Straight answers,
about what to do next.
An honest review of the technology you’re running, what it’s costing you, where the real risks sit, and a costed plan in priority order. No jargon, no scare tactics, and no recommendation we wouldn’t make to a friend.
Hands-on experience
Neutral recommendations
advice you can trust
English, no jargon
Most IT problems
are decisions that were never made.
Not broken hardware, postponed choices. The server nobody planned to replace, the licences nobody reviewed, the backup nobody tested. Consultancy is simply someone taking the time to look and tell you straight.
How it usually looks when we arrive
Nobody knows what you're paying for
Subscriptions on three different cards, licences for people who left, and a bill nobody has read line by line in years.
Decisions made by whoever shouted loudest
A system bought because a supplier pushed it, not because it fitted how you actually work.
Nothing written down
No inventory, no licence list, no network diagram, and the person who set it up left in 2019.
Spending on the wrong risk
Money going on the thing that feels frightening rather than the thing most likely to stop the business trading.
Clients starting to ask questions
Security questionnaires and tender documents arriving, and nobody in the business able to answer them honestly.
What you get from a proper review
A written picture of what you have
Devices, servers, licences, connections, accounts and where your data actually lives, documented, and yours to keep.
Risks ranked, not listed
What could stop you trading tomorrow, what’s merely untidy, and what can safely wait until next year.
Costed options, with the trade-offs
Two or three routes for each decision, with honest pros, cons and prices, including the option of doing nothing.
A roadmap you can budget against
Sequenced over the next 12-24 months so spending is planned rather than reactive.
Advice with nothing behind it
We’re not reselling somebody’s hardware target. Sometimes the recommendation is to keep what you’ve got.
Strategy, spend and risk,
for businesses without an IT department.
The kind of thinking a full-time IT manager would do, at the scale a small or midsize business actually needs it.
Infrastructure planning
What to replace, what to keep and when, servers, networking, storage and devices, mapped against warranty and support dates.
Cloud strategy
Whether to move, what should move first, and what’s genuinely better left on site, with the numbers behind the recommendation.
Security posture review
Where you stand on antivirus, EDR, identity, patching, MFA and access control, and the three things worth fixing first.
Compliance & questionnaires
Help answering client security questionnaires, tender IT sections and insurer requirements, honestly, and with the gaps closed first.
Cost & licence review
Line-by-line review of what you’re paying for: duplicate subscriptions, licences for leavers, and the wrong plan for the job.
Business continuity planning
What happens if the office is unreachable, the server dies or a key account is compromised, written down, and tested rather than assumed.
Digital transformation
Replacing paper, spreadsheets and double entry with tools your team will actually use, chosen for fit, not for fashion.
Supplier & vendor review
An independent read on quotes and contracts you’ve been given, and help holding an incumbent supplier to what they promised.
IT roadmap & governance
A 12-24 month plan with costs and sequencing, reviewed quarterly, so technology decisions track the business rather than trail it.
The things people actually
ring us about.
If any of these sound like your week, a review is probably the cheapest hour you’ll spend this quarter.
Spend
“Are we paying too much, and for what?”
We map every subscription, licence and support contract against the people and systems actually using them. Savings usually come from tidying up, not switching supplier.
Risk
“How exposed are we, honestly?”
A plain-English view of your security and resilience, what an attacker would find easy, and what would happen if it went wrong on a Friday afternoon.
Timing
“Do we replace this server or move to the cloud?”
Both options costed over five years, including the things people forget: downtime, licensing, connectivity and staff time.
Growth
“We're doubling the team, will this cope?”
What breaks first as you grow: connectivity, licensing, onboarding, or the assumption that one person can keep setting laptops up by hand.
Compliance
“A client sent us a security questionnaire.”
We go through it with you, tell you which answers are currently untrue, and put the shortest credible path to “yes” in front of you.
Continuity
“What if the office burned down tonight?”
A continuity position, written down: what you’d lose, how long recovery takes, and what it would cost to shorten that.
You end up with a roadmap,
not a sales quote.
Every engagement produces the same thing: findings in priority order, costed options, and a sequence you can hold us to.
Critical risks only, leaver accounts, unsupported systems, untested backups, missing MFA. Usually cheap, usually urgent.
Licence clean-up, duplicate subscriptions cancelled, patching and monitoring brought under management. Often self-funding.
