Financial Services
Scaled technology operations through growth from approximately 550 to 2,000+ employees across service desk, infrastructure, cybersecurity, telecom, vendors, facilities, compliance, and budget ownership.
About Balanced Bandwidth
Technology leadership across real-world business environments
Brian Schwartz is the founder of Balanced Bandwidth, based in Orange County, California. With 25+ years in IT leadership across financial services, insurance, healthcare, construction, and government, he started BB to give small businesses access to the same caliber of technology leadership that enterprise companies take for granted — without the full-time cost.
Connect on LinkedInBalanced Bandwidth brings enterprise-level technology leadership experience to small businesses without adding unnecessary complexity.
Brian has led technology work across insurance, construction, merchandise and ecommerce fulfillment, healthcare, government, and financial services environments.
Proven Experience
Balanced Bandwidth credibility metrics
25+ yearsin technology
10+ yearsin technology leadership
2,000+employees
supported
supported
$6M+annual technology budget ownership
$200K+annual savings generated
$20K/monthoperating cost reduction
Cross-Industry Experience
Practical technology leadership shaped by different operating realities
The value is not just years in IT. It is experience seeing how technology decisions affect operations, risk, customers, employees, vendors, budgets, and leadership confidence across very different businesses.
Insurance
Led service desk improvements, KPI reporting, compliance support, SOP maturity, disaster recovery planning, and customer-facing support improvements in a regulated environment.
Construction
Supported technology in a construction-affiliated business environment connected to multiple operating companies, with emphasis on reliable systems, access, communication, field coordination, and operational continuity.
Merchandise, Ecommerce & Fulfillment
Improved technology operations across Shopify, warehouse and inventory workflows, design, production, customer service systems, Microsoft 365, Jira Service Management, and change management.
Healthcare
Built and led a 13-person Service Desk, strengthened KPI reporting, evaluated ITSM needs, and planned expanded support coverage for more consistent operations.
Government
Improved municipal IT service delivery for 500+ users across 12 sites, including stronger Help Desk practices, knowledge resources, endpoint governance, and user support.
Proof In Practice
Specific business problems, practical actions, measurable results
These examples show the kind of technology leadership Balanced Bandwidth brings to smaller businesses: root-cause thinking, operational discipline, plain-language communication, and attention to measurable business impact.
These examples are drawn from Brian's career history across different organizations — not from current Balanced Bandwidth client engagements. They are shared here to illustrate the caliber and style of work he brings to every engagement.
Scaling Technology During Rapid Growth
- Challenge
- A growing Southern California financial services company expanded from about 550 to more than 2,000 employees, increasing pressure on support, infrastructure, vendors, planning, and budget discipline.
- Action
- Scaled Service Desk and Infrastructure operations, clarified escalation paths, improved vendor accountability, set support expectations, and brought more structure to planning and budget ownership.
- Result
- Supported business growth while improving service continuity and transparency, including more than $200,000 in annual savings.
- Why it matters
- Growing businesses need technology operations that scale before IT becomes a bottleneck.
Turning Network Instability Into Business Confidence
- Challenge
- Recurring network instability affected productivity and created risk for revenue continuity.
- Action
- Analyzed incidents, vendor activity, infrastructure condition, ownership gaps, and business impact, then led a modernization effort using HA FortiGate firewalls, Meraki switching, Aruba wireless, redundant ISPs, and better documentation.
- Result
- No further network connectivity-related issues occurred for the remainder of tenure.
- Why it matters
- Reliable technology comes from solving root causes, not repeatedly treating symptoms.
Reducing Recurring Support Demand
- Challenge
- A recurring website registration issue was creating more than 200 calls per month.
- Action
- Used ticket data and business conversations to identify the root cause, then partnered with Development to remove the friction point.
- Result
- Reduced that call driver from more than 200 calls per month to zero.
- Why it matters
- Good IT reduces recurring business friction, not just ticket response time.
Improving Support for Distributed Teams
- Challenge
- A municipal environment needed better IT support for 500+ users across 12 sites.
- Action
- Built and led Help Desk support, improved ITSM and ITIL practices, strengthened knowledge resources, and improved endpoint governance.
- Result
- Improved support availability by 300% and user satisfaction by more than 35%.
- Why it matters
- Distributed teams need dependable support models that employees can actually rely on.
Reducing Cost While Improving Resilience
- Challenge
- The business needed stronger resiliency, backup, monitoring, disaster recovery, business continuity planning, and lower operating cost.
- Action
- Consolidated and migrated eight full racks of hosted data center equipment, implemented monitoring and backups, updated the disaster recovery plan, and coordinated annual DR/BCP testing.
- Result
- Reduced IT operations costs by more than $20,000 per month while improving resilience and audit readiness.
- Why it matters
- Cost control and reliability can improve together when the work is planned around business risk.
Supporting Revenue-Critical Ecommerce and Fulfillment Workflows
- Challenge
- Technology supported Shopify, warehouse and inventory workflows, design, production, customer service, Microsoft 365, and network infrastructure.
- Action
- Implemented Jira Service Management, created SOPs, introduced change management, and improved visibility into service demand.
- Result
- Reduced downtime by 15%.
- Why it matters
- Technology improvements should support orders, operations, customers, and revenue workflows.
Strengthening Access, Security, and Onboarding
- Challenge
- Fast hiring and cloud systems required stronger access governance and better employee lifecycle coordination.
- Action
- Implemented JumpCloud, MFA, SSO, and integrations with more than 15 enterprise applications, while partnering with HR on onboarding and offboarding alignment.
- Result
- Improved access consistency, reduced onboarding and offboarding friction, and strengthened data security.
- Why it matters
- Small businesses can reduce access risk while making employee and vendor changes easier to manage.
Small Business Focus
Enterprise lessons without enterprise complexity
Most small businesses do not need enterprise complexity. But they do benefit from enterprise lessons.
Balanced Bandwidth helps business owners avoid unreliable systems, unmanaged vendors, weak access controls, tool sprawl, unclear support paths, unnecessary costs, and poor documentation.
The Goal
Technology that fits how the business actually works
The goal is to make technology more stable, secure, easier to manage, and better aligned with how the business actually operates.
Why Small Businesses
The gap worth filling
The reason Balanced Bandwidth focuses exclusively on growing businesses — not enterprises, not startups chasing funding — comes down to where the real opportunity lies.
The market that gets overlooked
Enterprise companies have IT departments, vendor management offices, security teams, and CIOs. Startups have advisors, accelerators, and technical co-founders. The businesses in between — 20 employees, 50 employees, 80 employees — are often managing technology through whoever is most comfortable with computers, or leaning entirely on an MSP that was never designed to provide strategic leadership.
That gap creates real problems. Technology decisions get made without the context to make them well. Vendors go unmanaged. Security risks accumulate without anyone measuring them. And the business owner carries a level of IT anxiety that is not productive for anyone. That is the situation fractional IT leadership is designed to address — and it is the situation that shows up in almost every initial conversation.
The impact that matters
Working with a growing business is different from working with an enterprise. The owner is often in the room. Decisions get made quickly. When something improves — fewer support calls, a vendor relationship that finally has structure, a security gap that gets closed — you see the impact directly. There is a connection between the work and the outcome that gets diluted at enterprise scale.
The fractional model is also honest about the relationship. There is no inflated retainer, no unnecessary complexity to justify ongoing engagement, and no conflict of interest with vendors. The work is scoped to what the business actually needs, and the goal is always to leave the organization more capable and less dependent — not more reliant on outside support than when we started.
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