A 20-50 person SMB without an in-house IT team

The situation

Three vendors, network, Microsoft 365, telephony, and none of them knew each other's contracts. A SharePoint set up by "somebody". Backups that ran on paper but had never been tested. A group chat as the helpdesk where ten people typed "me too!" when the printer acted up again.

This was a healthy company. It wasn't about cleaning up after a disaster, it was about cleaning up so the director could have his weekend back.

What we did

Week 1: audit. We dug into the licenses, the monitoring (there wasn't any), the vendors, password hygiene, and the actual operation of the backup. End of week one we put a four-page document on the table: this is missing, this is duplicated, this is a risk.

Weeks 2-4: setup. Helpdesk channel (mail + chat, one person on our side), MFA where it was missing, monitoring rolled out, the new-hire onboarding runbook written. One vendor cancelled because their function was already covered under M365.

From month two: rhythm. One-page monthly report, a quarterly hour-long review, unlimited helpdesk within scope.

What it delivered

After three months:

- 22% lower license cost after duplicate Microsoft and backup subscriptions were cancelled. - First-line incidents down from an average of 8 per week to 3, most resolved within the hour. - One channel for support, no more "who do I call about the phone system again". - The director doesn't remember when something last broke, because he's no longer the first to hear about it.

Flat rate per employee per month. Cancel any month.

What this wasn't

No rip-and-replace of every system on day one. We inherited what was there and took it on in order of risk. No forced hardware refresh, the existing laptops were fine for another two years. No multi-year contract you can't escape; that was settled in the first conversation.