Ghost Robotics was managing IT reactively — ticket by ticket, device by device. Rippling AI gave them a way to get ahead of it.

The Challenge

Bob Parsons manages IT and security at Ghost Robotics, a robotics and defense company operating with a heavily remote workforce. He’s a one-man shop, responsible for every device, every user, and every issue that comes through. And like most IT teams, his days were structured around the ticket queue: something breaks, someone reports it, Bob fixes it. Repeat.

The problem with that model was that it kept Bob’s focus on the present and off the future. Stuck putting out fires, he didn’t have any choice but to deprioritize the preventative device monitoring — looking for things like battery degradation, hard drive capacity, and lifecycle planning — that keep issues from reaching users in the first place.

With a remote workforce, the gap was even wider. Bob couldn’t physically see what shape his devices were in. He had no dedicated tool for monitoring fleet-wide battery life or storage across the organization. If a laptop was quietly degrading, he wouldn’t know until an employee messaged him to say it had died.

“You go from problem to problem and ticket to ticket. But being able to pull this data and look further down the road and plan better — it was a huge help.

Bob Parsons

IT & Cyber Security Specialist at Ghost Robotics

Support worked the same way. When a remote engineer hit a problem, Bob’s options were limited: walk them through a fix over Teams, ship hardware back and forth, or hope a third-party remote access tool was secure enough to trust. None of those options were fast, and none of them were reliable.

“Knowing a quick fix and not being able to give them a quick fix — trying to use third-party tools, none of those gave us the security that we needed. It was just frustrating,” Bob said.

Beyond device health and support, there was a compliance challenge building in the background. Ghost Robotics operates under CMMC Level 2 requirements, and without a dedicated tool to manage their security posture, Bob was trying to ensure compliance by hand.

On top of that, many employees were storing critical files locally rather than in SharePoint or OneDrive, putting all manner of organizational knowledge at risk. With just one hard drive failure, key documentation could just suddenly disappear.

The Solution

Fleet visibility from a single prompt

When Bob first got access to Rippling AI, he wasn’t sure where to start. So he started with the most straightforward question he could think of:

“What is the overall health of my devices?”

What came back surprised him. Rippling AI returned battery life data, hard drive usage, and device age across his entire fleet: a comprehensive view he had never had access to before. And the picture it painted was not the one he expected.

“I thought we were in a far better place with the overall health of our devices,” Bob said. “And then seeing it come back with lots of battery issues, hard drives maxed out — I was like, oh, I need to take a better look at this.”

That single prompt opened two distinct workstreams. The first was device lifecycle planning. Now that Bob could see which devices were degrading, he could build a proactive replacement roadmap instead of waiting for failures. When laptop prices dip, he can buy ahead — have replacements configured, staged, and ready to swap before the old ones give out. No emergency procurement, no scrambling.

The second workstream was data security. The hard drive usage data revealed which employees had filled their local storage — a strong signal that critical files were sitting on devices rather than backed up in the cloud. Bob used that data to open conversations with those employees directly, walking them through the risk: what happens if this laptop fails today? What would you lose?

Those conversations led to action. Employees shifted files to SharePoint and OneDrive. Hard drive space opened up. Data that had been one device failure away from disappearing permanently was now protected.

The fleet health data also changed how Bob could advocate for his team’s needs internally. Instead of walking into an executive conversation with a gut feeling and a request, he could walk in with a plan.

“Rippling gave me far better data to come to the table and not just say, this is something we need — but here’s the data that backs it. Here’s the plan and here’s a roadmap.

Bob Parsons

IT & Cyber Security Specialist at Ghost Robotics

Remote support that actually works

Visibility was one piece of the puzzle. The other was being able to act on it — and act fast. Rippling Remote Access, powered by Splashtop, gave Bob a secure way to get into any device in his fleet without leaving the platform he was already using to manage it.

The difference was immediate. Tickets that used to take days to resolve — back-and-forth over Teams, walking engineers through fixes they couldn’t execute, shipping hardware across the country — were now closing in under an hour. Most of the time, far less.

“Our ticket times for these types of problems have gone from a few days down to an hour or two max,” Bob said. “Most of them, probably not even ten to fifteen minutes, as long as their computer’s on.”

For issues that didn’t require touching the employee’s screen at all, Bob could use the remote terminal to push fixes silently in the background and never have to interrupt the engineer’s work. For more involved issues, he could jump in, see exactly what the employee was seeing, and resolve it in real time. Either way, the experience for employees changed noticeably.

“They love seeing the little purple thing pop up on their side,” Bob said. “Bob’s here. I don’t have to do anything.”

Remote Access also changed how Bob approaches training. Rather than group sessions or recorded walkthroughs that don’t stick, he now does one-on-one hand-over-hand sessions — demonstrating directly on the employee’s machine, then letting them walk through it themselves with him there. The results have been measurable.

“Maybe 35 to 45% of those tickets have disappeared since doing these Remote Access sessions,” Bob said.

Compliance, handled remotely

For CMMC Level 2 compliance, Remote Access became an essential tool. Rippling’s MDM handles BitLocker enforcement, but CMMC requires FIPS-level BitLocker, a step beyond what MDM can automate. Bob used Remote Access to reach engineers wherever they were in the world, flip the necessary settings, and verify compliance device by device without ever needing to ship anything, ask anyone to travel, or cause any meaningful downtime for the employee.

“Leave your laptop open while you’re eating lunch,” he’d tell them. “Before you’re done with your sandwich, I’m done and out, and you’re good to go.”

The same capability now covers audit readiness. If an auditor wants to spot-check a device that Bob can’t physically put in front of them, Remote Access means he can demonstrate compliance on the spot. He just pulls up the device, shows them the settings, and closes the loop without any logistical hurdles.

The Impact

For Bob, the shift became how IT gets to show up for the organization. He went from responding to crises to anticipating and preventing them before they arrived.

Having a better device lifecycle roadmap means replacement hardware can be purchased strategically, at the right price, with lead time built in. The data security conversations mean critical company knowledge is no longer one laptop failure away from being lost. And the data-backed proposals mean more of Bob’s recommendations are getting approved, faster.

“It gives you so much more time to focus on infrastructure and critical projects and future planning that you just don’t have without this tool. Let’s not react, let’s be proactive.

Bob Parsons

IT & Cyber Security Specialist at Ghost Robotics

For a one-man IT operation managing a dispersed remote workforce, the ability to see the full picture without building a custom monitoring stack — and to act on it before things break — is exactly the kind of leverage that changes what’s possible.