What "managed" means here

Every provider in this market says they look after your IT. That is not a definition, it is a feeling. So here is ours, and it is one you can test on us or on anybody else.

Managed means every system has a name against it, and you can produce the list

Every system, every service, every account, and the person responsible for each.

If that list does not exist, or it takes three weeks to assemble, those systems are not managed. They are being repaired when they break. There is nothing wrong with break-fix, but it should be sold as break-fix and priced as break-fix, and you should know that is what you are buying.

Why this is the right test

Construction already runs on named responsibility. A subcontractor's name is against a scope. When something is wrong with the electrical, nobody has a meeting about whose job it was.

IT is the only part of the business where that norm never took hold. The result is a set of systems nobody owns, and a provider who owns the tickets rather than the outcome.

This is the builder standard applied to IT. Hold it to the same standard you would hold any subcontractor to. Specified, scheduled, inspected, signed off.

The related test

There is a second one worth knowing, because it catches a different problem.

Own your IT or rent access to it. If you cannot get into a system without asking someone, you do not own it.

Domain registrar. Microsoft tenant. Backup console. Your own website. Ask who the registered owner is and whether you could get in tomorrow if your provider stopped answering the phone. The answer is uncomfortable more often than it should be.

What we do about it

We keep the list, and it is yours. It sits in your own SharePoint, not only in our systems, and we refresh it monthly with your report. Ask for it any other day and you will have it the same day.

You get the full copy at onboarding, and you get it again on the way out if you ever leave. We would rather lose a client cleanly than make leaving hard.