bcom ICT onboards most businesses within 30 days. Week one covers discovery and a plain-English report; week two closes urgent gaps such as untested backups and missing multi-factor authentication; weeks two to three deploy monitoring and support access; week four is documentation handover and the first review. The initial review is free. Call 07 3041 8993.
The sequence
1. Week 1 — we find out what you've got
A technician walks the site and we run discovery across your network. Every device, server, licence, subscription, warranty and supplier gets recorded. Most businesses moving to us have none of this written down anywhere, and that gap is exactly what hurts when a provider disappears or a key person leaves.
2. Week 1 — the honest report
You get a plain-English document: what's healthy, what's at risk, what's out of support, and what we'd fix in what order. It includes the things that are fine, because a report that lists only problems is a sales document, not an assessment.
3. Week 2 — we close the urgent gaps
Missing or untested backups, accounts without multi-factor authentication, unsupported operating systems, expired warranties on things you can't trade without. These come first regardless of what else is planned, because they're the ones that turn into a bad month.
4. Weeks 2–3 — monitoring and access go live
Monitoring agents are deployed, alerting is tuned to your environment, and your team gets our number and email. From this point faults start reaching us before you report them.
5. Week 4 — handover and first review
We walk you through the documentation, confirm the priority list for the next quarter, and agree what's budgeted. You hold a copy of everything from this point on.
Dealing with your outgoing provider
This is the part people dread, and it's the part we'll take off you entirely if you want.
- We'll deal with your outgoing provider directly if you'd rather not — handovers are often awkward and it isn't your job to manage that.
- We ask them for credentials, documentation and licence details, and we tell you plainly what we did and didn't receive.
- Where nothing is handed over, we rebuild the documentation from discovery. It takes longer but it isn't a blocker.
- Domain names, DNS and Microsoft 365 tenancy ownership get verified as yours, not the provider's. This is the single most common thing we find registered to someone else.
- Nothing is switched off until the replacement is verified working.
On that last point about ownership: check your domain name and your Microsoft 365 tenancy are registered to your business, not to your IT provider. It's the most common thing we find wrong during onboarding, and it's much easier to fix while everyone is still on speaking terms.
What you get at the end of it
- A complete asset register — every device, licence, warranty, subscription and supplier
- Network documentation, including what connects to what and why
- Credentials held securely, with confirmation that they belong to you
- A written baseline of your security position, including where you sit against the Essential Eight
- A prioritised plan for the next twelve months, with rough costs against it
- Confirmation of what's backed up, how often, and evidence a restore has actually been tested
All of it is yours. You can ask for a copy at any time, and you get it on exit as a matter of course — see our published commitments.
If you're not ready for managed IT
The review will sometimes conclude that you don't need us monthly yet. That's a legitimate outcome and we'll say it rather than sell around it — plenty of businesses are better served by ad-hoc support until they have a server, staff who can't work without their systems, or client data they'd struggle to prove is protected.
You keep the summary either way.
Onboarding follows the practices set out in how we work — discovery feeds the asset register, the report feeds the improvement plan, and both become the baseline your service reviews measure against.
What people actually ask before changing providers
Six questions, including the one about what happens if it does not work out.
“How disruptive is changing providers?”
Usually the concern that keeps businesses with arrangements they have outgrown. It is a real risk and it is manageable.
What we do Nothing changes on day one except who answers the phone. Discovery and documentation happen first; changes come after we understand what we are changing, and each one is agreed with you.
“Our current provider has all the passwords”
Usually extremely common, and it is why exits get difficult. Credentials frequently sit in a provider’s system rather than the client’s.
What we do We recover ownership properly and move everything into accounts you control. Where an account was set up under a provider’s own details, there is a process for that, and we run it rather than leaving you to.
“What if the outgoing provider is unhelpful?”
Usually occasionally the case. Most handovers are professional; a few are not.
What we do We can rebuild everything from the environment itself if we have to. A difficult handover slows us down and does not stop us, and it is worth knowing that before you feel trapped.
“When do you start actually changing things?”
Usually a fair thing to want defined. Providers that change a great deal in week one tend to break things nobody knew depended on each other.
