What happens in your first 90 days with a new IT provider?

Support starts the day our remote management software goes onto your machines. Antivirus with round the clock monitoring goes on at the same time, so you are protected from the first day as well as supported. Everything else is in place within 30 days, and we sit down with you at 30, 60 and 90 days to check it is working the way you want.

That is the short version. Here is what actually happens, what we need from you, and what your staff will notice, which is very little.

What happens on day one?

We send you our remote management software, NinjaOne, and you install it on every machine you can. We install it on the ones you cannot. That one step does three jobs at once:

• It tells us what you have. Every device, what it runs, how old it is and what state its updates are in.
• It lets us support you straight away. We can connect to any machine remotely, so the first ticket can be fixed on the first day.
• It puts protection on. Bitdefender antivirus, with managed detection and response watching it 24 hours a day, is rolled out to every machine at the same time. You are covered from day one rather than from the end of a project.

Your staff get our support details on day one as well: an email address, a phone number, and a Saturday Cloud icon by the clock on their taskbar. Clicking it gives them a help request form and our contact details, so raising a ticket is two clicks from wherever they are working.

What do you need to give us?

Less than most people expect:

• A named contact at your end, who we keep in touch with throughout.
• A staff list.
• Any admin details you hold, for Microsoft 365, the domain, the router and anything else with a login.
• Anything we should know about the people. Who only works Wednesdays, who only has a laptop, who is hard of hearing and would rather be emailed than rung, who uses a screen reader. It is the detail that makes support feel like it was set up for your team rather than for an average one.

What happens to the old provider?

We send them a handover document listing everything we need from them: admin access, passwords, licence details, anything they hold on your behalf. You give notice under your contract, and from there we do the chasing, so you are not stuck in the middle. What to get from your old provider lists everything that should be on it.

If there was no provider and somebody in the business has been doing it, often the managing director, they get the same document. It is a useful exercise either way, because it is usually the first time anybody has written down what the business depends on.

It is also the moment to confirm that your Microsoft 365 tenant and your domain are registered to you. We take admin access to do the job, and you keep your own. Who owns your Microsoft 365 tenant explains why that matters.

What is in place by day 30?

By the end of the first month:

• Our remote management tool is on every machine and we are patching them.
• Bitdefender is on every machine and being watched around the clock.
• We have admin access to your Microsoft 365 tenant.
• Every mailbox is being backed up, along with OneDrive and SharePoint.
• The rest of the security tools for your level are rolled out. On our Secure level that includes email security, DNS and browser protection, DMARC on your domain, vulnerability scanning and a password manager.
• We are gathering the data and usage logs that tell us how your business actually works, so the advice we give later is based on what we have seen rather than on assumptions.

What sits in each level is on the pricing page.

What will your staff notice?

Very little, and that is deliberate. Most of the first month happens in the background. The changes people do see:

• Multi factor authentication. This is the big one. We switch it on for every account, and before we do, everybody gets several warnings that it is coming and what they will need to do. It is not optional, because a password on its own no longer protects an email account.
• Unlicensed or risky software disappears. Cracked software is removed, every time, and every client knows that before they sign.
• People who were admins on their own laptop no longer are. Day to day work does not need it, and an account that can install anything is an account that can be tricked into installing anything.
• Support is faster. That is usually why a business moves in the first place.

What do we usually find?

Something, nearly always. Taking over an IT environment means finding what was left behind, and the first scan tends to turn it up.

One recent example: we audited a new client’s 37 machines and flagged 14 of them. Thirteen were still on Windows 10, which stopped receiving security updates on 14 October 2025, and could not move to Windows 11 because the hardware did not meet the requirements. Those were simply replaced, and the client understood why.

The fourteenth was the problem. It was on Windows 11 and looked up to date, but it was months behind on updates. Somebody had forced Windows 11 onto hardware that did not meet the requirements, bypassing the checks, and Microsoft’s own support guidance says machines like that are no longer guaranteed to receive updates. It looked current and it was not being patched at all.

Sometimes it is more serious. On the cyber security page is the scheduled task we found on a new client’s domain controller, running every ten minutes for six years. Their previous provider had antivirus installed and scanning daily. Nobody was reading what it found.

Sorting out what was left behind is part of taking you on, not a separate invoice.

How do you know it is working?

You tell us, and we ask. We stay in regular touch with your named contact throughout, to check whether anything in how we work needs adjusting for your business. On top of that there is a full sit down meeting at 30, 60 and 90 days: what we found, what we have fixed, what is still to do, and whether the support feels the way it should.

By day 90 you should be fully onboarded. Every machine is monitored and patched, security is in place for your level, the backups are running, and your team knows exactly how to get help. From there it is the monthly fee and the day to day.

What does onboarding cost?

There is a one off onboarding fee, tiered by the size of the business, because taking on five people is a very different job from taking on twenty five. It covers the audit, the clean up of whatever was left behind and getting every machine onto our monitoring. Sign for 36 months instead of 12 and we halve it. You get the figure before you commit, alongside the monthly fee, which is published.

What to do next

If you are thinking about moving, managed IT support sets out what we cover day to day, and tell us how many people you have to get the onboarding figure and the monthly cost for your business. If you are not sure you can leave your current provider cleanly, how to change IT support provider without breaking everything covers the notice period, the tenant, the domain and what to get in writing before you go.