The Challenge
A professional services firm of around 20 staff had grown without ever hiring in-house IT. When something broke, an outside contractor was called to fix that one thing — and nothing else. It’s the most common IT setup among small firms, and it fails the same way everywhere:
- Devices went unpatched between call-outs, causing regular downtime and leaving known vulnerabilities open.
- Wi-Fi coverage was patchy and unreliable across the office, with no one accountable for fixing it properly.
- Security updates were applied inconsistently, if at all.
- Nobody was monitoring anything — every problem was discovered by the person it interrupted.
- Dozens of small inefficiencies quietly accumulated into a real drag on the business.
The firm didn’t have a budget for an IT hire, and at 20 staff it didn’t need one. What it needed was someone accountable for the whole environment, not just the most recent breakage.
The Solution
PTS started with a comprehensive audit — unpatched systems, licence status, security posture and a Wi-Fi survey — so the engagement began from evidence rather than assumption. From there we moved the firm onto a structured managed IT service:
- Proactive maintenance — scheduled patching, licence tracking and security updates, so the gaps that caused most of the downtime simply stopped opening.
- Remote monitoring and helpdesk — monitoring tools across every device, with alerts triaged by the PTS helpdesk before users ever noticed a problem.
- Wi-Fi redesign — a survey-led rebuild of the wireless network, replacing the patchy coverage with properly designed Wi-Fi that has stayed reliable since.
- On-site support — engineers face-to-face for hardware work and the issues that can’t be fixed remotely.
- Right-sized scope — a service designed and priced for a 20-person firm, not a cut-down enterprise contract.
The Outcome
Downtime fell significantly and staff productivity rose with it. Wi-Fi became something the firm stopped thinking about. Patching and security updates now happen on schedule rather than after an incident, and the firm has a long-term IT roadmap for the first time — replacing the reactive fix-and-forget cycle with a strategic partnership.
The headline lesson: regular management and outsourced support eliminated the need for a costly in-house hire while delivering more reliability than the firm had ever had.
Why it worked
Ad hoc IT fails because nobody owns the environment between incidents. Putting one accountable team across patching, monitoring, helpdesk and the network meant problems were prevented rather than repeatedly paid for — at a monthly cost a 20-person firm can plan around.
This engagement was delivered by the PTS group; the same service model, tooling and standards back PTS Managed Services in Singapore.
Related services: managed IT services, IT support and business Wi-Fi. Related reading: why your business has Wi-Fi performance issues.