What we do After discovery, and in an order agreed with you. The first fortnight is mostly finding out what exists — including the things nobody remembers installing.
“What do we get at the end of it?”
Usually a question worth asking every provider you consider.
What we do A documented environment: asset register, network diagram, licence position, credentials in a system you control, and a prioritised list of what we found and what we recommend. Yours to keep whatever happens next.
“What if it isn’t working out?”
Usually a question people are often reluctant to ask at the start of a relationship, which is exactly when it should be asked.
What we do Managed agreements are month-to-month. We would rather earn the next month than hold a business to a term it regrets, and you leave with everything documented rather than having to argue for it.
What this looks like in practice
Representative engagements, drawn from real work with identifying detail removed — we don’t name clients without written permission.
Two weeks of finding out, before anything changed
The situation
A business of thirty-five staff moved to us from a provider it had used for six years. There was pressure from within the business to fix several visible annoyances immediately.
What we found
Discovery found three things that would have made an immediate fix a mistake. A server everyone described as a file server was also running a licensing service for the industry application, which nobody had mentioned because nobody knew. A scheduled task on a workstation under a desk was the mechanism by which two systems exchanged data nightly. And a firewall rule that looked redundant was the path a supplier used to reach an ordering integration.
What we did
Documented everything before changing anything, then addressed the visible annoyances in an agreed order with each dependency understood. Moved the nightly data exchange off the workstation under the desk, which was the genuinely urgent item nobody had raised.
The outcome
Nothing broke. Every one of those three things would have been switched off inside week one by a provider moving quickly to demonstrate value, and each would have caused an outage nobody could immediately explain.
Recovering accounts the business never owned
The situation
A business changing providers found that several of its most important accounts had been created by the outgoing provider under that provider’s own details, including the domain registrar and the firewall management portal.
What we found
Nothing had been done maliciously. Accounts had been created in whatever way was convenient at the time, years earlier, and never revisited. The practical effect was that the business did not own the domain its email depended on, and could not have proved ownership to anyone if the relationship had ended badly rather than amicably.
What we did
Worked through each provider’s ownership transfer process with the business’s documentation, moved every account into the business’s own name with billing on the business’s own card, and recorded the lot in a password manager the business controls.
The outcome
The business owns everything its operation depends on. We would rather do this at the start of a relationship than have a future provider discover we had left it undone.
Questions Gold Coast businesses ask us
How long does it take to move IT providers?
Most businesses are fully onboarded with bcom ICT within 30 days. Week one is discovery and reporting, week two closes urgent gaps, weeks two to three deploy monitoring and support access, and week four is handover and the first review. Larger or less documented environments take longer, mostly in discovery. Call 07 3041 8993.
Will there be downtime while we switch?
There shouldn't be. Onboarding is mostly discovery, documentation and adding monitoring, none of which interrupts anyone. Where a genuine change is needed — replacing an unsupported system, reconfiguring a firewall — it's scheduled with you and done outside business hours.
What if our current provider won't hand anything over?
It happens more than it should. We ask properly first, and if nothing comes we rebuild the documentation from discovery instead. It takes longer and we'll tell you what we couldn't recover, but it doesn't stop the move. The one thing worth checking early is whether your domain and Microsoft 365 tenancy are actually registered to your business rather than to them.
Do we have to commit before onboarding?
The initial review is free, and you keep its written summary, including if you decide not to proceed. If you do go ahead, managed agreements are month-to-month — there's no minimum term to sign before we've demonstrated anything.
What do you need from us during onboarding?
Access to the site, whatever documentation exists, a contact who knows how the business actually works day to day, and around an hour of that person's time in week one. That's genuinely it — the rest is our work.
What happens after the first 30 days?
Managed clients move into the normal rhythm: monitoring and helpdesk day to day, patching and backup checks on schedule, and periodic service reviews covering what broke, what's ageing and what to budget for. The onboarding report becomes the baseline those reviews measure against.
Start with the free review
A walk through your systems and a plain-English report on what's working and what isn't. Yours to keep, whether or not you go any further.