What co-managed IT means
Most businesses with fewer than fifty staff have no IT person at all, and an outside provider runs everything. Most businesses with several hundred staff have an IT department that runs everything. Co-managed IT is for the organisations in between: there is an IT manager, or a small team, and they are good at the work, but there is more of it than they can do.
The outside team takes a defined slice of that work. The usual slice is the helpdesk, because it is the part that interrupts everything else. Your IT manager keeps the strategy, the systems that are particular to your organisation, and the relationships with the business. Both sides work in the same ticket queue, and the reports go to your IT manager rather than to us.
Who it suits
Co-managed IT tends to suit an organisation when a few of these are true:
- There are around 100 or more staff, so the volume of password resets, new starters and "my screen is doing something odd" is real.
- The IT manager's project list has not moved in months because the queue eats the day.
- One person is the only one who knows how a system works, and the organisation holds its breath when they take leave.
- Staff in more than one office or state need support at hours the internal team cannot cover alone.
- A merger, a move or a platform change is coming, and the current team cannot run the business and the project at once.
It suits less well when the internal team is really one person who wants to stop doing IT altogether. That is a fully managed arrangement, which is a different conversation, and we have a page on that too.
How the split usually works
There is no fixed template, but the split in most co-managed arrangements lands somewhere like this.
The helpdesk. The outside team answers the phone and the tickets for day-to-day problems: logins, email, printing, a laptop that will not start. Your staff ring one number and do not need to know who is on the other end.
Monitoring and updates. Every device and server is checked and patched on a schedule. This is unglamorous work that an internal team rarely has time to do well, and it is where most outages start.
Projects. These usually stay with your IT manager, with the outside team doing the hands-on parts on request. A migration can be scoped and paid for as its own piece of work rather than quietly absorbed into the monthly arrangement.
Security. Multi-factor authentication, email protection and device protection are normally run by whoever runs the helpdesk, because the two are tangled. Policy decisions stay with your organisation.
Vendors. Chasing the software vendor or the internet provider is a job in itself. It is usually handed to the outside team, with your IT manager copied in.
On site. A technician in your office on set days, for the things that need hands. We run these days as part of the one helpdesk service, not as a separate contract, and the technician works the same queue as the remote team.
What stays yours
The reason co-managed IT works is that some things do not move. Your IT manager keeps ownership of the administrator accounts, the licensing decisions, the budget, and the relationship with the executive. The outside team reports to them, not around them. A provider who wants to take all of that over is selling a fully managed service with a friendlier name.
We supply a remote helpdesk alongside internal IT teams today, including for a national accreditation body, and the arrangement only works because the lines are written down and both sides keep to them.
Questions to ask before you sign
- Who owns the administrator accounts, and what happens to them if we part ways?
- Which queue do tickets live in, and can our IT manager see every ticket, including the ones you close?
- What is counted in the monthly amount, and what is quoted separately? Ask for the list in writing. Ours is on the pricing page.
- What happens when our IT manager is on leave: does the provider step up, and is that in the agreement?
- How are on-site days scheduled, and is the person who turns up the same person each time?
- What does the provider report each month, and to whom?
- How long is the term, and what does leaving look like? A long contract is how a provider stops having to be good.
- Who talks to our software vendors, and who is allowed to make changes on our behalf?
Where to start
Start with the queue. Count the tickets for a month and sort them into the ones only your IT manager could have handled and the ones anyone competent could have. The second pile is the size of the co-managed arrangement, and it is usually bigger than the IT manager expects.
If you would like a second opinion on that count, we are happy to look at it with you. How our outsourced helpdesk works explains the service in detail, and the call is free.