Mike Kanning, Fractional CIO & Tech Coach

Practical AI and automation for owners and senior leaders. Diagnosis before tools.

Most small and mid-size US businesses do not need a full-time CIO. They need someone who can find where the work gets stuck and fix it. Mike Kanning is a Fractional CIO & Tech Coach with more than 30 years in process engineering and technology, including about 16 years in process optimization and, for the last 3 or so years, a focus on practical AI. He has done that work in heavy manufacturing, international insurance and financial services, public sector systems used nationwide, and PE-backed companies. His approach is simple: find the bottleneck, cut the steps that add no value, and get the team working from the same plan.

Career

Early on, Mike led IT operations for two divisions of a $1B steel manufacturer and brought their systems together after a $140M acquisition. Later he was Director of International Applications at MedPro Group, a Berkshire company. There he managed a $15M technology budget and a 24-person engineering team that launched Azure-based policy systems in the UK, Ireland, and France. The team worked through three sets of regulations and delivered online portals that cut approved renewals to a 24-hour turnaround.

As Director of Software Engineering at Intellectual Technology, Mike ran a 29-person engineering group behind systems used by all 50 state DMVs, covering 10 products in 3 portfolios. He moved the team to two-week sprints and kept as many as 12 projects running at once. In 22 months the team cleared a backlog of more than 65 pandemic-era projects for licensing portals across the country.

Today Mike puts practical AI to work at DOXA, a specialty insurance firm owned by Goldman Sachs. There he automates hard, repetitive work, such as checking handwritten claims against 25 business-rule fields. At DOXA, that work has cut manual first-notice-of-loss inputs by 80% and reduced form errors by 10%. Through TechCoach, he brings the same approach to owners and senior leaders.

Credentials

Mike holds a BSEE from Purdue University (Computer Science focus) and an MBA from Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, plus AI Fundamentals from IBM and Gen AI Leader from Google. Day-to-day tooling experience includes Microsoft enterprise, Google Workspace / Gemini, and Grok tools. He uses that background to help leadership teams at small and mid-size businesses build systems their people can run and keep running.

Why TechCoach.ai

Mike founded TechCoach.ai in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 2024 to bring the process and technology discipline he used inside large enterprises to owners and senior leaders who do not have a full-time CIO. He leads every engagement, starts by finding where the work actually slows down, and brings in trusted partners when the job calls for it.

Work with Mike

Most leaders start with the $999 AI Audit. How it works, who it is for, and the Fractional CIO & Tech Coach retainer are on About TechCoach.ai.