A real MSP relationship,
reviewed and right‑sized

This is a real engagement — real contract, real numbers — showing what a VeriTech-style Review, Refine, and Rebuild actually produces.

Managed IT contract reduced from $58,453/yr to $8,262/yr · ~$67,471/yr in total net savings
Real engagement. Company name withheld at the client's request. All figures are drawn from signed contracts and internal spend records.

MSP Relationship Review

Case Study

New England Construction Firm

100–150 employees
IndustryConstruction / General Contracting
Internal ITOne IT role, no dedicated team
Current MSPFull managed contract, multi-year
PlatformMicrosoft 365, on-prem & cloud mix
Review triggerContract renewal
The company was paying for a full team it didn't need — and had the internal capacity to prove it.

The business had one internal IT role and a fully managed MSP contract covering help desk, monitoring, patching, RMM, email security, and endpoint protection — priced and structured as if no internal IT capability existed at all.

That one internal role was the hinge the entire review turned on. Even without it, the honest recommendation wouldn't have been to simply shop for a cheaper MSP — it would have been to reduce MSP dependency by identifying and training an internal champion to absorb part of the day-to-day, paired with right-sizing the MSP's scope and bridging the rest directly through IT Concierge. With the internal role already in place here, the real question became: which parts of this contract does that role need the MSP for at all?

1
Phase one

Review

An unbiased audit of the existing MSP relationship — what the contract covered, what the business actually needed, and where the two didn't match.

MSP Scorecard

Seven dimensions every MSP relationship can be measured against — regardless of provider, industry, or contract size.

Operational
Service deliveryTicket response times were acceptable and within SLA
Right-sized scopeFull managed pricing for work the internal role could absorb
Cost efficiencyPremium per-seat rates layered on top of duplicate tooling
Risk & protection
Security & complianceBaseline controls present; gaps in EDR consistency and patch cadence
Data protectionBackup existed, but restore testing wasn't being performed at regular intervals
Strategic
Ownership & lock-inLicensing, identity, and tooling decisions ran through the MSP by default
Strategic alignmentContract renewed on autopilot; never re-scoped against actual internal capacity

Key findings

01 The internal role had headroom the contract didn't account for

The existing IT role had the capacity — and, with training, the platform depth — to run day-to-day identity, device, and endpoint management directly. The MSP contract assumed none of that capacity existed.

02 Overlapping tools were being paid for twice

Identity and endpoint management ran through both the MSP's stack and separate standalone tools — including a dedicated identity provider layered on top of capability Microsoft 365 already licensed. Four separate management tools were doing work one platform could consolidate.

03 Monitoring and patching didn't need to be outsourced

RMM, patch management, endpoint monitoring, and EDR — the bulk of the MSP's recurring bill — were functions a trained internal role could own directly.

04 The phone system and license procurement hadn't been reviewed in years

A legacy phone platform was still in place alongside Microsoft 365 licensing that already included the capability to replace it. Licensing itself was being resold through the MSP — meaning every new hire or seat change ran through an MSP request instead of being provisioned directly. License tiers across the user base also hadn't been reconciled against actual usage.

05 The contract had never been re-bid or re-scoped

The relationship had run for years on renewal-by-default. Nothing in the contract had been re-evaluated against what the business actually needed at its current size and internal capacity.

06 An aging on-prem server was quietly heading toward a forced replacement

The physical domain controller and file server were both nearing end of life. The MSP's next recommendation would have been a new physical server, new VMware licensing, and folding the replacement into the monthly maintenance agreement — all to keep running services Microsoft 365 already provided at no additional cost.

2
Phase two

Refine

With the review's findings in hand, the internal role took over what it could reasonably run directly, and the subscriptions and tools that weren't earning their keep were cut.

3
Phase three

Rebuild

The remaining piece was infrastructure: an aging on-prem server nearing a forced replacement, retired in favor of the cloud-native platform already included in the business's Microsoft 365 licensing.

All recommended products and platforms are purchased by the client direct from the vendor. VeriTech Advisors takes no commission or reseller margin on any recommendation.

The financial picture

Every figure below comes straight from the signed contract and internal spend records. Add up the line items and you'll land on the same total we did.

MSP relationship

MSP full managed contract (last signed rate)$58,453.08/yr
Less: M365 licensing — continues at comparable cost through a direct CSP, not counted as savings−$19,350.00/yr
Less: MSP relationship, right-sized to backup-only−$8,262.00/yr
Cut from the MSP relationship alone$30,841.08/yr

Environment optimization

Legacy phone system consolidated onto Microsoft Teams Phone (net of new cost)$11,762.68/yr
Device management and remote-support tools consolidated into a single platform$7,530.00/yr
Redundant identity and access management tools eliminated$17,208.00/yr
General software subscription cleanup$911.00/yr
Less: new unified management platform subscription (added cost)−$4,382.00/yr
Environment optimization subtotal$33,029.68/yr

Infrastructure

Retiring the on-prem server before a forced replacement — avoided being locked into a new VMware subscription (minimum core commitment applies regardless of server size)$3,600.00/yr
Total net annual savings$30,841.08 + $33,029.68 + $3,600.00$67,470.76/yr

On top of the annual figure, retiring the server also avoided a one-time capital cost of ~$9,500 — the new physical server, Windows Server licensing, and MSP labor a replacement project would have required.

A renewal at the full managed rate was never signed — the business right-sized before it came to that. The contract figure above is the last signed rate, used here as a conservative baseline; a real renewal would likely have priced higher, meaning these savings understate the real number rather than inflate it. M365 licensing is treated as a wash throughout, since the same cost continues today through a direct CSP rather than disappearing.

What happened next

The MSP relationship wasn't eliminated — it was right-sized. Backup oversight stayed with an outside provider; everything else moved in-house, one phase at a time, on the same seat and same salary line already in place. No new hire was required to absorb work the MSP had been billing for at premium rates.

No internal IT person to train? This model depends on having someone in-house to hand capability to. If that role doesn't exist yet, IT Concierge is built to be that person on a fractional basis — same right-sizing outcome, without requiring a new hire first.

Want to know what your relationship would score?

A flat-fee, unbiased review of your MSP relationship — the same format shown above, built around your environment.

Request a Review