Grand Traverse County

About Grand Traverse County

Grand Traverse County, home to approximately 95,000 residents and 600 employees, is managed by a dedicated IT team of 12 people. As the Director of Information Technology, Cliff DuPuy leads a team responsible for managing all aspects of IT across 25 diverse county departments, from the Health Department to 911 dispatch and public safety. Their work primarily involves break/fix support, design, implementation, and integration of new technologies. A strong proponent of cloud solutions, the county has embraced Microsoft Azure and Office 365, demonstrating a forward-thinking approach atypical for much of the public sector.

The impact: Enhanced efficiency, accuracy, and strategic value

Even though Grand Traverse County is still in the early stages of implementation, the expected and observed impacts are transformative:

• Significantly improved first call resolution (FCR): With the new ITIL-compliant processes, service catalog, and AI capabilities, Cliff is confident they will boost their FCR from a “horrible” 60% to the high 90s, leading to faster resolutions and higher user satisfaction.
• Massive time savings in asset management: The automated asset tracking eliminates manual spreadsheets, saving “weeks” of labor annually for tasks like the evergreen refresh program and ensuring accurate departmental bill-backs. The ability to instantly pull reports on asset details by department drastically improves efficiency and financial transparency.
• Reduced manual workload for IT team: Automating common requests like password resets and account unlocks frees up technicians, allowing them to shift focus from “break/fix” to higher-impact project work.
• Enhanced data-driven decision making: SysAid’s reporting capabilities, accessible in “plain language” (unlike Lansweeper’s SQL-based reports), provide total visibility for the executive team on asset management, renewals, and overall service performance. This enables informed decisions and proactive IT management.
• Increased trust and adoption: SysAid’s responsive support and commitment to security (meeting CJIS, HIPAA, PCI PII guidelines) have built strong internal trust. Cliff’s team is actively using SysAid’s documentation to create internal training, promoting rapid user adoption.
• Avoided costly penalties and identified savings: Within the first day of implementation, Cliff uploaded all 33 contracts worth $1.6 million into the system. The proactive visibility immediately helped catch a $27,000 renewal for an unneeded license, preventing unnecessary spending. The centralized system ensures contracts requiring board approval are flagged with sufficient lead time.
• Discovered and mitigated compliance risks: Automated discovery uncovered 139 applications, with 18 (13%) previously unknown to IT. This included detecting unauthorized ChatGPT usage where staff were creating letters containing personally identifiable information (PII) for veterans—a serious compliance violation. The visibility enabled the team to block unsanctioned instances and guide users toward approved tools like Microsoft Copilot, which the county licensed for all staff.
• Proactive policy enforcement: Real-world incidents revealed through License Manager, such as staff licensing Adobe Cloud with personal credit cards, prompted the county to revise their acceptable use policy to explicitly address AI tool usage and enforce compliance through account management.
• Optimized license allocation: Utilization insights revealed both over-licensed and under-licensed situations. For example, a permit filing tool had 15 active users but insufficient licenses, while another application was licensed for all 600 employees but only used by 116, identifying immediate opportunities for cost savings and compliance correction.
• Audit readiness and vendor negotiation power: The county can now avoid situations like a previous software audit where they lacked usage data and had no bargaining power when vendors demanded retroactive payments. With real-time utilization insights, they can ensure compliance, eliminate paying for unused seats, enable smarter budgeting, and maintain stronger leverage in vendor negotiations.
• Service certifications tracking: Beyond software contracts, the team added all service certifications to License Manager, ensuring they had full visibility into annual renewals.

Why SysAid

SysAid is helping Grand Traverse County transition from an outdated, fragmented IT environment to a modern, efficient, and proactive service organization, proving that innovation and trust are paramount in the public sector.

Cliff particularly values how SysAid’s AI vision integrates across products. From the ticket queue, he can use the AI chatbot to check software requests, then jump directly into reviewing and provisioning with AI agents—all within the same hub. The AI chatbot and agents extend to License Manager, creating an intuitive, connected experience. “The integration of AI into the product shows the vision for where SysAid is heading,” Cliff notes. “Everything is connected now.”

He advocates for SysAid among his public sector peers, emphasizing its simplistic yet powerful functionality, its attentive customer support, and its openness to change. The rapid and effective resolution of a critical integration issue within three days, requiring a code rewrite in their tenant, solidified SysAid’s responsiveness. Cliff believes that SysAid’s ability to provide concrete, data-driven evidence of improved FCR, billing accuracy, and overall service quality will build unwavering trust with his peers.

For Cliff, SysAid is more than just a software vendor; we are a partner that empowers his team to succeed.