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Family & Children’s Services (FCS), a behavioral-health nonprofit serving the Tulsa area, faced a practical challenge as it grew: a lean IT team had more devices to manage across a workforce that did not always work from the office. In a feature published August 12, 2024, CIO.com reported that FCS partnered with Tanium to improve remote endpoint management while also working to reskill some IT staff. The article describes the technology work and training as efforts with intended benefits—not as changes whose impact on client care or staff outcomes was measured.
Why endpoint management became harder as FCS grew
FCS serves the greater Tulsa area through behavioral-health and family services. CIO.com reported in 2024 that the organization had more than 75 programs, offered services at more than 50 local schools, and served over 150,000 people a year. The same feature said FCS had around 1,500 employees after nearly doubling in size following its 2021 Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic status. Those figures describe the organization as covered in the 2024 report.
FCS’s current homepage describes its work as spanning more than 70 comprehensive programs, a differently worded figure published on a later date. The two descriptions should be read in their own contexts rather than combined as if they were the same measure.
According to CIO.com’s interview with FCS CIO Brent Harris, the organization’s lean IT team had difficulty securely pushing updates when employees were offsite. Updates were easier when staff brought devices into the office; remote work over VPN was less reliable. Growth also meant more endpoints to track, maintain, and secure.
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What Tanium changed in FCS’s reported IT workflow
CIO.com reported that FCS partnered with Tanium, an autonomous endpoint management vendor. During implementation, the team encountered varied software installations that created vendor-compliance issues and found assets it had assumed were decommissioned. The report says Tanium improved the team’s ability to propagate updates to offsite staff and see more of its technology estate. These are implementation observations reported by CIO.com, not the results of an independent audit.
For a nonprofit, the significance is operational: remote visibility and update delivery can help a small IT group manage a larger, distributed device fleet without relying as heavily on employees returning to the office. Harris framed efficiency as a priority because IT spending competes with other uses of organizational resources. As quoted by CIO.com, he said, “While we are well-funded and have excellent support, we do from an IT perspective recognize that every dollar we spend is a dollar taken away from potential client care.” The feature does not quantify whether the changes reduced costs or increased client-care capacity.
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How FCS used endpoint agents for emergency notifications
CIO.com connected FCS’s Tanium Threat Response use case to the June 1, 2022 shooting at Tulsa’s Saint Francis Hospital. FCS works with healthcare staff there, and the report says the organization used Threat Response to push emergency notifications to agents on devices used by staff and clients.
The account shows how endpoint management can have a role beyond routine patching: the same managed devices may serve as a channel for urgent communications. The feature does not provide alert-delivery rates, response-time data, or evidence of a specific effect on safety, so those outcomes cannot be inferred from the reported use.
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Why FCS was reskilling IT staff alongside automation
Harris told CIO.com that he was identifying IT staff who could build skills in robotic process automation (RPA), artificial intelligence, machine learning, and chatbot development. The stated rationale was to move employees away from repetitive tasks, address skills gaps, and make room for career growth. Harris said the organization wanted employees to feel challenged rather than “stuck in a more mundane, repeatable [role] where every day is the same,” and said some staff had been upskilled in areas of longer-term career interest.
Those are reported practices and goals, not quantified training outcomes. CIO.com did not report how many people completed training, how much time automation saved, whether retention changed, or whether staff satisfaction improved.
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Change management was part of the work
Harris described cultural adjustment as a major challenge. Employees inside and outside IT had to adapt to new software, services, and platforms. Staff with substantial experience using legacy tools needed help changing established habits, and leadership had to support the transition. That makes adoption—not just technical installation—a central part of the story: a tool’s potential value depends on people being able to use new processes consistently.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What FCS planned next, as reported in 2024
At the time of CIO.com’s August 2024 feature, FCS’s planned next steps included a full Windows 11 rollout and changes to hardware encryption and key management. The feature described these as future plans then; it does not establish whether they have since been completed.
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For organizations considering a similar effort, the case suggests useful questions to ask before choosing tools or training priorities:
- Can the IT team reliably update and inventory devices used away from the office?
- Does the organization have enough visibility into installed software and devices to manage compliance and retire assets accurately?
- What security or emergency-communication needs should managed endpoints support?
- Which repetitive IT tasks are suitable for automation, and what new skills would staff need to maintain those workflows?
- Who will help employees move off legacy practices and sustain adoption?
These are practical decision questions, not vendor-comparison findings from the FCS feature. The article does not compare endpoint-management products or training providers.
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