Anonymised case study based on real hands-on work by our founder. The company is not named and no figures are claimed.
The situation
A mid-sized services company ran email, calendars, shared drives and video calls on Google Workspace, but IT belonged to whoever had time. Requests arrived through chats and hallway conversations, shared mailboxes had no clear owner, and domain email settings had grown by trial and error. The brief was to make IT predictable without adding bureaucracy.
What we did
One front door. A shared IT mailbox became the single place for access requests, joiners, leavers and issues, so every request had an owner and a written trail.
Joiner and leaver routine. New accounts follow a short checklist: organisational unit, groups, shared drives and signature. Leavers have sign-in suspended, mail and files handed to a named owner and devices recovered before the account is closed.
Groups instead of forwarding. Team addresses moved to groups with named managers, replacing personal forwarding rules nobody could audit.
Email authentication. Sending domains were checked for correct SPF, DKIM and DMARC, and every third-party tool sending on the company's behalf was listed and authorised.
Security basics. Two-step verification became mandatory, admin rights were limited to the people who needed them, and third-party app access was reviewed instead of approved by default.
Runbooks. Each routine task got a short runbook so a second person can cover holidays.
The outcome
IT work became visible and repeatable: requests have an owner and a history, account changes follow one routine, and email authentication and admin access are known rather than assumed.
FAQ
Does a mid-sized company need a full-time IT person? Not always; clear routines and one request inbox go a long way.
What should be fixed first? Admin access, two-step verification and leaver handling carry the most risk.
Want IT that runs on routines instead of memory? Talk to Productive IT.