Who this is for
And who it isn't
Most providers will tell you their ideal client is any business that pays on time. Ours is narrower than that, deliberately, and it is easier for both of us if you can tell straight away whether you are in it.
Who we work with
Industry
Construction and building companies in South East Queensland. Head contractors, civil, fitout, trades with a real back office. That is the whole list.
Size
Roughly 20 to 200 staff. Big enough that IT failing costs you real money, small enough that you have never had anyone whose actual job is to own it.
Shape
An office, and sites. If your people are split between a back office that runs on Microsoft 365 and crews who need drawings on a phone in a paddock, that is the problem we are built for.
Appetite
You have to be willing to be told something you do not want to hear. If your last provider only ever agreed with you, we are going to be an adjustment.
What usually brings someone to us
Nobody changes IT provider because they are curious. There is always a trigger, and it is nearly always one of these.
A tender asked a question you could not answer
A head contractor or a government project sent through a security questionnaire, and the honest answers would have cost you the job.
Your insurer started asking
The renewal questionnaire wanted MFA, tested backups and a policy, and you were not certain which of those you actually had.
You cannot get a straight answer out of your provider
You asked for the list of what you are running and who has access, and three weeks later you are still waiting.
Someone left and nobody knows what they had
Or an invoice went to the wrong bank account, or a laptop went missing, and the incident made it obvious that nobody was actually holding the rope.
The back office is the bottleneck
You are winning the work you bid on, but you cannot bid on more, because quoting and admin cannot go any faster with the people you have.
Who this is not for
We would rather say this here than on the first call, and we would much rather say it on the first call than three months in.
- Businesses outside construction. Not because your problems are less real, but because we would be learning your industry on your money and someone else already knows it.
- Businesses outside South East Queensland. We turn up in person and that only works within a drive.
- Under about 20 staff. At that size a full managed service is usually more than you need, and we will say so.
- Anyone whose main question is who is cheapest. There is always someone cheaper. You tend to meet them again during an incident.
- Anyone who wants a provider who does what they are told and does not raise anything uncomfortable. Chapter 9 explains why that is not us.
What that looks like in practice
A few years ago I worked with a commercial manufacturer, custom doors and windows for fitouts. Three people did the estimating, led by the owner, and their bid times were all over the place. Some quotes went out same day, others took a week, and nobody could tell you why.
So we mapped the estimating process from scratch and got everyone working to the same one.
Within about two years that business went from three people turning over around five million to six people doing north of twenty. They did not cut a single role. They removed the bottleneck and grew into the space it opened up. Process was not the only thing that changed in those two years, but it was the constraint they had been stuck behind.
That is what we are actually for. Not cheaper IT. A business that can take on more work without the back office falling over.