What if our current provider will not hand over the credentials?

It happens more often than it should. We document what we can see, rebuild administrative access where we are entitled to it as the tenant owner, and escalate in writing. It adds time rather than stopping the move, and we plan for it from the start.

Will you find things that need fixing straight away?

Almost certainly. Every onboarding produces a remediation backlog. We prioritise it by risk, quote it separately, and work through it at a pace you choose rather than presenting it as an emergency.

Will our staff notice the change?

Yes, and mostly in the ways you would want: things working better, and a number that gets answered. They will also see the agent appear on their machine, and any new services you have taken will be visible to them too. Anything disruptive is scheduled with you rather than done during the working day.

Can it be done faster than that?

Yes. If your current provider is being difficult, or you simply want out, we are equipped to take control quickly and can pick up support immediately. What changes is us rather than you: the learning happens on the job instead of before it, so expect more questions from us in the first few weeks.

What if our environment turns out to be in worse shape than we thought?

We tell you, with what it will cost to put right, before doing the work. Almost every onboarding turns something up — that is the normal outcome rather than a bad sign — and we would rather have an uncomfortable conversation in week two than quietly absorb something and let it fail later.

Onboarding — your first 30 to 90 days

Onboarding is where a support relationship is decided. Done properly it is unglamorous and slightly tedious. Done badly, you find out eighteen months later when something fails and nobody documented it.

Thirty days is the shape of it for a straightforward business, and it stretches rather than changes for a larger or more tangled one — sixty days is common, ninety for a complicated estate. That is the same reason a sensible notice period with your current provider is ninety days: moving an estate properly takes about as long as leaving one does.

The weeks below are the running order, not a contract. Some of it will not apply to you, and some of it moves once we see what is actually there — finding something in week one that has to be dealt with in week one is exactly what week one is for.

Week one — discovery and the record

We find out what you actually have, which is regularly not what anyone believes you have. Servers, devices, cloud services, line-of-business applications, network equipment, domains, licences and the contracts underneath them. Solving your technology puzzle before anyone changes anything is the whole point of week one — change what you do not yet understand and you spend week five apologising for it.

Monitoring and support agents deployed. They are how we watch the estate day to day, and how we build our knowledge base on your infrastructure and services — what is running, what it depends on, and what changes.
An asset register built, and kept current from then on.
Every line-of-business application identified, including the ones only one person uses.
Domain registrations and renewal dates checked. Expired or nearly expired domains are a common and expensive find.

Week two — security baseline audit

We measure what you have against the baseline we would expect, and write down the gap.

Administrator accounts: how many, who has them, and whether they are separated from everyday accounts.
Multi-factor authentication coverage, and where it is missing or bypassable.
External sharing and oversharing in your cloud storage.
Backup coverage, and whether anyone has ever restored from it.
Patch status across the estate.
Devices running an operating system that is no longer supported.

Week two to three — the remediation backlog

Everything the audit found, prioritised by risk, with a cost against each item. Some of it is included in the monthly fee. Some of it is project work and is quoted separately. We are explicit about which is which.

You decide the order and the pace. We will tell you clearly which items we think should not wait, and we will put that in writing.

Week three — credential and access transfer

Administrative access moved to named accounts we control, with your ownership of the tenant and the domains unchanged throughout. Your outgoing provider's access is removed on a date you agree.

This is the step that most often stalls, because it depends on the incumbent co-operating. We will have started chasing it in week one for that reason.

Week four — handover into service

Your staff are told how to reach us, with the number and the portal.
Escalation contacts agreed in both directions.
A meeting to go through the environment as we now understand it: what we found, what we fixed, and what is still outstanding. The useful half of that conversation is usually what we have missed — discovery finds what is running, not the thing that only one person knows about, and this is the point at which that surfaces cheaply rather than at two in the morning.

What typically goes wrong

The incumbent withholds credentials: Common, and rarely malicious so much as unmotivated. We escalate in writing and rebuild access where we are entitled to as the tenant owner. It costs time, not the move.
An undocumented line-of-business application: Usually something critical that one person maintains and nobody else understands. We find these in week one specifically so they are not discovered during an incident.
Expired or misdirected domain registrations: Domains registered to a former employee's personal account, or renewing to a card that no longer exists. We check this early because the failure mode is total.
Backups that have never been tested: A backup job reporting success and producing an unusable restore is the most common serious finding there is.

If you are moving from an incumbent you are unhappy with, switching IT provider covers the commercial side: what to ask for, and what to expect.

Questions people ask

What if our current provider will not hand over the credentials?: It happens more often than it should. We document what we can see, rebuild administrative access where we are entitled to it as the tenant owner, and escalate in writing. It adds time rather than stopping the move, and we plan for it from the start.
Will you find things that need fixing straight away?: Almost certainly. Every onboarding produces a remediation backlog. We prioritise it by risk, quote it separately, and work through it at a pace you choose rather than presenting it as an emergency.
Will our staff notice the change?: Yes, and mostly in the ways you would want: things working better, and a number that gets answered. They will also see the agent appear on their machine, and any new services you have taken will be visible to them too. Anything disruptive is scheduled with you rather than done during the working day.
Can it be done faster than that?: Yes. If your current provider is being difficult, or you simply want out, we are equipped to take control quickly and can pick up support immediately. What changes is us rather than you: the learning happens on the job instead of before it, so expect more questions from us in the first few weeks.
What if our environment turns out to be in worse shape than we thought?: We tell you, with what it will cost to put right, before doing the work. Almost every onboarding turns something up — that is the normal outcome rather than a bad sign — and we would rather have an uncomfortable conversation in week two than quietly absorb something and let it fail later.

Onboarding.