ITSM Consultancy · 100–500 person organisations

When Your IT Is
Outgrowing How
It's Being Run

A productised IT operating model for growing organisations. Fixed scope. Fixed price. Live in 8 weeks. Not a programme. A system, handed over.

Programme duration
8wks

From engagement to a live, governed IT operating model — not a roadmap for later.

Fixed scope
Fixed price
Build and govern, never run
Audit-ready from Day 1
Where it breaks down

The patterns we see
in every engagement

Growth exposes process gaps that were always there. The organisations that engage us aren't failing — they've simply scaled past the informal arrangements that once worked.

01

IT is reactive, not governed

Work arrives informally. Priorities shift daily. No intake, no triage, no accountability — just whoever shouts loudest gets served first.

02

No single version of the truth

Asset records are incomplete, CMDB entries are stale, and no one trusts what the spreadsheet says. Incidents become archaeology.

03

Changes cause unplanned outages

Ad-hoc deployments, no CAB, no rollback plan. Every Friday afternoon is a gamble. The business has stopped expecting better.

04

The service desk is a black hole

Tickets age without update. Resolution metrics are absent or fabricated. Business stakeholders have given up raising requests.

05

Audit preparedness is a scramble

ISO 27001, Cyber Essentials, SOC 2 — every audit cycle means weeks of emergency documentation and manual evidence gathering.

06

Growth has outpaced IT structure

What worked at 40 people doesn't scale to 200. Informal arrangements, tribal knowledge, and heroics are now liabilities.

Foundation Package

A complete IT operating model,
not a collection of tickets

  • Incident Management — structured triage, severity classification, and SLA-based resolution workflows
  • Service Request Fulfilment — catalogued, approved, and tracked from first contact to close
  • Change Management — risk-assessed CAB process with rollback planning and communication templates
  • Asset & Configuration Management — CMDB populated, attributed, and owned from Day 1
  • Problem Management — root cause workflow, known error library, and recurring incident reduction
  • Knowledge Management — article templates, ownership model, and self-serve deflection path
  • IT Governance Framework — RACI matrix, escalation paths, and a board-ready reporting cadence
Timeline
8weeks

From signed engagement to live operations. Every deliverable agreed before build begins.

Fixed scope · Fixed price
Build and govern, never run
Audit-ready from Day 1
The 8-Week Plan

How it works

Phase 01 Weeks 1–2

Discovery & Design

Current-state audit, stakeholder interviews, and gap analysis against ITIL Lite baseline. Process maps and tooling configuration plan agreed before build begins.

Phase 02 Weeks 3–5

Build

ITSM platform configured, workflows built, SLA definitions set, CMDB seeded, and knowledge base structured. Every element built to your context, not a template.

Phase 03 Weeks 6–7

Test & Enable

End-to-end process validation, IT team enablement sessions, runbook documentation, and governance cadence rehearsed with stakeholders.

Phase 04 Week 8

Go-Live & Handover

Cutover to live operations, hypercare window, reporting dashboards verified, and full documentation handed to your team. The engagement closes; the system runs under your ownership.

Optional Modules

Extend the foundation

Module · AI Enablement

AI Enablement

Practical AI capability layered onto your new operating model — not retrofitted onto chaos. Automated classification, intelligent routing, and knowledge surfacing integrated into existing workflows.

  • Ticket classification and priority prediction
  • Intelligent routing to resolver teams
  • Knowledge article surfacing at point of triage
  • Draft first-response generation for common request types
  • Anomaly flagging in incident volume and change risk
Priced on discovery call
Module · Reporting

Advanced Executive Reporting

Board and leadership reporting that tells the story of IT performance in language the business understands. Beyond ticket counts — strategic narrative, risk posture, and investment rationale.

  • Monthly IT performance narrative deck
  • SLA adherence and trend analysis
  • Risk register integration and exception reporting
  • Cost-per-incident and deflection rate tracking
  • Quarterly strategic review pack
Priced on discovery call
Fractional Service Manager

Ongoing governance without the headcount

Once the operating model is live, it needs a senior practitioner to govern it — not manage it. Our FSM retainer provides exactly that: fractional, strategic, senior input focused on holding process integrity and raising the bar over time.

This is not a managed service. We build and govern; we never run your IT. The retainer exists to keep your team accountable to the framework and to bring external rigour that an internal team, under operational pressure, often can't sustain.

Clients on the FSM retainer consistently report stronger audit outcomes, better change compliance, and a material reduction in repeat incidents compared to organisations running without governance oversight.

Priced on discovery call · Typically 5 days per month
5
Days per
month
~⅕
FTE cost
comparison
  • Monthly governance review and process health check
  • CAB chair and change risk advisory
  • SLA performance review and remediation planning
  • Stakeholder reporting and board-pack input
  • Escalation support and exception handling
  • Continuous framework improvement and maturity tracking
Pricing

Transparent pricing, shared directly

We don't publish day rates or padded estimates. Pricing is fixed, modular, and shared in full on a discovery call — so the conversation starts with your context, not a number out of context.

Get Pricing — Book a Discovery Call
Why Operata

Six things that don't change

Fixed price · always

No time-and-materials

You know what you're buying before you sign. No scope creep, no blended-rate surprises. The investment is fixed; the outcome is defined.

Live in 8 weeks

Not a roadmap

Eight weeks from engagement to a live, working IT operating model. Not a discovery phase leading to another phase.

ITIL-lite · not ITIL-heavy

Right-sized process

Disciplined without bureaucratic overhead. Built for 100–500 person organisations, not enterprise IT departments with dedicated process teams.

Founders deliver

No junior handoffs

Senior practitioners on every engagement. The people who designed the methodology are the people who implement it. No bait-and-switch.

Build and govern, never run

Your capability, your team

We build your operating model and govern your framework. Your team runs IT. This distinction matters for cost, control, and long-term organisational maturity.

Audit-ready · Day 1

Evidence from the start

Every process, record, and policy is structured for evidenceability from go-live. ISO 27001, Cyber Essentials, and SOC 2 readiness is never a retrofit.

Next step

Book a 30-minute
discovery call

No pitch deck, no sales process. A direct conversation about your IT situation, what you're trying to fix, and whether we're the right fit. You'll leave with fixed pricing and a clear picture of the engagement.

Book a Discovery Call

Build and govern, never run · Fixed price · 8 weeks to live