Managed IT Support
IT that works, without employing anyone to run it.
For businesses too small to justify an IT person, but too dependent on technology to leave it to chance.
This is for you if…
- You've got no IT person, and things get fixed by whoever is least busy
- Your "IT support" is currently a friend, a relative, or whoever set it up originally
- You've outgrown a provider who treats you as too small to bother with
- Something breaks and you don't know who to ring
- You suspect your Microsoft 365 setup isn't right, and nobody has ever checked
From one person upwards. Some of my clients are sole traders; some have fifteen or twenty staff.
What's included
- Day-to-day user support — the things that stop people working
- Microsoft 365 administration — accounts, licences, mailboxes, permissions, new starters and leavers
- Device setup and management — new machines configured properly, existing ones kept patched
- Patching and updates — kept current, not left to whoever clicks "remind me later"
- Supplier liaison — dealing with your broadband, telephony and software providers so you don't have to
- Backup oversight — making sure it's actually running
When something goes wrong
Everything comes through helpdesk.mcharg.com, so nothing gets lost in an inbox and you can see where a job has got to.
These are the response targets I work to:
| Priority | What it means | I aim to respond within | You'll hear from me |
|---|---|---|---|
| P1 Critical | Complete outage or major disruption affecting multiple users | 30 minutes | Every 4 hours |
| P2 High | Significant impact with no acceptable workaround | 1 hour | Daily |
| P3 Normal | Limited impact, or affecting a small number of users | 4 business hours | Every 2 business days |
| P4 Request | Service request, cosmetic issue or minor inconvenience | 1 business day | As required |
Two things worth being straight about.
These are response targets, not fix times. Some problems take longer to solve than others, and I'd rather say so than pretend otherwise. What the table describes is how quickly you'll hear from a person — and how often you'll keep hearing from them until it's dealt with. Most of the frustration with IT support isn't the wait. It's not knowing what's happening.
And they're targets I hold myself to, not a contractual guarantee. I'm one person. I'd rather tell you what I actually aim for and hit it than sell you a promise with an exclusions list underneath.
Hours
8am to 5pm, Monday to Friday, excluding bank holidays.
Evening, weekend and bank holiday work is available on request rather than as standard. I'd rather be honest about that than advertise cover I can't reliably provide.
Remote first
Standard support is delivered remotely, which is usually how you want it — most problems are solved in minutes over a remote session rather than waiting half a day for somebody to drive over.
Onsite work is quoted separately, as project work or by exception.
Knowing what's wrong before it breaks
Support fixes what breaks. It doesn't tell you what's quietly wrong — the account without two-step sign-in, the laptop running an operating system that stopped getting security updates, the member of staff whose files aren't being backed up.
That's what my security monitoring service does: your Microsoft 365 estate checked every night, and a plain-English report each month telling you what actually matters. £120 a month, in addition to your support arrangement.
Tell me what's going wrong.
No charge for the first conversation. If what you need is smaller than what I do, I'll tell you that.