The question came over the phone: could I take over their entire IT? I was already looking after the company’s Microsoft 365 environment at the time. Accounts, permissions, licenses, the things that pile up in daily work.
Yes would have been the easy answer. First I wanted to know what I would be saying yes to.
How IT support is usually built
The pattern is almost always the same. A monthly base fee, whether anything happens or not. Work billed by the hour, with the price showing up only on the invoice. A ticket for every small thing. And a service level that sets how fast someone responds.
None of that is wrong. It was built for a different kind of IT: the server in the basement, faults that needed a technician on site, providers who kept people on standby. The base fee pays for that standby.
A small team working in the cloud today has a different kind of day. A new hire needs an account. A laptop needs replacing. A shared folder has the wrong permissions. Many months, almost nothing happens. Then everything comes at once. Most of these jobs are small, clear and easy to describe up front. Paying for standby every month to cover them mostly means paying to wait.
What I built differently
You pay for work that gets done. Every task has its price before I start. If the effort is open, we agree on a limit, and it is never quietly exceeded. On demand, there is no base fee. If you want to hand over an area for good, Microsoft 365 for example, or the whole operation, you pay a monthly fee for it. Then you are buying responsibility, not waiting time. That gives three arrangements: on demand, managed areas and full service.
Every task has three routes. “Handle it.” “Show us how.” “Build us a guide.” For a provider, the third one is the awkward one. In a model that earns by the hour, a good guide is bad business. With Flex, it is a job with a fixed price, and the guide is yours afterwards. When a task keeps coming back, I suggest this route myself and tell you what it will save.
Costs become visible. Everyday work runs through a credit balance. Not to keep it as full as possible, but so that not every small job turns into its own invoice. Completed work is deducted once. You can always see what was done and what it cost. Over time, that gives you something few companies have: an honest number for what looking after their IT actually costs. Month by month. Sometimes more, sometimes almost nothing. That is why it is called Flex.
The balance does not expire. If you prefer to pay by invoice, you can. And if you leave, you get the rest back.
A first response is not a fix
Which leaves the question that always comes up with IT support: what if something is on fire?
A classic service level might promise that someone responds within four hours. That sounds like security. All it means is that someone gets in touch. Not that things work again afterwards. First contact and resolution are two different things. Put both in one line and what you mostly buy is a good feeling.
I keep it simpler. If something comes up, email or call. If it is critical, call. Then it takes priority, and I stay on it. If I am traveling, you know in advance. And in an emergency, nobody waits for a balance: we agree briefly on what I will do, then I start. The invoice comes afterwards.
If a business genuinely needs fixed response times or around-the-clock coverage, that is organized on purpose: with backup coverage, in writing, and at a price that fits. Not as a promise nobody can keep when it counts.
What stays with you
Accounts, licenses, data and backups belong to you. So do the guides. Later on, you can hand over more, do more yourself, or move your support to someone else. That is not the fine print. That is the point.
Flex is my answer to that phone call. The usual model answers how to keep someone on standby. Flex answers what your IT needs right now, and what that costs.
Price before work. No promise that isn’t organized.