For clients who’d rather hand the whole thing over.
Some clients take the out-brief, act on the parts they choose, and we speak twice a year. Others want one company to hold the entire technology function — the security work, the day-to-day, the vendors, the licensing, the decisions.
Associated Konsultants does that too, for clients we have already assessed.
No cost, no obligation. A short conversation, not a sales presentation.
Why the assessment comes first
This is the part that makes us different from every managed services provider you will talk to, so it is worth being direct about it.
I don’t take on ongoing management of a business I haven’t examined.
Not as a sales rule. As a practical one. An assessment is six to eight hours on site, a scored review against the 18 CIS Critical Security Controls, a walk through your facility, and a written report of what is actually exposed. When that is finished, we know your environment in a level of detail no onboarding questionnaire produces — and you know exactly what you are asking us to manage, and what it will take.
The alternative is the industry norm: a monthly contract signed on the strength of a discovery call, and both parties finding out what they agreed to over the following year.
And you are not committed to any of it. The assessment is a complete piece of work that stands on its own. The out-brief is yours; plenty of clients take it to the provider they already have. Managed services is a door that opens afterwards, not a destination the assessment was steering you toward.
What “the full suite” actually means
Not a package with a name and three tiers. The scope is written around what the business needs, and it varies considerably between clients. Across the retained clients we support, the work covers:
Security operations
The controls from your out-brief, kept working. Patching, endpoint protection, backup verification, multi-factor authentication, access reviews when people join and leave.
Microsoft 365 and Azure
Tenant administration, licensing, mailbox and identity management, and the security settings inside it that most organizations never turn on.
Infrastructure
Servers, network equipment, firewalls, cloud migration and the capacity planning that stops you finding out you are full on a Monday morning.
Day-to-day support
The “is this email real?” question, the machine that won’t start, the new laptop that needs to be specified, bought and set up correctly.
Vendor management
Dealing with the people we procure from so you don’t have to.
Red-flags screening
Before you enter a business relationship, a screening report on the prospective client or vendor — surfacing areas of concern that ought to be weighed first. Routine due diligence inside large organizations, and almost unheard of at your size, which is precisely why the exposure sits where it does.
Security awareness training
For your staff, because the controls in your report assume people behave a certain way, and that assumption has to be maintained.
Executive digital footprint work
Removal of personal exposure for owners, physicians, attorneys, judges and their families. What a broker site publishes about a named executive is frequently the starting point of an attack on the business.
Training and footprint work are part of the ongoing relationship. Neither is sold separately, and both are priced after the onsite visit.
It gets cheaper per hour the longer it runs
This is worth stating plainly, because it is the reverse of how the market prices.
Managed services are normally sold by the seat. Add people, add cost — and the provider’s revenue grows for reasons that have nothing to do with the amount of work involved.
Associated Konsultants bills for hours, at rates that step down as the volume rises. That is not a promotion. It reflects what actually happens: the first year in a new environment is the expensive one, because nothing is documented and nothing is standardized. In an environment we assessed, re-engineered and now know well, the same result takes fewer hours — so it costs less.
Every engagement has a not-to-exceed number of hours agreed in writing before work begins. Hourly in form, fixed price in effect.
You are never handed a bill you did not expect.
How we get paid
Associated Konsultants is paid for time and judgment. That’s all.
We make no money on hardware and none on software. Several of the products your environment needs aren’t sold to end users at all — only through resellers — so we procure them on your behalf, at the price you’d pay if you could buy them yourself. That procurement takes real administrative work, and we don’t bill you for it. It’s possible only because we hold the partner agreements and you don’t.
There’s one exception, and you should know about it. Microsoft 365 and Azure licensing: we buy through a distributor, and our clients pay less than Microsoft’s own direct price. We keep the difference. If you’d rather buy your licensing direct from Microsoft, that’s fine — you’re still a client, and nothing about the advice changes.
That is the entire list. One place where margin is made, disclosed on the page, at the one point in the relationship where you still pay less than the alternative.
And the recommendations are yours. Hire us to carry them out, or hand the report to someone else. The advice doesn’t depend on who does the work.
Who we buy from
These are the vendors Associated Konsultants buys from on behalf of clients. None of them pays us anything. We are their customer, not their salesman.
- 1Password
- Acronis
- Apple
- AWS
- BrainStorm
- Crexendo
- Cynet
- Dow Jones
- Dropbox
- ICDSoft
- LogMeIn Resolve
- Microsoft
- Optery
- Pax8
- Verizon
- Yubico
A reseller is paid by the vendor, which points the recommendation and the revenue in the same direction. Here it runs the other way — which is why the products in your out-brief are the ones that fit your business rather than the ones carrying this quarter’s incentive.
We hold a formal partner agreement with every vendor shown. That is also how we stay current with what these products actually do, rather than with what their marketing says they do.
Several of these don’t sell to end users at all. If you needed one of them, you would need a reseller — which is the procurement described above, and it isn’t billed to you.
Eight years, one client
“Our previous IT consultant was unable to support our company’s evolving needs and was not consistently available when issues arose. Our server had reached capacity and our security protections needed strengthening. Anthony transitioned our business to Microsoft 365, moved our archive folders to the cloud, expanded our server capacity, and implemented firewalls and two-factor authentication. We have worked with Anthony for the past eight years. He consistently goes above and beyond — computer selections, software updates, potentially fraudulent emails, and any other technology issue that arises. He is available when we need him.”
Claudia GersterPrincipal and Owner, Creative License International
Questions
- Is there a monthly contract?
- There’s a written agreement with agreed hours and an agreed cost, and it is reviewed as your needs change. What there isn’t is a per-seat subscription that grows because you hired someone.
- How many clients do you manage this way?
- A small number, deliberately. Associated Konsultants is one person plus specialists, and
the service described on this page is not one anybody delivers well at volume. We provide a
small number of clients with the kind of service that only works when the number stays
small.
If we don’t have the capacity to do it properly, I’ll tell you that on the first call rather than after you’ve signed something. - What if we already have an IT provider?
- Most people who call already do. An assessment is an independent read on whether what you’re paying for does what you need — and it frequently concludes that it does. Green Valley’s own provider carried out every recommendation in their out-brief, and we were paid for the assessment and nothing else.
- Do you cover our building, or just our systems?
- Both, and that is unusual. Physical security, visitor handling, hiring and termination practice and emergency procedure are part of the assessment, and stay part of the conversation afterwards. When the work calls for a specialist, we bring one in — on a recent assessment, a retired FBI agent, Matt Tank, with more than twenty years in physical security.
- Are you only in Tucson?
- No. Associated Konsultants is based in Tucson with clients across the country. Ongoing management is largely remote; the onsite work is scheduled.
Start with twenty minutes.
Not a proposal and not a presentation — a short conversation about what you have and what’s worrying you. If ongoing management turns out to be the right shape for your business, there’s time to get to that. If it isn’t, I’ll say so.
(520) 585-4746 · ClientServices@akonsultants.com · Tucson-based — clients nationwide