News & Case Studies – mrc's Cup of Joe Blog

Coming in May: Build AI Agents in Your Environment, Governed by Your Own IT Team

By Sal Stangarone / AI Agents, Artificial Intelligence

In speaking with IT leaders recently, I keep hearing the same thing. Employees are using AI, with or without IT’s blessing.

The problem: They’re using it in risky ways. For example:

They’re pasting customer lists into ChatGPT to summarize them.
They’re feeding contracts into public chatbots to analyze them.
They’re asking AI tools to review company data they exported to a spreadsheet.

Here’s the part that should worry you. Studies keep finding the same thing, including IBM’s 2025 Cost of a Data Breach report: Employees routinely ignore the AI tools their company actually paid for. Why? Because the sanctioned tools are slower, harder to get into, or don’t do what they need. So, they reach for the public ones instead.

In short, Shadow AI is becoming the default.

I talk to IT leaders who feel like they’re in an impossible spot. They’re trying to manage a workforce that’s already using AI, on tools they didn’t approve, against data they’re responsible for, in ways their auditors and privacy team can’t see. Policy memos don’t fix that.

The only thing that fixes it is giving people a sanctioned path that’s easier than the rogue one. IT needs a way to deliver sanctioned AI that’s easy for the users…without giving up control.

That’s exactly what’s coming next in m-Power.

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Coming in May: Build AI Agents in Your Environment, Governed by Your Own IT TeamRead More »

Case Study: Learn how this non-profits meets development challenges…without developers

By Sal Stangarone / case study, Low-code

Picture this: You’re running an IT department, and everyone’s asking for custom applications. The catch? You don’t have a single programmer on your team. What do you do?

Well, that’s exactly what Lifeskills, a Kentucky-based non-profit, was dealing with. But instead of pulling their hair out, they found a secret weapon: The m-Power Development Platform.

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Case Study: Learn how this non-profits meets development challenges…without developersRead More »

Case Study: Learn how the AICTP outperforms larger companies

By Sal Stangarone

The American Institute of Certified Tax Planners (AICTP) is a not-for-profit corporation that trains and licenses tax professionals in the expertise of advanced tax reduction.

Shortly after the AICTP was founded, Dominique Molina (President and Founder) noticed a problem: There was no technical solution for this discipline. Everyone used different methods rather than one, standardized approach. This created a problem: When everyone’s doing things in different ways (and getting different results), it’s nearly impossible to effectively teach and lead them.

The solution: The AICTP partnered with mrc’s services team to help them develop a solution for their industry. With Molina providing the tax expertise and mrc’s consultants providing the development, they created a solution that perfectly fits their industry’s needs.

The result: The AICTP offers an industry-leading solution that outperforms solutions from much larger companies. According to Molina, “We’ve been at this for many years. In that time, other competitive solutions have entered the marketplace from some really well-known, well-funded organizations. Their solution is not as effective as ours. That helps us stand out with our clientele because they know that our solution can give them results that other off-the-shelf applications can’t deliver.”

To learn more, you can watch the interview below or read the whole case study here: https://www.mrc-productivity.com/customers/aictp.html.