Change to Australia's Best Managed IT Provider

Support is live from day one, so the part that worries people is over immediately. The structured transition runs about four weeks: kick-off and scope in week one, a full environment audit across weeks one and two, access and tooling in week two with backups validated first, stabilisation across weeks two to four, then service desk induction and reporting at week four. Hypercare, with weekly check-ins, runs alongside all of that from week one through to about week sixteen, and closes when the environment is stable rather than on a date.

What usually sets the start date is not the technical work. It is your notice period and the end dates on your other agreements, which is why they are worth mapping before you commit to anything.

Four things, on your side. A kick-off conversation of about an hour to agree scope, contacts and what must not be disrupted. Approving the access transfers, which we prepare and walk you through, so your part is clicking approve and confirming you can log in. Sending your team a note about the change, which we draft for you. And one induction session so everyone knows how to reach the help desk.

Everything else is ours, including dealing with your outgoing provider. You do not chase them for credentials, sit on hold to vendors, or project manage the transition. That is the part people expect to be painful, and it is the part we take off you.

Less than most people expect, if access is in order. Your team keeps working and keeps logging tickets, and most of the change happens underneath them. The disruptive changes are the ones where the outgoing provider holds credentials the business does not, because that turns a handover into a rebuild of accounts that should already have been yours.

That is the reason the checklist on this page leads with logging in yourself to your domain registrar, your Microsoft 365 or Google admin centre and your backup console. Twenty minutes of checking now is what keeps the change boring later.

It depends on your agreement, and it is worth reading rather than assuming. Look for three things: the length of the notice period, whether notice has to be posted or emailed and to whom, and whether the agreement renews automatically. An auto-renewal that passes while you are still deciding can cost you a year.

Also check what you have paid in advance and what the contract says happens to it. None of this stops you from changing, but all of it changes when you can move and what it costs.

Administrative access to everything you pay for: your domain registrar, your Microsoft 365 or Google tenant, your backup console, firewall and network equipment, your phone system portal, and any security consoles. Alongside that, ask in writing for documentation of the network and systems, an asset register with ages and warranty dates, a list of licences and subscriptions with renewal dates and who they are billed to, industry software vendor contacts, and confirmation that their remote access and monitoring agents are removed once the change is complete.

Ask for it as a list with a date against each item. A provider who will not put a handover in writing has told you something useful about the handover.

It is common and it is fixable, but it is much easier to fix while you are still a client. Ask for ownership to be transferred to an account in your business's name, held by an employee, and verify it by logging in yourself rather than being told it is done.

If a provider will not transfer something you pay for, that is worth knowing early. There are established processes for recovering a domain or a tenant, and we have done it, but they take time you would rather spend on the actual change.

Where the timing allows one, it helps. An overlap gives you somewhere to go if something is missed, and it removes the pressure to cut over on a fixed date regardless of what the audit finds. Where an overlap is not possible, and often it is not, the substitute is a written handover date with named owners on both sides.

Changing provider is not always a choice and does not always happen slowly. If you are moving in a hurry, tell us that at the start and the sequence changes to suit it.

Yes, and that happens from week one. We take over the dealings with the outgoing provider, including chasing access, documentation and the handover items they are obliged to supply, so you are not the one caught in the middle of a conversation with someone you have just given notice to.

You still give the notice, because that is your relationship and your contract, and we will help you work out the timing.

Onboarding is included in a managed services agreement with us, so the change itself is not a separate project fee. What can cost money is what the audit finds: hardware at end of life, licences that were never right, or a backup that has never worked. Those are quoted separately and you see the costs before anything is spent.

The problem you have been working around, and which prompted the change, is the exception. That is scoped in writing before you sign and carried out at no additional charge under the agreement.

Usually, though it can mean paying out a notice period or running two providers briefly. The question worth answering first is whether the cost of waiting is higher than the cost of leaving. If the current arrangement is causing outages, security risk or work that never gets done, waiting six months is rarely the cheaper option.

Map your notice period and your other end dates, then decide with the numbers in front of you rather than the frustration.

No. Our managed services agreements have no lock-in period. The First Fix, where we scope and fix the problem you are sick of at no additional charge, does require a signed agreement, because otherwise it is an open-ended promise rather than an offer.

The scoping itself costs nothing and commits you to nothing. If you read it and decide we are not right for you, you keep the scope and there is no invoice.

We work best with Australian businesses of roughly ten to one hundred people, across professional services, defence, healthcare, agriculture and clubs. Below that a full managed agreement is often more than a business needs, and we will tell you so rather than sell it.

If you are larger, or you have your own internal IT person and want support alongside them rather than instead of them, that also works. Ring and describe the shape of it and we will tell you honestly whether we are a good fit.