Client PortalManaged IT for consulting firms
IT Support for Consulting Firms Across Melbourne
A consultancy sells its people's time, and that time is spent anywhere except a desk you control. The work happens at a client's office, in an airport lounge, at a kitchen table on a Sunday. Technology either follows your consultants or quietly taxes every one of them.
Want the number first? Our pricing is published: AgileCORE from $85 and AgileCOMPLETE from $130 per user per month ex GST, plus the AgileSECURE add-on at $44, which we strongly recommend for a firm holding client material. Estimate your monthly figure in two minutes, or book a conversation.
What an IT problem actually costs you
In a consultancy, technology friction comes straight off the invoice
In most businesses a slow laptop is an irritation. In a firm that bills by the hour it is margin, and it is margin that never appears on a report because nobody writes down the forty minutes lost to a file that would not open before a client session.
That is the argument for managing technology rather than supporting it. Support responds after the time is already gone. Management is the work that stops the same forty minutes recurring across fifteen people for a year.
Starting somewhere new, on day one
A consultant joining a client site should not spend the first morning solving connectivity, access or a document that will not sync. Standardised, managed devices make the first hour unremarkable, which is the point.
One version of the deliverable
Firms lose more to version confusion than to outages. Documents governed in one place, with history, so the report the client received is the report you can still produce.
Working from a client's network
Your people connect to networks you do not control, routinely. The device has to carry its own protection rather than relying on a perimeter that belongs to somebody else.
The obligation clients assume you are meeting
Your clients' confidential material is on your consultants' laptops
Consulting engagements run on other people's commercial information: strategy, financials, staff matters, things that would be damaging in the open. Most client contracts say something about how it will be protected, and most firms have never checked whether what they signed is what actually happens.
Increasingly the question is asked directly. Client security questionnaires now reach firms of ten people, and the ones that answer confidently win work from the ones that improvise.
AgileSECURE is aligned to the SMB1001 maturity framework, which gives you something to point at rather than a paragraph of reassurance.
Scope
What we take responsibility for
Agreed in writing on day one in a Responsibility and Accountability Matrix, so what sits with us and what sits with the firm is settled before it matters.
- Microsoft 365, including document structure that survives growth
- Devices that are standardised, encrypted and managed wherever they are
- Access that reflects the engagement, and ends when it does
- Security controls you can describe in a client questionnaire
- Backups tested by restoring from them, with the result recorded
- The software and connectivity vendors, so your operations lead is not the integration layer
Published pricing
AgileMANAGED: structured IT from $85 per user / month
We publish our pricing because a firm that budgets properly deserves to know the number before the first meeting, not after the third.
AgileCORE
Remote support, monitoring, security baselines and Microsoft 365 management. Suits a firm that is already working remotely by default.
View AgileCORE →AgileCOMPLETE
Everything in CORE, plus onsite support, managed servers with 24/7 monitoring, and quarterly business reviews.
View AgileCOMPLETE →Where we work
Based in Mornington, working wherever your people are
Agile IT Solutions has been based in Mornington since 2007. A good share of the consultancies we look after sit around Hawthorn, Richmond and the inner east, which is convenient, though for a firm whose people are rarely in the office it matters less than it used to. Most issues are resolved remotely, and onsite support across our service area is included with AgileCOMPLETE.
Questions
IT questions from consulting firms
Our consultants work from client sites. Does that change what we need?
It changes where the protection sits. When your people spend their week on networks you do not control, the device has to carry its own security rather than depending on an office perimeter. In practice that means managed, encrypted laptops, multi-factor authentication, access that works from anywhere without opening everything up, and documents that sync properly rather than living in a downloads folder.
Clients are sending us security questionnaires. Can you help?
Yes, and this is becoming the main reason firms call us. We can tell you what your current answers really are, close the gaps worth closing, and give you a position you can stand behind. AgileSECURE is aligned to the SMB1001 maturity framework, which is more useful in a questionnaire than a general assurance that you take security seriously.
We use contractors and associates. How should their access work?
Scoped to the engagement and time-limited, in a place the firm controls. Give them what the work needs, in your environment rather than theirs, and remove it when the engagement ends with a record showing it happened. The common failure is not that associates are risky, it is that access granted for one project quietly becomes permanent.
We already have an IT company. Why would we change?
Usually because nobody is managing the environment, only responding to it. The test we suggest is simple: ask your current provider when a restore was last tested, who has administrator access, and what is scheduled for replacement next quarter. If those answers are not readily available, the issue is ownership rather than effort.
Are we too small for this?
We work best with businesses of roughly 5 to 50 staff, and smaller teams growing into that range. If your firm is three consultants and everything works, you probably do not need us yet, and we will say so. The point at which this becomes worthwhile is usually when technology decisions start waiting because nobody owns them.
How do we get started?
A discovery conversation. We look at what the firm runs on today, how it is managed and where the gaps are, then set out what a structured managed service would look like. No obligation and no quote pushed at you in the first meeting.