Thinking of changing IT provider?
Changing IT company should not mean disruption. CT1 is a Canterbury managed IT provider, and we handle the technical handover from your current one: the credentials, the licensing, the documentation and the chasing. Your team keeps working while we take responsibility for the environment.
- Canterbury based
- 80+ Kent businesses supported
- Cyber Essentials Plus certified
“Changing IT provider sounds painful.”
It is the reason most businesses stay somewhere they are not happy, often for years. So it is worth being specific about what is actually involved, including the parts we cannot make painless.
“We will be left without support in the middle of the change.”
You are not handed over on a date and hoped for. We agree a cutover date in advance, and we do not take support off your current provider until our monitoring, patching and security tooling is on your devices and we can see the environment properly. If something breaks the day before go-live, you still have somewhere to ring.
“Our current provider will make it difficult.”
Some outgoing providers are helpful and hand over cleanly. Some are slow, and a few do not engage at all. We plan for the unhelpful version from the start, because the things that matter are almost always recoverable from what you already own: your Microsoft 365 tenant, your domain registration, your hardware and your accounts. Where a credential genuinely cannot be recovered, we tell you early and rebuild it rather than discovering it at go-live.
“We will lose email, files or company history.”
In most cases nothing moves at all. If your email and files are in Microsoft 365, that tenant belongs to your business, not to your IT provider. We take over administration of it. Your mailboxes, your SharePoint sites, your Teams history and your OneDrive files stay exactly where they are, and there is no migration for your staff to notice.
“It will drag on for months.”
A handover for a typical small or medium business is a matter of weeks rather than months, and the length is driven by how much documentation exists and how quickly the outgoing provider responds. We give you a date for go-live before we start, and if discovery turns up something that moves it, you hear that from us straight away.
“Our staff will be disrupted while it happens.”
Most of the work is administrative and happens away from your team: tenant permissions, backup configuration, documentation, supplier records. Where something has to touch a device or a server, it is scheduled with you, usually outside working hours. We will not promise you a change with no interruption at all, because anything involving a reboot or a firewall swap can have one. We will tell you in advance where those points are.
“We do not really know what we have got.”
Very few businesses do by the time they are unhappy with their provider, and it is not a reason to put the conversation off. Finding out what you have is the first stage of the process, and you keep those findings whether or not you go on to use us.
The short version: the risk in changing provider is real, and it is ours to manage rather than yours to absorb. That is what the handover process below is for.
SEE HOW THE HANDOVER WORKSWhy businesses change IT provider
Almost nobody moves because of one dramatic failure. It is usually an accumulation of small things that stopped being acceptable. These are the reasons we hear most often.
Tickets take days, not hours.
You log something and then wait. Nobody tells you where it sits, who has it, or when it will be done.
You have to chase for everything.
Following up on your own support requests has quietly become somebody's job, usually somebody senior.
Nobody takes ownership.
Every problem belongs to someone else: the software vendor, the broadband, the printer, the engineer who was here last time.
Everything seems to cost extra.
The monthly fee covers less than you thought it did, and the invoice for the rest turns up after the work rather than before it.
Security only gets looked at after something happens.
There is no patching schedule you have seen, no test of the backups, and nothing to send a client who asks how you protect their data.
We have outgrown them.
What worked at eight people does not work at forty, across two sites, with clients auditing you and staff working from home.
Nobody ever suggests anything.
You get fixes, never advice. No one has told you what to plan for, what to replace, or what next year should cost.
Our IT person is leaving.
One person holds the passwords, the history and the reasons things are set up the way they are, and they are retiring or moving on.
We pay for Microsoft 365 and barely use it.
Licences nobody has configured, security features switched off, and tools you are paying for that no one has ever shown your team.
Nothing is written down.
No list of what you own, no network diagram, no record of what was changed or why. The knowledge lives in somebody's head.
If more than one of those is familiar, the problem is not that you picked badly. It is that the arrangement has stopped matching the business you are now. See what managed IT support should cover.
The CT1 Managed IT Handover
Six stages, in order. You can stop after the first one and owe us nothing.
- 01
Confidential discovery
We work out what you actually have, and whether changing provider is even the right answer for you.
- Walk through your setup with you: users, devices, servers, network, connectivity, backups, licences and suppliers.
- Identify what is missing, out of support, unprotected or costing you money for nothing.
- Tell you plainly whether we would change anything at all, including when the honest answer is that your current arrangement is fine.
What you do
Give us an hour or so and answer some questions. You do not need to notify your current provider, and you do not need documentation ready. If you have none, that is one of the findings.