The planned project: server replacement, cloud migration, identity rollout, or the application change you've been putting off.
A short quarterly review against the plan, what changed, what's next, and what can now be dropped from the list.
Four stages,
one honest conversation.
No discovery workshops that last a month. We look, we ask your team, we write it up, we sit down with you.
Look at what's really there
We inventory devices, servers, licences, connections and accounts, then talk to the people who use the systems every day. The gap between how something is supposed to work and how it actually works is where most of the findings live.
- Estate inventory
- Staff conversations
- Data & access mapped
Rank it by consequence
Every finding is scored on likelihood and impact: what could stop you trading, what's a cost leak, what's simply untidy. You get a clear view of where you stand on security, resilience, cost and ways of working.
- Risks ranked
- Costs quantified
- Quick wins separated out
Options, with prices and trade-offs
Two or three costed routes for each significant decision, including the honest case for doing nothing yet. Then a sequenced 12-24 month roadmap you can budget against, written in language you can take to your board or your accountant.
- Costed options
- Sequenced roadmap
- Plain-English report
Do it with us, or with anyone
We can deliver the roadmap ourselves, work alongside your existing supplier, or simply hand it over. Where we do stay involved, we review progress quarterly and keep the plan current as the business changes.
- Delivered or handed over
- Quarterly reviews
- Plan kept current
An hour, a project,
or a standing seat at the table.
Most clients start with the free review and take it from there. Nothing here commits you to buying anything else from us.
Free IT review
The honest starting point
- Conversation about the business, not the kit
- High-level look at your current setup
- Top risks and quick wins identified
- Written summary, yours to keep
- No obligation and no sales follow-up
Free · usually an hour or two
Most popular
Full audit & roadmap
Project work, fixed price
- Everything in the free review, plus:
- Full inventory of devices, licences and accounts
- Security and resilience assessment
- Line-by-line cost and licence review
- Costed options for each major decision
- 12-24 month sequenced roadmap
- Presented to you or your board in person
Quoted after the free review
Virtual IT manager
Ongoing, retained
- Named consultant who knows your setup
- Quarterly review against the roadmap
- Independent review of supplier quotes
- Help with client security questionnaires
- Budget planning and licence oversight
- On the end of the phone for the big decisions
Quoted per month · rolling
Independent by design, our advice doesn't change based on what we'd rather sell you.
Advice is the start.
Delivery is the rest.
The services clients most often engage once the roadmap is agreed, or use someone else for, entirely their call.
Cloud migration
Mail, files, applications and identities migrated out of hours, with a fixed quote and a rollback plan at every stage.
Managed security
Antivirus, EDR and ITDR, monitored around the clock, usually the first two items on any roadmap we write.
Managed backup
Encrypted off-site copies with tested restores and 30-day version history, monitored daily by our engineers.
Common questions
Before you get in touch.
Is the first conversation really free?
Yes, an hour or two looking at your setup and talking about the business, with an honest take on the main risks and quick wins. If we can’t see anything worth doing, we’ll say so, and that’s the end of it.
We already have an IT company. Is this awkward?
Not at all, and it’s common. We frequently review a client’s current setup or help a client ask better questions. Where they’re doing a good job we say that plainly.
How small is too small?
There isn’t a floor. We work with sole traders and with businesses of a couple of hundred staff. The scope of the review changes; the approach doesn’t.
Will you recommend things we don't need?
No, and we’ve stayed in business 24 years on word of mouth precisely because of that. If the cheaper fix is the right fix, that’s what we’ll put in the report, even when it earns us nothing.
Can you help with a client security questionnaire or tender?
Yes. We’ll go through it with you, flag anything you can’t honestly answer yes to yet, and give you the shortest credible route to being able to, usually far less work than people fear.
How long does a full audit take?
For a typical small business, a week or two from first visit to presented roadmap, most of that is us working, not you. Larger or multi-site estates take longer and we’ll tell you up front.
What do you need from us to start?
An hour of someone’s time who knows how the business runs, and read-only access to see what’s in place. You do not need to prepare anything, tidy anything, or know the answers already.
Need a quote on IT support for your business?
An hour or two of our time, a straight look at what you’re running, and an honest summary of the risks and quick wins in priority order. No obligation, no jargon, and no follow-up sales call you didn’t ask for.
Free audit · fixed per-user pricing · 30-day rolling agreement
