A London-based IT support firm has launched a campaign to help SMEs rein in their IT spend by up to 30%.
Founded in 2008, Totality Services has grown rapidly to almost 50 team members and 150 clients, with a focus on the legal, accountancy, architectural and professional services sectors.
It holds coveted Platinum status with customer review platform Feefo.
Launched last week, Totality’s ‘Mission 30’ campaign offers prospective clients a free audit designed to identify potential IT cost savings.
These could be in areas such as cloud overspend or IT sprawl, as well as the efficiencies that can come from moving to an outsourced IT provider.
‘Clients were telling us our quotes were substantially different’
Talking to IT Channel Oxygen, co-founder Luis Navarro said the idea was sparked by his desire to raise awareness that Totality can save SMEs money on their IT, even in comparison with other IT support providers.
“Prospective clients, who were comparing our quotes with what they were currently paying, were telling ours were substantially different,” he said.
“We also get that feedback when we’re tendering – we normally come out the best value, even for things that are very basic, like licenses or workstation support.
“We were hearing it more and more. So we thought ‘let’s get the message out that we can really help SMEs lower their costs, and give them better value and a better service’.”
Recent studies* indicate that around 30% of cloud spend is wasted.
But this isn’t the only bad habit SMEs can fall into, according to Totality’s Director of Strategic Partnerships, John Saville.
“A lot of companies implement technology that doesn’t evolve over time and that has been bolted together. You can get a lot of cost creep, and a lot of applications that cross over in functionality.,” Saville explained.
Totality’s audit typically takes between 30 minutes and an hour.
“We do a technical discovery piece, and then listen to the client and where their pain points are, before coming back with a proposal on how to move that in the right direction,” Saville said.
“Generally there are good savings for them in that journey.”
‘We’ve been growing exponentially’
Although Navarro founded Totality in 2008 with one of his best friends from school, Pedro Martins, it remained an evening and weekend pursuit for the first eight years.
“He’s very much a techie and I’m more from a sales and marketing background,” Navarro explained.
“We knew that a lot of MSPs at that time were run solely with an IT person at the helm, and thought we could make a real difference.”
Having amassed around 25-30 clients, the duo packed in their full-time jobs and got their first office in 2016.
“Since then we’ve just been growing exponentially every year,” Navarro said.
Today, Totality has around 40 full-time staff and a handful of contractors. It recently opened a South African office that will provide extra helpdesk resource.
“Our goal was never to make money; it was always to provide an excellent service – and that runs across everything we do as a business,” Navarro said.
Totality has a Feefo service rating of 4.9 out of 5.0 – the highest score in London’s IT support sector.
“There are lots of stats and metrics we use internally to make sure the quality of work is great and customers are extremely happy,” Navarro said.
“We’ve invested heavily in a customer success team, which now has four team members. We speak to our clients weekly or monthly, minimum.”
Support savings
Backing off work to an outsourced IT provider can slash costs by as much as two-thirds, Saville claimed.
“If you want to hire an in-house team for a 1,000-person company, vs an outsourced shared platform, you’re going to be doubling or tripling your costs,” he said.
SMEs who keep IT decision-making inhouse also lose exposure to new technology, Saville added.
“They don’t get challenged cross-sector like we do, so can end up with slight tunnel vision,” he said.
“Having an external partner that has exposure to numerous verticals and technologies all the time is beneficial to those businesses.
“What we offer is a shared platform. We hold extremely high standards to make sure people get great support. We are very open. We ask people to review us every time we solve an issue.”
Navarro said: “Of course, in addition to our helpdesk, clients have access to IT & Technical Directors with decades of experience alongside a team of project engineers to keep their businesses at the cutting edge of productivity and security.”
Saville concluded: “We wear our services on our sleeve. And people can save an awful lot of money.”
This article was produced in association with xpandly and is classified as partner content. What is partner content? See more here.
Doug Woodburn is editor of IT Channel Oxygen
