We sit on your side of the table.
Ask any advisor what happens before they recommend anything. Our answer is on this page, with the rest of what people want to know before they hire us: how we learn your business, who is in the room when you decide, what you own from day one, how often you hear from us, who you work with, and what we will tell you not to do.
We learn your business before we name a provider.
The first conversations are not about technology. They are about how the work moves: who takes the calls, where the files go, what happens on the day the internet drops, which contract renews next, and what your own people have stopped mentioning because nobody fixed it last time.
In reviews of the advisors people kept, the line that comes up is that they took the time to understand our business. That is the standard we hold to before a single provider is named.
Only then do we say what the issue actually is, in plain words, and whether it needs a provider at all. Sometimes a few changes to what you already pay for are the whole answer, and that is what you hear.
Is this advice or a sales pitch? The way to tell is whether the questions come before the product. Ours do.
Who is in the room when you decide.
Most technology decisions are made with one vendor in the room, and that vendor is the one who booked the meeting. Ours run the other way around.
Here is the order, whichever practice the decision falls under.
- We name the issue. What is slowing you down, in your words and ours, written down before anyone talks about products.
- We bring in the engineers. More than one provider, and from each one the engineer who will answer for the work, not the salesperson. They sit in the technical discussion with you, and we ask the questions you would not know to ask.
- You hear the upside and the downside of each. Side by side, with what it costs to leave, what breaks when it fails, and what happens at renewal. Keeping what you already own is always one of the options.
- You choose. It is your business, so the choice is yours, made with the whole picture in front of you.
- We read the contract before you sign. Term, auto-renewal, notice window, exit clause, and the promises that were in the pitch but are not on the page. The renewal date goes on a list you hold.
- The provider delivers, and we stay in the room. Their engineers configure, install and migrate. We read what they send, ask what they left out, chase what stalls, and keep a plain record of it that you own.
Nothing of yours lives in our account.
In one forum thread about letting an IT consultant go, the list ran like this: all of those admin accounts you don't know the password to, and backups sitting in an account the vendor provided. Some contracts go further and charge a documentation reconstruction fee to hand back your own network diagram.
So we insist on the other arrangement from the first day, with every provider, and it stays that way whether you keep us for a month or for years.
- Your accounts, opened in your company's name, in your own Microsoft or Google tenant and with every carrier and provider.
- Your admin logins, held by you. Nothing on your account depends on a password only we hold, or only a provider holds.
- Your backups, in storage you pay for and can reach without us or the provider who set them up.
- Your contracts and support agreements, in your name, so a call to the provider's support line is yours to make.
- Your documentation, written as we go and kept where you can read it, in plain words.
- If you leave, nothing has to be handed back, because nothing of yours was ever in our hands.
Every week, including the quiet ones.
One owner's review of the IT consultant he let go: multiple weeks passed without updates on progress or timeline, then an invoice for additional work hours. A founder said much the same about a fractional CTO: weeks of waiting, hoping, following up, and still not seeing real progress.
So you hear from us every week, including the weeks with nothing to report. The update is short: what moved, what is waiting on which provider, and what happens next, with a name and a date beside it.
The only time you hear from them is when you call. That complaint should never be about us. If a date is going to slip, or a provider has gone quiet, you hear it in that update before it becomes a problem, and you hear what we did about it.
The person you meet is the person who stays.
The plain version of the question is who do I call, and will it be the same person next month. Yes, and here is how the account is built around that.
- The person you meetthe person who reads your document on the first call is the person on your account, the same one the whole way. You have a name and a direct line, and a question from your team goes to that person, not to a ticket queue.
- The engineersfor the technical discussion, the engineers come from the providers being compared, and once you have chosen, from the provider doing the work. We bring them in, we sit with you while they answer, and we translate when the answer comes back in geek speak.
- The papereverything learned about your setup goes into a plain record you own, so nothing about your business depends on one person's memory, ours included.
- The week we are awayevery account is in your name, every provider answers to you, and the record is in your hands, so nothing waits on a login only we hold.
