GURUS is to focus on their client’s business goals and outcomes first, and the technical solutions second. Keith and his team immediately recognized that for a company with such an ambitious roadmap, this medical firm’s IT infrastructure lacked scalability. The most obvious problem was their small-business network and single local domain, which were clearly not suitable for a company with a mobile workforce set on going public and expanding internationally.

The firm already had a highly mobile, nation-wide sales team who rarely visited the office, so the local network made little sense. The solution was to move them to an enterprise-grade cloud network, with all devices managed remotely through Microsoft’s Azure. This gave them much more flexibility to manage resources and set policies, and greatly facilitated the healthcare-sector security obligations they would need to meet once going public.

“When we started working together, this firm was much smaller and their presence wasn’t as big as today. We built their infrastructure to accommodate users all over the United States, but we did it knowing that they would soon be in several countries, and eventually all over the world.” 

Keith Schoolcraft
CEO, a COUPLE of GURUS

To prepare their client for meeting new and more stringent healthcare-sector security requirements, a COUPLE of GURUS took a range of actions. These included basics like managing the encryption on all of their devices, to implementing a security event incident management (SEIM) solution to collect and analyze data from across their network.   

“We started by holding technology planning sessions, first internally and then with the client’s team. We took over all of their regular IT management and user support. Then we implemented some big projects in phases, to get them on the cloud, get them compliant, and get them secure, following all the HIPAA, SOX, and NIST guidelines.

We knew they were going to be growing, so everything we did, we had to take healthcare-specific security and HIPAA policies and procedures into account. One of the goals we achieved is taking the level of controls you have on a traditional domain network and replicating those same controls in a cloud network. This made it much easier for them to scale when the time came.”

Keith Schoolcraft
CEO, a COUPLE of GURUS

The Results

This medical device firm has been wildly successful since partnering with a COUPLE of GURUS in 2016. They’ve grown their firm significantly each year.

Part of this success has been due to the strategic approach of a COUPLE of GURUS and the technology planning process designed to address their client’s unique business needs. The proactive IT services this client leveraged meant they were well positioned to face the challenges of transitioning from a private to a public company. For example, the healthcare security solutions a COUPLE of GURUS initially put in place, not only satisfied the firm’s HIPAA obligations but will also help them meet any future SOX requirements if they go public.

As a result of having this infrastructure, this medical device firm has expanded its business and been able to scale with remote workers to establish an international presence around the world.

“The key to a growing organization is not to design solutions that meet today’s needs, but to design for where that organization will be in the future. Think long term.”

Keith Schoolcraft
CEO, a COUPLE of GURUS