MIKE NANTO
Fractional IT leadership for small & mid-sized business

Strategy.
Systems.
Software.
One hire.

You can't afford a CIO, an architect, a project manager, and a dev team, but you have exactly the problems those four people solve. I'm the one hire who does all four jobs.

USMC veteran · PMP · Azure Solutions Architect Expert · a decade running service-business operations
70%Verified cut in a client's platform costs: same system, a third of the bill
10+Years running service-business operations before ever advising one
0Minutes of scheduled downtime moving a live claims platform onto all-new systems
43Healthcare privacy controls audited line-by-line, re-verified in a second pass

What I do

§1 · Services

Fractional IT Leadership

IT Director / CTO-level ownership on retainer: a technology roadmap, control of your cloud and vendor spending, security and who-can-access-what, and rules sized for your company, not a Fortune 500's.

Systems Integration & Automation

Your CRM, phones, field-service, HR, and billing systems made to talk to each other, killing the re-keying that quietly eats your team's week.

PMO & Project Delivery

Project rules people actually follow, change management with real authority, and delivery oversight from kickoff to done.

Custom Software Development

Production applications designed, built, and maintained, from first prototype to the system your business runs on every day.

Case files

§2 · Selected engagements, five industries

Clients are never named here. Confidentiality is part of what they pay for. Every figure comes from engagement records, and references who'll take your call are available on request.

Case file 01 / 08 · Platform architect

The claims platform rebuilt under live traffic

Thousands of billed claims a month ran through a single hand-configured server nobody dared touch. I rebuilt the platform as a modern cloud system without stopping the line.

  • Rebuilt the whole platform as six smaller systems that update independently, so one change no longer risks the whole business. Five weeks from first line of code to live.
  • Made the switch while the business kept running: no scheduled downtime, no outage a customer could see.
  • AI-assisted claim submission across 13+ manufacturer and administrator programs, de-risked by running the new system alongside the old and comparing every result before the switch.

The same platform at less than a third of the cost: improvements roll out one piece at a time, every claim moves automatically, and there's a paper trail for all of it.

Read the full case file →

LaravelAzureContainer AppsOEM APIsAI automation
Case file 02 / 08 · Integration engineer

The entitlement engine that ended manual triage

Six insurance programs feeding one set of rules: the coverage decision, once a job for a person reading a screen, now takes seconds. Read the case file →
Case file 03 / 08 · Healthcare automation & compliance

A clinic that runs itself, and a SaaS audit with teeth

Insurance verification, refill reminders, and a 43-control HIPAA audit. Expand to read.

Two kinds of healthcare work: automation a clinic can actually afford, and compliance a software platform can actually act on.

  • Automated insurance eligibility checks end to end for a clinical practice: the full caseload every month, a daily look-ahead, and an instant check the moment an appointment is booked, with results written into the patient's chart automatically.
  • Connected seven outside systems (medical records, insurance-eligibility checking, text messaging, email, file storage, credential management, and system monitoring) into one automated whole: 16 connection points and 7 scheduled jobs running on cloud services that only run (and only cost money) when working.
  • Built a refill-reminder system: a clinician's note triggers pharmacy reminders timed to the patient's remaining supply, follow-ups are tracked, and the clinic gets a monthly summary, with no staff spreadsheet.
  • Separately, led a HIPAA privacy-and-security audit of a live healthcare platform serving many organizations: 43 controls, each backed by evidence down to the exact file and line across a system with 266 access points, re-verified in a second pass, and never once touching real patient data.

Insurance status, patient outreach, and refill tracking run themselves, and compliance became 14 fix-it plans a developer can build from directly, not a binder.

Read the full case file →

EHR APIEligibility (X12 270/271)Azure FunctionsHIPAAMicrosoft Graph
Case file 04 / 08 · Analytics consultant

130-plus ambulances, one truthful dashboard

217k trips modeled, a missing region found, phantom payroll hours caught. Expand to read.

Operations at a medical-transport company ran on gut feel and month-old spreadsheets. Now it runs on a live dashboard whose every number has survived an audit.

