Shrieve is a leading value-added distributor of specialty and commodity chemicals. It emphasizes people and relationships, seeking out the market inefficiencies that make its customers' and suppliers' jobs difficult rather than simply buying and selling chemicals. The company is private-equity-backed, pursues a global growth strategy built on acquisitions, and runs IT with a two-person team led by IT Operations Manager Debora Yawn.

Shrieve's growth strategy depends on acquiring companies and integrating them quickly. When Debora Yawn joined as IT Operations Manager, three acquisitions were sitting in an onboarding backlog, waiting for the resources to get them over the integration finish line. The existing managed service provider (MSP) was local, had limited staffing and could not deliver the level and scope of global support required. The number of hours needed to complete a project was excessive.

Security was a separate problem. Shrieve's managed security service provider (MSSP), a different vendor, outsourced security monitoring to a third party. The organization had no eyes on the glass: it could not access the tools and could not see anything about its own security posture.

With acquisitions in limbo and zero visibility, a two-person IT team was stretched thin managing two vendors. After a consultant-led vetting process, Shrieve was leaning slightly toward a Thrive competitor until a critical incident arose before the contract was signed. Shrieve reached out to that provider and got no response. That moment settled the decision.

Shrieve consolidated both MSP and MSSP services with Thrive, replacing two vendors with one partner that operates in the same global geographies as Shrieve. Thrive deployed both service lines and completed full onboarding well ahead of schedule: everything was onboarded within four months, despite the amount of work that had to be undone, redone and put in place. The engagement spans advisory services, backup, cloud, end user support, IT automation, managed infrastructure, Microsoft 365, security and the TransformIT portal.

Beyond infrastructure, Shrieve signed up for advisory services combining a virtual Chief Information Security Officer (vCISO) and a virtual Chief Information Officer (vCIO). Meeting weekly with the vCISO, Yawn formalized security policies, employee-facing procedures and incident response plans, moving from informal notes to documented, audit-ready standards built around the CIS framework. The incident response plan is current, and a tabletop exercise against it is being prepared. Monthly strategic planning with the vCIO keeps projects on track and identifies new ways to support growth.

Shrieve also uses Thrive's TransformIT portal for support. Tickets that might once have taken hours are now assigned to a technician in 15 to 20 minutes, and Yawn can pull monthly metrics for her manager and the C-suite showing IT and enterprise application support performance in real time, something the previous provider could not offer. Thrive's latest TransformIT update adds AI automation and workflows.

• Three of four backlogged acquisitions onboarded in the first year with Thrive
• Full MSP and MSSP onboarding completed within four months, well ahead of schedule
• Tickets assigned to a technician in 15 to 20 minutes instead of hours through the TransformIT portal
• Security policies, procedures and incident response plans formalized with a vCISO against the CIS framework
• Monthly IT and application-support metrics now reported to management and the C-suite
• One provider replaces separate MSP and MSSP vendors, restoring visibility into security tools