Leaving your old provider, in the right order.
I feel trapped, and I do not even know where to look. The line comes from someone locked into poor service without a clean way to leave, and the ones who do leave have their own warnings.
One expected that switching would be easy and save money, and wrote afterward: wrong, it was more expensive. Another was told to change every admin password before ending things with the old IT person, because a few good keystrokes and you'd be cooked.
So the switch starts with the paper, in this order.
- We read your current contract first. The term, the notice window, whether it auto-renews, the exit fee, and what they claim to own. We also ask which admin logins, backups and accounts only they can reach, and the answer goes on the record you own.
- Your dates go on one list you hold. Notice deadlines and renewal windows, tracked so that the window does not close while everyone is busy.
- The overlap between the two contracts is written into the plan before you give notice, so paying two providers at once is a number you chose, not a surprise on the bill.
Things we will tell you not to do.
Here is what we push back on, even when it is the answer nobody in the room wants to hear. If you want one of them anyway, we will say why we would not, and then it is your call and your business.
- Buying a tool before fixing the process it is supposed to fix.
- A three-year term when a shorter one is on the table.
- Signing anything before the last page of the contract has been read.
- A plan where no line says who and by when.
- A forty-page report when two pages and a start date would do.
- A bundle you cannot drop one part of without ending all of it.
- Anything set up so that only the provider who built it knows how to change it.
- A report that says what the boss already decided. We ask your own people what they think, then we tell you.
Is this advice or a sales pitch?
Advice. No provider gets named before we understand the problem, and when providers are named there is more than one. You see them side by side with the downside of each spelled out, their engineers answer your questions in front of you, and the choice is yours. If a few changes to what you already own would do the job, that is the recommendation, and it is written down for you to keep.
How do you decide which providers to bring in?
By the problem, not by the logo. Once we understand what is slowing you down, we look at which providers actually fix that kind of problem for a business your size, and we ask more than one of them to put an engineer on the call rather than a salesperson. You hear each of them answer the same questions. If the best answer is the provider you already have, on a shorter term, that is what you hear.
Do you do the work, or just tell us what to do?
We advise, and the provider you choose does the work. Our job is to name the issue, bring the right engineers from the right providers into the technical discussion, and help you choose. Once you have chosen, that provider's engineers configure, install, migrate or port whatever the job needs, and we stay at the table as your advisor through it: reading what they send, asking what they left out, and escalating with them on your behalf when something stalls. You get one person who is not the vendor and knows your business, and the vendor gets a client who is asking the right questions.
We already have an IT company and a carrier rep. Where do you fit?
Beside them, usually. You keep your IT company for day-to-day support and your rep for the account, and you use us for the contract, the plan, and the second opinion, which is the outsider's job. When a decision comes up, we bring their engineers to the same table as everyone else's, and they answer the same questions. If we think something about that arrangement should change, we say it to you, not around you.
What if it drags on? We have had weeks of silence before.
Then you hear about it before it drags. Every item on the plan has a name and a date beside it, and most of the names are the provider's. The weekly update says what moved, what is waiting on whom, and what we did about the ones that stalled. When a provider goes quiet, we escalate with them on your behalf and pass on what we hear, in plain words, as it comes in. Weeks of quiet followed by a surprise is what the weekly update exists to prevent.
What happens if you are away?
Nothing about your business stops, because nothing about it runs through us. The same person stays on your account the whole way, and the account is built so that it does not depend on that person being at a desk: every login is in your name, every provider contract is in your company's name, and the record of your setup is in your hands. The provider's support line answers to you, not to us. When we are back, the weekly update picks up where it left off.
Start with one document.
Forward the contract, the quote, the questionnaire or the plan that made you look for this page. The senior person who would stay on your account goes through it, then picks up the phone inside two business days and gives you thirty minutes: our read of it, the first thing we would change, and the mistake people usually make with that kind of document. It costs nothing, there is nothing to buy on the call, and nobody calls you again unless you ask. If the right answer is to keep what you have, that is what you will hear.