+44 (0)1482 770583
hello@systechitsolutions.co.uk
In short: Buy a block of days up front and call them off in half-day units as you need them, for support, project work or development. Five days is the minimum pack and the rate improves as the pack gets larger. No monthly fee, no minimum usage, and one approval instead of a purchase order for every small job.
- You have your own IT team and need specialist help a handful of times a year
- Small pieces of work keep getting deferred because each one needs its own quote and purchase order
- You want a budget line for the year rather than a series of unplanned invoices
- You have something we built and want changes made without commissioning a project each time
- You are not ready for a managed contract and want a lower-commitment way to start
The real cost of ad hoc work is rarely the day rate. It is that every small piece of work needs a quote, an approval and a purchase order, so the things that would take half a day never get done. They accumulate instead, quietly, until one of them becomes an incident.
How it works
You buy a block of days up front. When you need us, you call off against the balance in half-day units, and we tell you what is left. There is no monthly fee, no minimum usage in a given month, and nothing to cancel when you do not need anything.
Half a day is the smallest unit, so a job that takes an hour and a job that takes four both draw the same. That is worth knowing because it changes how to use a pack well: batching a few small things into one session gets considerably more out of it than calling off separately for each. We will tell you when something is not worth a call-off on its own.
The packs
Five days is the minimum, and the rate improves as the pack gets larger. The discount is against the standard day rate for the work involved:
| Pack | Discount | Suits |
|---|---|---|
| 5 days | Minimum pack, standard rate | A handful of small jobs a year, or a lower-commitment way to start with us |
| 10 days | 5% off the day rate | The usual starting point where there is a steady trickle of work |
| 15 days | 10% off the day rate | A year with a project in it as well as the everyday things |
| 20 days | 15% off the day rate | Standing capacity, or a group drawing on one agreed balance |
Days run for twelve months from purchase, and we extend that on request. The twelve months is there to give the arrangement a shape, not to keep money for work we did not do, so if a quiet year leaves you with days in hand, ask and we will move it.
What the days can be used for
Anything we do, which is the point of buying them this way. You are not deciding at purchase what the work will be, because most people genuinely do not know a year ahead:
- Ad hoc support and second-line escalation when your own team is stuck
- Consultancy: an opinion, a design review, or a decision somebody needs to be right
- Project work, migrations and rollouts scoped small enough to run inside a pack
- Development: new features, reporting changes and fixes to something we built
- Security, endpoint and Microsoft 365 work that sits outside a support contract
- Covering a vacancy, a period of leave or a peak nobody planned for
That covers both sides of what we do, so the same pack can pay for a piece of endpoint work in March and a new reporting feature in September, without either being a separate procurement exercise.
Why a pack rather than quoting each job
The discount is the smaller half of the argument, and you can work it out in your head. The part worth more is that a pack removes the friction that currently stops small work happening.
In most businesses, a half-day task needs a quote, an approval and a purchase order, and the overhead of arranging that costs more than the task. So it does not get done. It goes on a list with the others, and the list is not a list of jobs so much as a list of things that will eventually go wrong at a worse moment. A pack turns that into a phone call against a balance somebody has already approved.
The second reason is budgeting. One agreed figure at the start of a year is far easier to defend than a series of unplanned invoices, and it means the answer to “can we afford to get someone to look at this” is already yes.
When a pack is the wrong purchase
Worth saying plainly, because a pack you cannot use is worse than no pack:
- You need something monitored continuously. Nothing is watched between call-offs, so that is a managed contract
- You have one large, well-defined project. A pack sized to match it is a project with extra administration, and it should just be quoted
- You would struggle to use five days in a year. Have the work quoted as it comes up instead
- You need a guaranteed response time. A pack buys days, not a service level, and the two are priced differently
If any of those describe you, say so when you enquire and we will point you at the right thing instead. A managed contract is priced differently and covers a genuinely different need, and a single defined project is better quoted as one.
What it costs
Packs are quoted rather than listed, because the day rate depends on the work. Tell us the kind of thing you expect to use the days for and we will quote the pack against it, with the discount for the size you pick applied to that rate.
We publish a real per-user rate for managed IT under 50 users on the pricing page, so it is worth saying why there is no equivalent figure here rather than leaving it as an omission. A single day rate would have to assume a skill level, and a first-line support day, a security consultancy day and a development day are not the same cost. Quoting one number would flatter one buyer by misleading another.
Frequently asked
Do the days expire?
They run for twelve months from purchase, and we will extend that on request. The twelve months exists so the arrangement has a shape rather than sitting open indefinitely, not so we can keep money for work we did not do. If you get to the end of a year with days left because the year was quieter than expected, ask and we will extend it. If you would rather we were blunt about the exception: we are not going to extend a pack indefinitely for someone who bought twenty days and used two, because at that point the pack was the wrong purchase and we should talk about that instead.
What is the smallest amount of time I can use?
Half a day. That is the call-off unit, so a piece of work that takes an hour draws half a day and a piece that takes five hours draws the same. It is worth knowing because it changes how you use the pack sensibly: batching two or three small things into one session gets far more out of it than calling off separately for each. We will tell you when something is not worth a call-off on its own.
Can the days be used for project work as well as support?
Yes, and that is deliberate. The same pack covers reactive support, professional services and development: a piece of consultancy, a migration, a new feature on something we built, a chunk of endpoint or security work. It means you are not deciding at purchase what the days will be for, which is useful because most people genuinely do not know a year ahead. The only thing worth flagging is that a large single project is usually better quoted as a project, since a pack sized to match one piece of work is a project with extra administration.
How is this different from a managed contract?
A managed contract is continuous: we run the estate, monitor it, and the cost is predictable per user per month. A call-off pack is discontinuous by design. Nothing is monitored, nothing is owned by us between calls, and you decide each time whether something is worth spending a day on. If your estate needs somebody watching it, a pack is the wrong instrument and we will say so rather than sell you one. Plenty of clients have both: a managed contract for the estate and a pack for the project work that sits outside it.
What if we run out of days mid-piece of work?
We tell you before you get there rather than at the end. You will get a running balance, and if a piece of work is going to take more than the pack has left we say so before starting it, so the decision to top up is made in advance and with the numbers in front of you. Work does not silently continue into an overdraft.
Do we have to be an existing client?
No. A pack is a reasonable way to start with us, and it is a lower-commitment first step than a managed contract, which is one of the reasons we offer it. It also works the other way round: if you already have an internal IT team and no intention of outsourcing, a pack gives you specialist capacity for the handful of things a year that need it, without changing who runs your estate.
Can somebody else in the group use the days?
Usually yes, and it is worth raising at the point of purchase rather than assuming. Where a group has several entities and one budget holder, a single pack drawn on by more than one company is normally fine and we set out who can call off against it in the quote. It matters mainly for the reporting, so the balance goes to the person accountable for it rather than to whoever happened to phone.
What has been sitting on the list?
Tell us the kind of work you keep deferring and roughly how often it comes up. That is enough for us to suggest a pack size and quote it, and to tell you if the honest answer is that you do not need one.
What has been sitting on the list?
Tell us the kind of work you keep deferring and roughly how often it comes up. That is enough for us to suggest a pack size and quote it.