Managed IT or break-fix? The numbers for a 20-workstation SME

The reactive model looks cheaper because the largest share never arrives on an invoice: it is the hours the team spends at a standstill waiting for a fix. In the example below, for a company with 20 workstations, that model costs around €11,800 a year in lost time and ad hoc call-outs.

An analogy helps. Reacting is going to the mechanic only when the car breaks down on the motorway. Managing is having it serviced, changing the tyres before they are bald and having a dashboard that warns you when something starts to fail. Both get the car fixed; only one keeps you off the hard shoulder.

These numbers are an example, not a statistic. Swap the assumptions for your company's own.

• Team 20 workstations.
• Cost per person €25 per hour, all-inclusive.
• Minor incidents One per workstation per month (printer, password, slowness, email), with 1 hour lost including waiting time.
• Major outage One a year (server, internet or network), with all 20 people idle for 8 hours.
• Ad hoc technician 30 hours a year at €60 per hour, excluding travel.

This leaves out costs that are hard to measure: data lost without a valid backup, delayed invoices, clients kept waiting, overtime to recover work.

• Security updates Applied in a controlled way, out of hours whenever possible.
• Daily backups with restore tests A backup that has never been tested is a hope, not a guarantee; discover our backup solutions.
• Monitoring with alerts Disks, servers, firewalls, network and internet connections, with alerts going to the technical team rather than the user.
• Review of accounts and permissions Who has left, who has too much access.
• Inventory with warranties and end of support Planned rather than forced renewal; timeframes in when to replace a computer.
• Report to management What was done, what is at risk and what is coming up.

The difference between monitoring and reacting is explored in proactive monitoring vs reactive support.

• Cheap peripherals Mouse, keyboard, secondary monitor, with a spare to hand.
• Equipment with no data and no impact A backup printer, for example.
• Parts That are quicker to swap than to diagnose.

The mistake is applying the same logic to the server, the firewall, the internet or email, where every hour of downtime is multiplied by the number of people unable to work.

1. Inventory — what exists, who it belongs to and what condition it is in.
2. Backups — an off-site copy and a tested restore.
3. Monitoring — alerts on critical equipment, tuned so they do not create noise.
4. Maintenance windows — when updates and restarts happen, with no surprises.
5. Renewal plan — replacements for the next two to three years already budgeted.

At DataRoad - IT Services and Consulting these steps are part of the onboarding for every IT Unlimited contract. The Essential plan, from €395/month + VAT, includes remote and telephone support, without on-site visits. Premium, from €750/month + VAT, includes unlimited on-site support. On every plan, monitoring with alerts and security are included.

In 2018, Boost Portugal — a tourist entertainment and alternative mobility company that started out with the GoCar brand in Lisbon — signed an annual contract with DataRoad for monthly support and continuous monitoring of all its information systems.

The contract covers ongoing user support, backups, maintenance of the IP phone system, internet redundancy with failover, remote monitoring, alerting and availability reports. If one connection drops, the other takes over automatically; management receives reports. Discover the Boost Portugal case.

We analyse your IT estate and deliver a prioritised plan: what to monitor, the state of your backups and the renewals to plan for. No-obligation proposal. More than 10 workstations · support contract · remote, on-site and telephone support.