What You Actually Get From IT Support

What Is Included in Managed IT Services?

A client of mine, lovely chap, runs a manufacturing business in Dartford. He rang me last week, half laughing.

“Jacqui,” he said, “I was at golf yesterday and Dave – you know Dave, everyone knows a Dave – asked me what JJ actually does for us. And I realised I couldn’t really tell him. Things just… work. I don’t really know what you’re doing in the background.”

That, in a way, is the highest compliment I could ask for. But it’s also a problem if you’re trying to decide whether managed IT is worth paying for. Because if it’s working well, you don’t see most of it. And if you can’t see what you’re paying for, it’s hard to know whether you’re getting your money’s worth.

So let me tell you more;

The bit you do see – help when things go wrong

This is the obvious one. Somebody can’t get into their email. The printer’s chewing up A4. A laptop won’t connect to the office Wi-Fi after the chap who uses it took it home for the weekend.

Managed IT covers all of that. You ring, somebody picks up, the thing gets fixed.

The difference between a good provider and a bad one isn’t really whether they fix the issue – they nearly all do, eventually. It’s how quickly they answer the phone, how often it’s the same engineer who already knows your business, and whether they explain what was actually wrong in plain English or just say “it’s fine now” and hang up after a few mouse clicks.

The bit you mostly don’t see – keeping things running

This is where the real value sits, and it’s also the bit most small businesses don’t appreciate until they don’t have it.

A proper managed IT service is doing a long list of things in the background, every single day, whether you’ve logged a “ticket” (we call them incidents) or not:

  • Patching. Microsoft and every other software vendor pushes out updates constantly. Some of them plug serious security holes. Somebody has to make sure they actually get applied to your servers, your laptops, your line-of-business apps – and that they don’t break anything when they do.
  • Monitoring. Watching your kit and your network for the small signs that something’s about to go wrong. Disk filling up. Memory leak. Backup failing quietly. The stuff you’d never notice yourself until it became a proper problem.
  • Backups. Running them, checking them, occasionally testing a restore so you actually know they work. Anyone can buy a backup product. The job is making sure it’s still doing what it’s meant to.
  • Antivirus and email security. Keeping it updated, watching for alerts, dealing with the dodgy emails that get through and the ones that nearly do.
  • User admin. Setting up new starters. Disabling leavers (very important and very often overlooked). Resetting passwords. Adding people to the right shared mailbox.

None of that is glamorous. None of it makes for a good story over dinner. But it’s the difference between a business that hums along and a business that lurches from one IT crisis to the next.

The bit that actually saves you – security and resilience

This one used to be optional. It isn’t any more.

Cyber attacks on small businesses have gone through the roof in the last few years, and most of them aren’t sophisticated. It’s somebody clicking a link they shouldn’t, or a password being reused on a site that got breached, or a laptop being pinched out of a car. The damage is the same whether the attacker is a teenager in his bedroom or a proper criminal gang.

Managed IT puts the layers in that stop the worst of it:

  • Multi-factor authentication on everything (so a leaked password isn’t enough on its own)
  • Sensible password rules, enforced rather than asked nicely for
  • Email security that catches phishing before it lands in someone’s inbox at 8am
  • Encrypted laptops, so a stolen one is a hassle but not a data breach
  • An archive of your email that sits outside Microsoft, in case Microsoft has one of its days

The aim isn’t to make you bulletproof. Nothing is. The aim is to make you a harder target than the next business along, and to make sure that when something does go wrong, you’re back on your feet by Tuesday rather than Friday week.

The bit that helps you make decisions

The thing you really pay a managed IT provider for, if I’m honest, is the advice.

Should we move our file server to the cloud, or is it fine where it is? Is now the time to swap everyone to laptops? What do we do about that ageing accounts package? Is this email from “Microsoft” actually from Microsoft? What ought we to be doing about cyber insurance? My broadband keeps dropping out – is that BT being awkward or is it our kit?

A good managed IT provider answers those questions honestly, in plain language, and with your business in mind rather than what’s most profitable for them. They’ll tell you when you don’t need to spend money. They’ll also tell you when you do, and explain why, properly.

The bit you only really notice once a year

There’s also the stuff that happens once or twice annually, the bit you don’t think about until you need it.

  • Helping you with a cyber insurance questionnaire (they can be brutal, and getting them wrong invalidates your cover)
  • Supporting an audit if you’re going for an ISO certification or a big tender
  • Planning an office move – because shifting 30 desks is the easy part, it’s the network, the phones and the kit that takes the time
  • Sorting out a new starter who needs everything from a laptop to a Microsoft 365 account to access to four different systems, ideally before they walk through the door on Monday morning

These aren’t day-to-day jobs. They’re the moments when having a proper managed IT provider on side is worth its weight in gold, because they’ve done it before and you haven’t.

What’s not included

For balance, the bits that usually aren’t.

The actual licences – Microsoft 365, antivirus, email security – are normally separate, because they’re a third-party cost passed on to you. New hardware (laptops, screens, servers) is separate too. Big project work like an office move or a major rollout is generally chargeable on top of the retainer, unless you’re on an all-in contract like our Premium Plus, where the labour is in.

Anyone who tells you it’s all bundled together for one tiny price is either a saint or a fibber, and most of them aren’t saints.

So is it worth it?

Honestly? If your business depends on email, files, internet and a handful of bits of software working day in, day out – which is to say, almost every business now – then yes. The alternative is either employing somebody full time (which costs many times what a managed IT contract does), or muddling through, which costs you in lost time, missed sales and the occasional truly awful Friday.

If you’d like a proper conversation about what should be in your managed IT service – not a sales pitch, just an honest chat about what you’ve got, what you’re missing and what good looks like – give me a call on 01227 371375. I’m happy to talk it through.

To read a more detailed breakdown of the IT services and support we provide, and what happens next if you trust us with your IT support, click through to our managed IT service page.

Jacqui Offen IT Director, JJ Systems UK Ltd