From 1 to 5 employees, when can IT no longer be ad-hoc
Up to three people 'just ask each other' still works. From four or five it starts to creak, that is when tooling, accounts and rules need to be explicit.
Try this first
- 1Stop sharing personal logins, everyone gets their own account in email, accounting and project tools.
- 2Create a shared place for customer files, no scattered folders on someone's own laptop or in a personal Dropbox.
- 3Designate someone, internal or external, as first contact for IT questions, otherwise everything routes through you and blocks work.
- 4Start with a simple onboarding checklist, you will reuse it often, also see the existing entry on onboarding routine.
- 5Make sure MFA is on all accounts and the team uses a password manager, not 'we'll fix that when it goes wrong'.
- 6Plan a six-monthly review, since at four or five people something changes every quarter and the tooling has to keep up.
When to bring us in
If at three or four employees IT questions start disrupting your work, bring in an external partner. Vectel can get the basic tooling in order so your team can carry on.
See also
- First IT setup as a freelancer, what do you actually needNot everything at once. One laptop, a mailbox on your own domain, a password manager, a backup. That covers the first year.
- Hiring your first employee, what IT to arrange before day oneLaptop, account, mailbox, access to the right folders. In that order, not all of it at 9 a.m. on day one.
- Moving to a new office, IT checklistInternet and power have the longest lead times. Plan at least three months out, not three weeks.
None of the above fits?
Describe your situation below. We pass your input plus the steps you already saw to our AI and return tailored next-step advice. If it's too risky to DIY, we'll say so.
Or skip the DIY entirely
Our Managed IT clients do not look these things up. One point of contact, a fixed monthly price, resolved within working hours.