Technology Operator
The company you bought has no technology function. It has a person.
Usually one, occasionally two, always overloaded, and holding the whole estate in their head. We take the function - systems, security, vendors, helpdesk and data - under one monthly agreement, with one senior lead accountable for it.
What you actually inherited
None of this was on the data room index, and all of it is true on the first Monday.
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One person, and all of it in their head
The estate works because of them rather than because of anything written down. Their notice period belongs on your risk register whether or not anybody has put it there.
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The helpdesk is whoever answers
A laptop that will not connect goes to the one person who can least afford to stop, which is why the work that matters never finishes.
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Nobody owns security
It sits inside everybody's job description and inside nobody's objectives, so it happens when there is time, and there is never time.
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Suppliers renew themselves
Contracts nobody has read, rolling over on dates nobody tracks, at prices nobody has tested since the company was a third of the size.
The arithmetic of hiring it instead
Worth making properly, because it is usually made badly: one engineer's salary set against a monthly fee. The question is not what a person costs. It is what the function needs.
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You need six specialisms and can fund one salary
Infrastructure, network, security, identity, data, and somebody to answer the phone. A company this size hires a generalist and hopes the gaps stay quiet.
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You cannot hire a fraction of a network engineer
You can buy one. That difference is the whole argument, and it is why a comparison on salary alone never comes out right.
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Hiring takes months the plan has not got
A search, a notice period and a ramp. The hundred day plan does not pause while a job advert runs, and the first hire is rarely the right one.
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One person is not a rota
Holiday, sickness and resignation become unplanned outages when the function is one deep, and they arrive without regard to the board calendar.
What we take on
The estate, and the administration that comes with it. The second half is the part nobody costs and everybody resents.
The estate
- Identity, devices and the Microsoft tenant
- Network, firewalls and remote access
- Servers, backup and recovery
- Helpdesk, joiners and leavers
- Data, reporting and integrations
- OT and the plant network, where there is one
The administration
- Supplier contracts, renewals and price reviews
- Licence positions and true-ups
- Asset register and lifecycle
- Security questionnaires and audit evidence
- Insurance and regulatory requests
- The documentation, written as we go
What changes
Not a ticket queue with a service level attached to it. A function, run by people who will be sitting in your operating review.
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One accountable name
A senior lead who knows the estate, rather than a rota of whoever picked up the ticket. They answer for it in the operating review.
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The function does not go on holiday
A team behind the lead, so cover is structural rather than hopeful and August is a month like any other.
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It arrives with a standard
The same baseline we run at every other company we operate, so the next acquisition starts from something rather than from nothing.
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Documented as it goes
So it can be handed to an in-house team when the company is large enough for one, or to a buyer, without an archaeology exercise.
When to put this in
Four moments where this is materially cheaper than it will be three months later, and all of them are early.
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Before the transitional services agreement runs out
After it you are paying the seller for a service you no longer control and cannot change.
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Before the first audit or insurance renewal
The questions arrive whether or not anybody at the company can answer them.
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Before the person leaves
The estate gets documented while the one person who understands it is still there to explain it.
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Once, rather than at every company
The standard travels to the next acquisition. The exercise does not have to be run from the beginning again.
The rest of what we run
Where to start
A two week audit. One document. No obligation.
Fixed scope, fixed price. It reads your systems and tells you what is wrong, what each fix costs, and what to do first. You keep the report either way.
What it turns up
- Licences paid for and not used
- Firewall rules nobody has reviewed since install
- Administrator accounts with no owner
- Reports built on a source that stopped updating
- An integration failing quietly, nobody alerted
What it reads live
- Licences, systems and what they cost waiting
- Network, remote access and segmentation waiting
- Cloud tenant, identity and admin rights waiting
- Core systems and how they connect waiting
- Reporting, data quality and access waiting
One document: what is wrong, what it costs to fix, and what to fix first.