Managed IT · Common problems
The issues that keep coming up at 10 to 100 person companies, what each looks like in the office, and the fix, with a name next to it.
Put a name on every fix
Test-restore backups every quarter
The company should own the domain
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The IT problems that keep coming up at companies of 10 to 100 people are remarkably consistent: shared passwords, nobody knows who controls the domain name, backups that have never been tested, laptops past their useful life, subscriptions nobody can explain, admin access that never gets removed, and an office network that one person set up years ago. Each has a straightforward technical fix. The reason they persist is that nobody owns them.
My view is that most small-business IT problems are ownership problems, not technology problems. The technology to fix them is cheap and well understood. What is missing is a name next to each one and a date by which it gets checked.
Shared logins start as a convenience: one login for the shared mailbox, the supplier portal, the social media account. Then someone leaves and nobody changes it, because changing it would mean telling everyone the new one. So former staff keep access, sometimes for years. Fix it with a business password manager that lets you share a login with the right people and take it back when they leave, and individual logins wherever the service allows. The office manager owns the list of shared accounts. See our guide to password managers for business.
This one is a pretty big deal and is invisible until it isn’t. The domain name runs your email and your website, and it is often registered in the name of a founder, a former employee, or the web designer from 2014. When it comes up for renewal and the card on file has expired, email stops. Find out who the registrant is, move it into an account the company controls with MFA, turn on auto-renew, and record it. ICANN’s registrant guidance puts sole responsibility for the registration on the registrant, and requires accurate contact details and, with auto-renew, current payment information, so you want the registrant to be the business itself, with someone senior as the contact. Our article who owns my website? covers the website side of this.
If I had to name the mistake I see most often, it is confusing a cloud subscription with a backup. Having your files in Dropbox, Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace does not automatically give the business the recovery controls it assumes it has. Sync can carry a deletion or ransomware damage straight across, retention may be limited, and recovering an entire organization is a very different job from restoring one file. Even businesses with a proper backup have rarely restored from it, and the backup that has never been restored is the one that fails: it stopped running months ago, or it covered the wrong folders, or nobody knows the password to the backup console.
So I want every client to be able to answer three questions. What data is protected? How long are independent copies, ones you can actually recover from, kept? Has anyone tested a restore? Fix the last one with a scheduled test restore (quarterly is a reasonable start) and a written note of what was restored and how long it took. Whoever runs IT owns the test, and the owner should read the note. For a small business, I would take a documented, tested recovery plan and clear ownership of the admin accounts over a stack of expensive security products nobody operates. To my mind, good IT is measured by whether the business can keep working, and recover, when something fails. Counting the tools installed tells you very little.
Old computers are slow, which is annoying, but the bigger problem is security. Windows 10 reached end of support on October 14, 2025, so machines that cannot run Windows 11 no longer get regular security updates unless you pay for extended updates. Keep an inventory with purchase dates, replace on a cycle (four to five years is common for business laptops), and budget for it every year rather than all at once. See computer replacement cycles.
Look at a year of card statements and you will usually find software nobody remembers buying, licenses for people who left, and two tools doing the same job. The fix is dull: a list of every subscription, what it is for, who uses it, the renewal date and the cost, reviewed twice a year. The finance person owns it, with IT checking which licenses are actually used.
Over the years, the old IT company, a contractor, and two former office managers all end up with administrator rights in Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. Microsoft’s own guidance is to have as few Global Administrators as possible and to give people the least powerful role that does the job. Review admin accounts quarterly, and remove access on the day someone leaves. Our offboarding checklist covers the leaver side.
Someone set up the firewall, the Wi-Fi and the printer years ago. They may still be around, or they may not. Either way, there is no diagram and the firewall password is in their head. Get the network documented: a simple diagram, the admin logins stored in the password manager, firmware updates on a schedule. Whoever runs IT owns it.
When the one person who “knows computers” is on holiday, everything waits. Staff stop reporting small problems because they don’t want to bother anyone, and the small problems turn into the Monday morning that nothing prints. A clear way to ask for help, whether that is an internal person, an outside provider, or both, with a promise about how fast someone replies, fixes more than any piece of software.
Make a one-page table with a row for each of the problems above. For each row write who owns it, when it was last checked, and what “fixed” looks like. If you can’t fill in a name, that is your answer for where to start. Then put a recurring calendar reminder for the quarterly checks (backup test, admin review, subscription review) in the owner’s calendar, not IT’s general inbox.
A 30-person company can do this in an afternoon. The fixes themselves take longer, but they get done once someone’s name is on them.
If you would rather have someone collect this for you, our free Technology Health Assessment covers IT operations, cybersecurity, applications, spending and business continuity in 30 minutes of data collection, with a plain-language report the next day and a short list of next steps in order. It is yours to keep, no obligation. Book your free assessment.
None of these problems needs an outside provider. But if the honest answer to “who owns this?” is “nobody has time”, that is the case for one. Our managed IT service takes ownership of the technical rows (backups and tested restores, updates, admin reviews, the network, the help desk) for businesses of roughly 25 to 100 people, and works alongside an internal IT person if you have one. The domain and the subscriptions list still need a name inside your company. Some things you shouldn’t outsource.
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The mistake I see most often is treating a Dropbox, Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace subscription as a backup. Shared passwords that never change when people leave come up all the time too. Both are cheap to fix once someone owns them.
Look up the domain with your registrar or a registration data lookup, then check which account it sits in. If it is under a former employee or an old vendor, move it into a company-controlled account with MFA and auto-renew.
Four to five years is a common cycle for business laptops, sooner if a machine cannot run a supported operating system. Budget for a share every year.
Not necessarily. You need an owner for each problem. If nobody inside has the time, a managed IT provider can own the technical ones.
