o8t's fleet cleanup used to take 30 minutes of manual digging — and kept getting deprioritized because of it. Now it takes one prompt.

The Challenge

Device refresh cycles are one of the most operationally important and chronically deferred tasks in IT. For CJ, that tension was a constant. With roughly a third of o8t's fleet (20-30 devices) in active rotation at any given time, keeping tabs on who had received a new machine, who hadn't yet returned their old one, and whose MDM enrollment was lagging required pulling data from multiple places within Rippling and then manually correlating the results.

On top of device refreshes, CJ is also responsible for broader vulnerability management: auditing app installations across o8t's fleet for high-risk software, checking MDM compliance status, flagging machines with errors. Each required navigating menus, running reports, cross-referencing lists. 

In a company where CJ is the entire IT department, that time adds up fast. So much so that CJ just didn’t have the bandwidth to carry out reviews as often as he’d have liked. And that meant proactive maintenance sometimes slipped down the priority list.

Finally, when a company-wide shift from Intel to ARM chips added more urgency to the usual device refreshes, it became all the more important to find a more efficient way to get them done. Rippling AI allowed him to do just that.

“Instead of going through reports or manually scrolling through the UI, I'm able to ask a question, and it delivers all this  information quickly and easily. It used to take me 30 minutes to identify everyone who's mid-swap.

CJ Hughes

Global Head of IT and Security at Omniscient Neurotechnology (o8t)

The Solution

CJ used Rippling AI to replace the manual fleet review with a single comprehensive prompt that covered every dimension of the cleanup at once:

"I want to do a serious cleanup. Machines not returned — who do I have to chase for a FedEx return? Users with two machines who I need to chase to finalize the swap. Any new hires who haven't been assigned their machine yet? I need to know MDM status — anyone sitting with errors or non-compliant machines? Any restarts that need to occur? Anything else worth checking off. And can you draft me emails to nudge the relevant users?"

What came back was a complete fleet cleanup report: every user with multiple active devices listed by name, their device details, and the specific status of each. MDM compliance flags, pending restarts, unreturned hardware. And drafted outreach emails, one per affected user, ready to copy and paste directly into CJ's email client and send.

CJ sent the prompt, stepped away, and returned to find everything waiting. It crossed every item off the list in one pass. 

“It was a quick prompt. I walked away, grabbed a cup of tea. When I came back, there was a list waiting for me — along with drafted emails and any other action items I had.

CJ Hughes

Global Head of IT and Security at Omniscient Neurotechnology (o8t)

The initial reaction was skepticism. CJ didn’t realize the system wouldn't be capable of answering a multi-part query across device status, MDM compliance, and user-level detail all at once, let alone draft individualized follow-up communications on top of it. What came back changed that assumption.

"I felt like I was challenging it. But I was pleasantly surprised when it came back and was able to answer all of my questions, plus added some extra flavor that I didn't even request, but that was related and helpful."

And the fleet review wasn't the only prompt CJ ran. A separate cybersecurity query, asking Rippling AI to flag high-risk software categories such as remote desktop tools or non-standard VPN clients, returned a user-by-user breakdown with software details and recommended actions. The kind of output, CJ noted, that would be above and beyond what a junior IT staff member would typically surface.

The Impact

80–90% less manual work, per cleanup. A fleet review that previously required 20–30 minutes of manual report-digging — cross-referencing device status, MDM compliance, and user assignments — now takes a single prompt and a few seconds of processing.

Monthly instead of ad hoc. Reducing friction on an important-but-deprioritized task changed the cadence entirely. o8t's fleet is now reviewed and actioned every month — proactively, rather than whenever the backlog forces it.

Security gaps surfaced automatically. A separate cybersecurity prompt checked the fleet for high-risk software categories — things like remote desktop tools or non-standard VPN clients — and returned a report with details and recommended actions. The kind of output that previously would have required a dedicated audit.

More time for higher-value work. As the sole IT professional at o8t, CJ spent significant time on manual aggregation across device and security data. Rippling AI takes that off his plate, freeing him up for higher-value security work.

“It saves time and makes you more efficient and capable with less effort. I'd highly recommend it to any IT professional who's out of time, which I think most IT professionals are.

CJ Hughes

Global Head of IT and Security at Omniscient Neurotechnology (o8t)

For a solo IT function managing a distributed fleet, the difference between a tool that stores device data and one that synthesizes it into action items and ready-to-send emails is the difference between a task that gets done and a task that keeps waiting. For CJ, that shift is now built into the monthly routine.