WORLD-CLASS BEER BREWERY EXECUTES STRATEGY TO BUILD WORLD-CLASS IT INFRASTRUCTURE
Flying Dog Brewery
The Breweries Industry
The Challenge
The leadership at Flying Dog Brewery, a popular and iconic brand within the beer brewery induStylestry, has been challenged with technology.
Not having IT professionals within their team, they were relying upon a set of vendors for strategic guidance as well as execution of projects and support for their compute infrastructure. They experienced technology reliability issues too often and would also receive confusing or contradicting perspectives from the various vendors.
Jim Caruso, the Flying Dog CEO, determined that adding fractional, executive-level technology expertise to their team would enhance the leadership team’s perspective and address their concerns. He desired to find a fractional CIO that had deep experience in infrastructure, cybersecurity, vendor management, technology contracts, and business software system support.
The Solution
Jim was introduced to Brian Scott and ClearTone Consulting through a member of his network. After meeting with Jim and understanding the Flying Dog challenges, Brian shared with Jim specific use cases from his 35-year technology career and 20-year CIO experience and how they applied to the Flying Dog issues. Brian brings decades of experience in leading companies with large infrastructure, hosting environments with hundreds of servers, cybersecurity protecting critical systems processing hundreds of millions of dollars, multiple six-figure vendor engagements, and business systems supporting tens of millions of dollars in revenue.
TECHNOLOGY – STRATEGY – LEADERSHIP – EXECUTION
"In my opinion, there is no better way for smaller businesses to have the benefit of world-class support, and Brian has been phenomenal to work with on all areas of IT.” – Jim Caruso, CEO Flying Dog Brewery
The Impact
Flying Dog leadership has been extremely pleased with the addition of Brian’s experience and perspective. The other Flying Dog functional leaders are now allowed to focus solely on their prime areas of responsibility without being burdened by IT issues. Jim now has a technology expert on his team that can explain technology initiatives and challenges in the business terms he wants to hear and can keep Flying Dog’s best interest at the center of all decisions.
Flying Dog has since gone on to select new vendors for their technology management and employee satisfaction has significantly increased with solid, well-managed vendors engaged. Their cybersecurity position has improved as well as the reliability of their infrastructure. This keeps the beer brewing with more consistency and the team productive and focused on the business.
“I could not be more pleased or impressed with Brian Scott as a fractional, CIO executive. In my opinion, there is no better way for smaller businesses to have the benefit of world-class support, and Brian has been phenomenal to work with on all areas of IT”, Jim Caruso, CEO Flying Dog Brewery.