  • Built a live Power BI dashboard covering 217,000 trip legs and 130+ units across eight years, checking 615,000+ scheduled hours against 641,000+ clocked hours, with every odd number traced to its cause.
  • Found an entire regional program (6 units, 1,300+ trips) silently missing from the client's numbers for 22 months, restored it, and redesigned the reporting so a missing program would surface immediately.
  • Worked out the software vendor's unpublished utilization formula and matched it to four decimal places, and caught a broken time clock entry sitting in payroll as ~24 hours of unearned time.
  • Corrected the performance-target math and flipped the over/under verdict for 14 of the 127 units graded against targets, including the fleet's two largest.

The numbers leadership argues from now match the dispatch system to the digit: current, defined, and agreed on.

Read the full case file →

Power BIDAXMySQL217K trip legsGit-versioned BI
Case file 05 / 08 · IT Director & PMO Lead · same client as file 01

From 58 repositories to one governed portfolio

58 separate codebases, 8 cloud accounts → one roadmap, one standard, real change control. Read the case file →
Case file 06 / 08 · AI strategy & governance

AI with adult supervision

AI kept private, tough independent audits that caught two silent risks to live-system backups, every developer trained. Read the case file →
Case file 07 / 08 · ERP replacement

A decade-old ERP. Mission-critical. Replaced outright.

The business ran its daily warranty work on an aging in-office system its maker no longer supported. A purpose-built cloud platform replaced it, every core function rebuilt. Read the case file →
Case file 08 / 08 · Incident response & platform rescue

Five requests took it down. Never again, by design.

A server that had run 283 days without a restart went down completely. I traced the failure to its exact root cause the same day, then designed the move to new systems so that kind of failure can't happen again. Read the case file →

Sound like your situation?

Write to mike@mnanto.com →

How I work

§3 · The operator

"I know what a dispatch board at 7 a.m. feels like. That's why my systems get built for the people who actually use them."

Most consultants make you choose: a strategist who can't build, or a developer who can't see past the ticket. I've spent my career refusing that choice: running IT departments and project offices while writing the integration code myself. I got my start in technology as a United States Marine Corps data network specialist, then spent a decade inside service businesses, running operations, not just advising them.

Evidence before theory. I read the code, query the database, and check the logs before proposing anything. Recommendations built on assumptions are how consultants waste your money. I also serve as an automotive expert witness in California lemon-law cases: when your findings get cross-examined under oath, you learn to claim only what the evidence supports.

Nothing ships unvalidated. You see before-and-after proof of every change. Nothing goes live quietly.

Governance that fits. The right two questions before any change to a live system, not an enterprise change board. And every client's context is sealed; this page is written under the same rule.

Working on-site, hybrid, or fully remote. Find me on LinkedIn.

Credentials

§4 · Independently verifiable

Certifications spanning the three things I sell: cloud architecture, applied AI, and project delivery.

PMI Project Management Professional (PMP) VERIFY ↗
Microsoft Azure Solutions Architect Expert VERIFY ↗
Microsoft Agentic AI Business Solutions Architect VERIFY ↗
Microsoft Azure AI Engineer Associate VERIFY ↗
PeopleCert ITIL 4 Foundation VERIFY ↗
Anthropic Claude Partner Network

Toolbox, chosen per engagement: PHP / Laravel ·Python ·Go ·Vue ·Azure ·Cloudflare ·Twilio ·Power BI / DAX ·MySQL ·Jira / Confluence / JSM ·Entra ID & SSO ·REST / SOAP / Webhooks ·IaC (Bicep) ·CI/CD (OIDC) ·Git

I also hold Azure Administrator Associate and additional project-management credentials. The full Microsoft transcript is at the VERIFY links above.

Let's talk about your systems.

Thirty minutes is enough for me to tell you honestly whether I can help, and roughly what it would take. Most engagements are a monthly retainer or a fixed-scope project, priced for businesses your size, not enterprise budgets. Ask, and I'll connect you with clients who'll take your call.

No form, no funnel: just email. I read everything.