IT leadership for highly regulated businesses
The IT department you don’t have.
RapidShift runs IT for regulated companies with no IT leader on staff. One senior IT director. One flat monthly fee. Sixty days’ notice if we stop earning it.
Start free: we read your last two IT invoices and tell you what you’re paying for.
Illustration of an IT vendor’s monthly invoice: 212.5 hours at $95 an hour, several entries with no description, marked up with the questions an owner should ask.
You know the signs
Nobody did anything wrong. Nobody was in charge.
01
The invoice says hours. It doesn’t say what happened.
A rate, a total, and entries with no notes. You pay it because you can’t prove it’s wrong.
02
One person understands the system the company runs on.
They built it decades ago. They’re talking about retiring. Nothing is written down.
03
The regulator wants evidence. You have good intentions.
Who had access. What changed. When it was reviewed. Somebody has to pull that in an afternoon.
04
You pay for Microsoft 365 and use the email.
The security, the device management, the automation. All of it sits there, already paid for.
What we do about it
Run it. Lead it. Build it.
Three jobs that usually belong to three vendors and nobody’s boss. We take all three.
Run it.
The platform every working day depends on.
- Microsoft 365 and sign-in
- Laptops that set themselves up
- Network, firewall and VPN
- Backups that get tested
- Security controls, with records
Lead it.
One person accountable to you.
- A roadmap and a budget
- Every IT invoice read before you pay it
- Vendors held to written scopes
- A weekly stand-up with your managers
- Plain answers for auditors and insurers
Build it.
Fixed fee. Quoted before we start.
- Customer and ordering portals
- Integrations with the system of record
- Reports your managers can open on a phone
- Automation for the two-day job
- Your website
Who it’s for
Different rulebooks. Same job.
A bank answers to examiners. A drug wholesaler answers to the FDA and the DEA. A manufacturer answers to auditors and insurers. All of them get asked the same things: who has access, what changed, which vendors were checked.
FFIEC · FDIC IT exams · SOX
Banks and credit unions.
We’ve led a bank’s IT team through its exams and audits.
DSCSA · DEA · State boards
Pharmaceutical distribution.
We run IT for a licensed drug wholesaler today.
Insurers · Customer audits
Manufacturing.
We’ve built and run the servers, storage and backups behind steel manufacturing.
PCI DSS · SOC 2 · Auditors
PCI and SOC 2.
We’ve managed PCI and SOC 2 compliance through outside audits.
Not on the list? If someone can ask you for evidence, it’s the same job.
How it starts
Four steps. The first one is free.
Send two invoices.
Your last two bills from whoever handles IT. In two business days we tell you what you’re paying for, and whether it’s fair.
One conversation.
An hour with the person who’d do the work. You get a written plan the next business day: what we heard, what we’d do, in what order.
One paid month.
A fixed fee and a short list. If it isn’t working, it ends there.
Flat monthly.
One number. No hourly billing. Sixty days’ notice ends it, either side, any time.
The price
From $7,500 a month.Flat. No hourly meter.
One number for the job. No hourly billing, no surprise invoices, no charge for picking up the phone.
- First-line support is priced per person, or handled by your own technician under our direction.
- Projects are quoted as a fixed fee before work starts.
- Sixty days’ notice ends it. Either side, any time.
For scale: a full-time IT manager runs about $180,000 a year with benefits, and still needs vendors behind them. Source: Robert Half 2026 salary data for Birmingham, AL (median $125,440) plus benefits at the U.S. private-industry average reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Overqualified
Proof, not adjectives.
Client work. And years on staff in banking, steel manufacturing and travel.
For clients
- We run IT for a pharmaceutical wholesale distributor that answers to the FDA, the DEA and state boards of pharmacy.
- We built and host a bank’s public website.
From the inside
- We’ve led a bank’s IT team: the people, the policies, the FDIC IT exams, the SOX audits.
- We’ve brought AI into a bank the careful way: governance, vendor risk reviews, security controls, then the pilot.
- We’ve managed PCI and SOC 2 compliance through outside audits.
- We’ve built and run the servers, storage and backups behind steel manufacturing.
What we have experience with
- Industries
- Banking, pharmaceutical distribution, steel manufacturing, travel
- Frameworks worked under
- DSCSA, FFIEC, NIST, SOX, ITGC, FDIC IT exams, PCI DSS, SOC 2
- AI consulting
- Governance, vendor risk reviews, security controls and guardrails, staff pilots, executive recommendations
- Projects delivered
- Microsoft 365 migration, data center migration, virtualization platform migration, headquarters and branch network rollout, device management rollout, disaster recovery testing, IT policy sets
- Platforms and code
- Microsoft 365, Entra ID, Intune and Autopilot, Azure, AWS, Nutanix, VMware, Hyper-V, Cisco and Meraki networking, Power Platform, Python, PowerShell, Bash
Our first act with any vendor is to read the invoices. Line by line.
No lock-in
You stay because we perform—not because you’re stuck.
Sixty days’ notice.
Either side, any time, any reason.
You hold the keys.
Admin accounts, domains and licenses in your company’s name. Not ours.
Everything written down.
Documentation lives in your systems. If you leave, it stays.
No company should be held hostage by its IT vendor. Including us.
Questions
Asked before every engagement.
Who is this for?
Companies with roughly 25 to 150 people, a regulator, an examiner or an auditor to answer to, and no IT leader on staff. See the industries we work in.
Do you replace our current IT vendor?
Not necessarily. Often your IT company or managed service provider (MSP) stays, and we manage them. Sometimes the invoice review shows they do honest work at a fair price, and we’ll tell you that.
Is this a fractional IT director, or a vCIO?
Same job, different names: fractional IT director, fractional CIO, virtual CIO. Ours runs the work as well as the plan. See what’s included.
What does it cost?
IT Director engagements start at $7,500 a month, flat. First-line support is priced per person. Projects are quoted as a fixed fee before work starts.
Is there a contract?
There’s an agreement, because your auditors will want one. It ends on 60 days’ notice from either side, at any time. You stay because we perform—not because you’re stuck.
What happens if your lead is out?
Everything we run is documented inside your systems. You hold the admin accounts. Day-to-day requests go to a named technician working from written runbooks.
Nothing lives in one person’s head. That’s the problem we’re hired to fix.
Do you handle compliance?
We make your systems produce the evidence that regulators, auditors and insurers ask for: who has access, what changed, what was reviewed, which vendors were checked.
We are not your compliance officer or your attorney, and we don’t certify anything.
Do you still build websites?
Yes. Websites, customer portals and the integrations behind them, mostly for companies whose IT we already run. More on that here.
Where are you?
The Southeast. We work remotely with clients across the United States and come on site when the work needs hands. About RapidShift.
Start here
Two invoices. Two business days.
Send the last two bills from whoever handles your IT. We’ll tell you what you’re paying for, and whether it’s fair. Free.