- 02
Transition planning
Before anything is touched, you get the plan in writing: what happens, in what order, on which dates.
- Agree a go-live date and work backwards from it.
- Separate what must be fixed before go-live from what can wait for the roadmap, so the handover does not turn into a project.
- Write down what we need from the outgoing provider, and what we will rebuild ourselves if it does not arrive.
- Agree how and when your current provider is told, and who tells them.
What you do
Approve the plan and the date. Check your existing agreement for its notice period and end date so the dates line up.
- 03
Managed handover
We deal with your outgoing provider so that your team does not have to.
- Request and chase the handover directly: administrator credentials, licensing and tenant details, domain and DNS access, network and firewall configuration, backup and security consoles, supplier and contract records.
- Track what has arrived and what has not, and keep you updated on both.
- Rebuild what does not come. A credential that cannot be recovered gets reset properly, documented and handed to you.
What you do
Very little. You may need to confirm to your provider in writing that we are authorised to receive the handover, which we will draft for you.
- 04
Access, backup and security verification
Nothing is assumed to work because someone said it does. The critical items are proven.
- Confirm we hold genuine administrative access to every system you depend on, rather than access we have been told exists.
- Check that backups exist, cover what you think they cover, and can actually be restored.
- Deploy monitoring, patching and endpoint protection across your devices, and enforce multi-factor authentication where it is missing.
- Confirm your domain and DNS are in an account in your business's name.
What you do
Nothing, other than let us know if a member of staff sees a prompt they were not expecting. We tell you in advance which prompts are ours.
- 05
CT1 support goes live
From an agreed date, your team stops ringing them and starts ringing us.
- Take on support from the agreed date and time, with the same contractual response times every CT1 client gets: 15 minutes for critical issues, 30 minutes for high priority.
- Give your team one number, one email address and a portal, plus an introduction to the engineers who will be looking after them.
- Watch the first days closely, because that is when anything the outgoing provider left undocumented tends to surface.
What you do
Tell your staff the date and the new number. We provide something you can send them.
- 06
Improvement roadmap
The handover ends with a plan for the things that were never going to be fixed in week one.
- Walk you through what we found, what we fixed during the handover, and what is still outstanding.
- Rank the rest by risk and cost so you can decide what to do and when, rather than being sold everything at once.
- Set the review rhythm: what we will come back to you about, and how often.
What you do
Read it, challenge it and decide what you want to spend. Nothing on the roadmap happens without your say-so.
Response times, cover hours and service credits are the same from your first day as they are for every other CT1 client. They are set out in full in our service level agreement, and what it costs is on the pricing page.
What we take over
A handover is not just support tickets changing hands. This is what moves into our care, and what gets documented properly in the process.
Microsoft 365 and identity
- Microsoft 365 tenant administration
- User accounts, mailboxes and shared mailboxes
- Licensing and subscription records
- Multi-factor authentication and conditional access
- SharePoint, OneDrive and Teams
Devices and servers
- Laptops, desktops and mobiles
- On-premise and cloud servers
- Mobile device management and enrolment
- Patching and update schedules
- Asset register and warranty status
Network and connectivity
- Firewalls and network configuration
- Wi-Fi and access points
- Switches, routers and VPNs
- Business broadband and leased lines
- VoIP and telephony
Security and continuity
- Endpoint protection and detection
- Backups, retention and tested restores
- Email filtering and phishing defence
- Security tooling and alerting
- BitLocker and recovery keys
Domains, suppliers and records
- Domain registration and DNS
- Administrator credentials, held properly
- Third-party and vendor relationships
- Software licences and renewal dates
- Documentation, diagrams and change history
Not sure what you have?
Most businesses are not, and it is not a problem. Working that out is the first stage, and the findings are yours either way.
Proof, not promises
We support more than 80 businesses across Kent, and we have been doing it from Canterbury for over fifteen years. We hold Cyber Essentials Plus and ISO 9001, 14001, 27001 and 45001 ourselves, which is a reasonable thing to expect of anyone proposing to audit yours.
Switching questions, answered
The questions we get asked before anyone commits to anything. Where the honest answer is “it depends”, that is what it says.
No. Discovery is confidential and there is no point at which we contact your provider without your say-so. Plenty of the conversations we have never go any further, either because the business decides to stay put or because the timing is wrong, and their provider never finds out they happened.
Does my current IT provider need to know I am talking to you?
No. Discovery is confidential and there is no point at which we contact your provider without your say-so. Plenty of the conversations we have never go any further, either because the business decides to stay put or because the timing is wrong, and their provider never finds out they happened.
