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How working with us actually goes
No mystery, no surprise invoices. Five stages from the first phone call to a steady rhythm of support, reporting and planning.
Look, report, plan, take over, keep improving
Changing IT provider feels risky, and it should. You are handing over the keys to everything your business runs on. So we made the process slow at the start and deliberate throughout, with a decision point at every stage where you can stop.
The first two stages cost you nothing. By the end of them you will have a written picture of your own environment that most businesses have never seen, and you can act on it with us or without us.
- Nothing is billed until a scope is signed
- You keep the assessment report either way
- Onboarding work happens outside business hours where it affects users
The five stages in detail
Typical timeline from first call to fully onboarded is two to four weeks, depending on the size of your environment and how much needs fixing before we take responsibility for it.
Discovery call, about 20 minutes
We ask how many staff and locations you have, what your systems look like, what has been going wrong, and what you actually want from a provider. You ask us anything you want about how we work.
You get: an honest answer on whether we are a good fit, and a rough monthly range so nobody wastes time.
Cost: free. Commitment: none.
Onsite assessment, about half a day
A technician comes to your office and documents what is really there. Hardware inventory and age, server and network configuration, backup status and last successful restore, patch levels, licence usage, administrative accounts, firewall rules and physical condition of the comms room.
We then write it up in plain language: what is healthy, what is at risk, what is costing you money, and what we would do about each item in order of priority.
You get: a written assessment report and a risk register you own outright.
Cost: free with no obligation. Typical turnaround: three business days.
Proposal and plan
We present a support plan with a fixed monthly figure, plus any one-off remediation work quoted separately at a fixed price. Remediation is split into what must happen before we take over support, and what can wait a quarter or two.
This is a conversation, not a presentation. Most proposals change once or twice as we work out what fits the budget and what can be staged over the year.
You get: a written scope, a service agreement in plain English, and a start date.
Decision point: nothing is billed until this is signed.
Onboarding, usually two to three weeks
The technical work: monitoring agents deployed, endpoint protection installed, backups configured and verified with a real restore, MFA rolled out, documentation built, credentials secured and administrative access transferred from your previous provider.
The human work matters just as much. We hold a short session with your staff so they know who to call, how to reach us and what to expect. Every user gets a one page card with the phone number, email address and portal link.
You get: a stabilised environment, a documented network, and a team that knows how to reach us.
Disruptive tasks are scheduled outside business hours.
Support, reporting and quarterly review
From here it becomes routine. Tickets are handled against agreed response targets, patching runs on schedule, backups are tested monthly, and you receive a report covering what happened and how we performed.
Every quarter we sit down with you for an hour: what broke and why, what is ageing, what licences changed, what is coming up in your business, and what should be in next year's budget. That meeting is where most of the value shows up in year two and three.
You get: predictable support, visible numbers, and a technology plan that stays current.
Month to month after the first 90 days.
What each priority level means
These targets are written into the agreement and reported against every month.
Critical
15 minute response
A site is down, a server is offline, or a security incident is suspected. We call you and work the issue continuously until service is restored.
High
1 hour response
A department or a critical function is blocked. Examples: shared drive unreachable, phone system faults, a manager unable to work.
Normal
4 hour response
One user affected with a workaround available. Most day to day tickets sit here and are usually closed the same day.
Scheduled
Agreed date
New user setups, equipment builds, planned changes and project tasks, booked in with you ahead of time.
What we need from you
Onboarding goes smoothly when a few things are lined up early. None of it is difficult, and we will chase all of it politely.
- One point of contact. Usually an owner, office manager or finance lead who can approve decisions.
- Access to what exists. Domain registrar, Microsoft 365 global admin, firewall and any vendor portals.
- Honesty about the past. Old servers, shadow systems, that one Access database from 2009. We have seen worse and we will not judge it.
- A window for change. A few evenings during onboarding for the tasks that cannot run while people are working.
- Feedback. If a technician is not getting it right we would rather hear it in week two than in the exit meeting.
Questions about switching provider
Onboarding itself does not require downtime. Agents and security tools install quietly in the background. Where a change genuinely needs systems offline, such as a firewall replacement or a server migration, it is scheduled after hours and communicated to your staff in advance.
It is common and it is manageable. We handle the handover professionally and keep it civil, since the outgoing provider is often still needed for a few weeks. Where they refuse to cooperate we can rebuild access through domain ownership and Microsoft tenant recovery. It takes longer, but it is not a dead end.
Yes. Many clients start with the assessment while still under contract elsewhere, then onboard once their notice period ends. Doing the groundwork early means the switch itself takes days rather than weeks.
You give 30 days notice after the initial period. We export your documentation, transfer administrative accounts and licences into your name, remove our agents and provide a handover pack to whoever comes next. There is no exit fee and we do not hold anything hostage.
Basic onboarding is included in the plan. Remediation work identified in the assessment, such as replacing an unsupported server or rebuilding a broken backup, is quoted separately at a fixed price and is entirely your call.
Start with stage one. It costs you a phone call.
Twenty minutes tells both of us whether it is worth going further.