About Us

We Find the Real Problem.
Then We Fix It.

Veteran-owned IT, cybersecurity and web help in Joliet, IL. You work directly with Patrick or Elenor, from the first message to the finished job.

Veteran-owned

Patrick served in the U.S. Army as a Network Communication Specialist and held a security clearance.

Two senior partners

You work directly with the principals on every project. No junior account team in the middle.

Joliet to anywhere

Local presence in Will County. Most services delivered remotely to anywhere in the country.

Why We Built This

Why Patrick and Elenor Started Root Cause.

Patrick and Elenor started Root Cause Technology in Joliet after years of watching small businesses get the runaround from technology vendors. Patrick has spent 15 years in IT, first in the U.S. Army and then in financial, manufacturing and retail IT, watching problems get patched instead of solved. Elenor has spent 8 years building websites for real estate, healthcare, legal, security and wellness businesses, and kept seeing sites launched with no plan for getting found.

Root Cause puts both sides of your business technology under one roof, with the same two people on every project. The person who scopes your project is the person who does it.

The name reflects the work. We do not patch symptoms. We trace problems back to where they actually started, then fix what is causing them.

The Team

Who You Will Work With.

Patrick Sullivan

Lead Technology Consultant

15+ years in IT and cybersecurity. U.S. Army Network Communication Specialist who held a security clearance. Patrick managed classified satellite communication networks before moving into the private sector.

He has worked in IT across multiple industries, including financial, manufacturing and retail. PCI implementation experience inside financial institutions. HIPAA implementation experience for healthcare practices. Disaster recovery testing for organizations that cannot afford downtime.

B.S. in Technical Management from DeVry University, Magna Cum Laude.

U.S. Army Network Communication Specialist
Held a security clearance
Classified satellite network operations
PCI implementation experience inside financial institutions
HIPAA implementation experience in healthcare
Disaster recovery testing
B.S. Technical Management, Magna Cum Laude

Elenor Sullivan

Web and Digital Strategist

Eight years of web design and digital strategy across real estate, healthcare, legal, security, and wellness businesses.

She has rebuilt search presence for businesses in multiple industries, including a healthcare practice that lost its original domain. She took it from invisible on Google to #4 on page one for its main local keyword in under a year.

She built the website for a $1.2M luxury home listing. Buyers told the seller they kept returning to it before making an offer.

Her work goes beyond websites. She builds custom operational systems and internal apps, including a full platform for an education organization that runs registration, payments, rosters, and check-in from one source of truth.

Web design and digital strategy
Real estate, healthcare, legal, security, wellness
Domain recovery and Page 1 search rebuilds
SEO, AI search, and content strategy
Brand and identity design
Google Ads and Google Business Profile management
Luxury real estate marketing support
Custom operational systems and internal apps

How We Work

How We Run Every Project.

We listen first

Before we recommend anything, we understand your business. What you sell, who you sell it to, what is actually broken, and what is already working. Then we recommend only what fixes the problem.

We document everything

What we did, what we found, what we recommend, written in plain English. You will know exactly what is happening with your technology at all times. If we ever leave, you have a complete record of how things work.

We give you straight answers

If something is not worth doing, we say so. If you do not need a service we offer, we tell you.

We do not lock you in

Month-to-month engagements. You own your domains, accounts, and data. If you ever leave, everything goes with you. We earn your business every month or we lose it.

If you cannot explain what you fixed, you did not really fix it.

Who We Work With

Built for Small and Mid-Sized Businesses.

We work with businesses that have 1 to 75 employees, where the owner is still involved in decisions, and there are real systems worth investing in. We serve local businesses in person across Will County and the Chicago southwest suburbs, and serve clients remotely anywhere in the country.

HealthcareLegalFinancial servicesConstructionManufacturingReal estateHospitalityNonprofitsSmall business

Recent Work

Real Outcomes for Real Businesses.

Selected client work, plus the compliance experience Patrick brings from his work inside financial institutions. Clients are anonymized to protect ongoing relationships.

Invisible to Page 1 of Google in under a year

Joliet healthcare practice. After a foreign conglomerate bought its domain, we rebuilt the search presence on a new one and later got the original back. We got it to #4 on Google page one for the practice’s primary local keyword.

A $1.2M listing site. The home sold.

We built a website for a $1.2M luxury home listing. Buyers told the seller they kept returning to the site before making an offer.

PCI experience inside financial institutions

Patrick has designed and implemented PCI-aligned infrastructure inside financial institutions: documented controls, monitoring, and audit-ready reporting, plus hands-on remediation and configuration work.

HIPAA implementation experience for healthcare practices

Hands-on implementation of access controls, encryption, audit logging, and staff training inside healthcare practices. Documented workflows that practices can actually maintain without us.

Some of my emails were going to spam and some suppliers weren't getting them at all. Elenor tracked down the problem and fixed it, and it was such a relief. She's also built and updated our website over the years, and every time I look at her work, it looks great. I'm thankful for the great work she's done for me.

Technology, Illinois

Tell Us What's Going On.

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We Find the Real Problem. Then We Fix It.