When should I tell my current provider?
Once you have decided, and usually once you have a go-live date. Telling them earlier rarely improves the handover and occasionally makes it worse. We agree the timing with you as part of the transition plan, including who makes the call and what is said.
What if they will not cooperate?
It happens, and the plan assumes it might. Almost everything we need can be recovered from assets your business owns rather than from goodwill: your Microsoft 365 tenant, your domain registration, your hardware and your own accounts. Where something genuinely cannot be recovered, we reset and rebuild it, document it properly and hand it to you. That work is part of the handover, not an extra.
What happens to our Microsoft 365?
In most cases it stays exactly where it is and we take over administering it. Your mailboxes, files, Teams history and SharePoint sites do not move, so your staff see no change to their email or documents. What changes is who holds the administrator accounts, how security is configured, and whether anyone is actually monitoring it.
Who owns our Microsoft 365 tenant?
The tenant and the data in it belong to your business. Your provider may hold the administrator accounts, and they may sell you the licences under their own Microsoft agreement, but that is a billing and access arrangement rather than ownership of your data. If your licences are bought through your provider, moving them is a transfer between Microsoft partners: it changes who invoices you, and it does not move or delete anything. We check how yours are set up during discovery.
Who owns our domain?
It should be registered to your business, with your business as the legal registrant. Sometimes it is registered under an IT provider's own account instead, which is worth knowing about before a relationship ends rather than after. We check the registration at discovery and, if it is not in your name, getting it there is part of the handover.
Can you take over an existing Microsoft environment rather than rebuilding it?
Yes, and that is usually what we do. Rebuilding an environment that works is expensive and disruptive for no benefit. We take over what you have, fix what is unsafe or misconfigured, and put the rest on the roadmap.
Will our staff experience downtime?
Most of the handover happens away from your team and they will not notice it. We will not tell you there is no chance of interruption at all, because some steps, such as a firewall replacement or a server restart, can cause one. What we will do is tell you in advance which steps those are and schedule them with you, normally outside working hours.
What passwords and documentation will you need?
Administrator access to your Microsoft 365 tenant, your servers and devices, your firewall and network equipment, your backup system and your domain and DNS. Alongside that, an asset list, a network diagram, your backup and retention arrangements, and your supplier and licensing records. We give you the full list in writing at the planning stage, so you can see exactly what is being asked for and why.
What if the documentation is missing?
That is common and it is not a blocker. We rebuild it, which means auditing what is actually there rather than trusting a list, and you end up with documentation you have probably not had before. It is one of the reasons discovery comes first: a poorly documented environment takes longer to hand over, and we would rather find that out at the start than tell you about it halfway through.
What happens to our backups?
We check three things: that they exist, that they cover what you believe they cover, and that a restore actually works. It is common to find one of those is not true. Where the current backup is sound we take it over. Where it is not, replacing it is one of the items we would want done before go-live rather than left for the roadmap.
Can you work around an existing contract?
Usually, yes. Most agreements have a notice period and a renewal date, and the practical approach is to line the go-live date up with them so you are not paying two providers for longer than necessary. We are not lawyers and we will not interpret your agreement for you: check the notice period and termination terms, and take proper advice if anything is unclear. Tell us the dates and we will plan around them.
How long does switching normally take?
For a typical small or medium business it is usually a matter of weeks rather than months. The variables are how many users, sites and servers are involved, how well documented the environment is, and how quickly the outgoing provider responds. We give you a target go-live date at the planning stage, and if something we find changes it, you hear about it at the time rather than at the end.
What happens on the first day with CT1?
Your team gets one number, one email address and a portal, and an introduction to the engineers looking after them. Contractual response times apply from that moment: 15 minutes for critical issues and 30 minutes for high priority. We watch the first few days closely, because that is when anything the previous provider left undocumented tends to show itself.
Do you replace everything immediately?
No, and you should be wary of anyone who proposes to. A handover is about taking responsibility for what you have safely. Beyond that we fix what is genuinely unsafe before go-live, and everything else goes on a ranked roadmap for you to decide on.
Can we speak to you before making a final decision?
That is what the first conversation is for. It is exploratory and confidential, you get the findings whether or not you go ahead, and there is no obligation at any point. If we think you should stay where you are, we will say so.
Something not answered here? Ask us directly. We would rather talk you out of a move that is wrong for you than sell you one.
Not sure whether you should switch?
Talk to us before you decide. We will go through what you have, what the risks are, what a transition would actually involve and what we would change. It is confidential, there is no obligation, and if the answer is that you should stay where you are, we will tell you that.