Accounting Firm Saves $95K/yr Replacing In-House IT

2 IT people, 150 users, no after-hours coverage, and a looming SOC 2 audit.

A mid-size accounting firm had grown from 60 to 150 users over five years, but their IT department had not kept pace. Two IT generalists were responsible for everything: helpdesk tickets, server maintenance, Microsoft 365 administration, security patching, and whatever else came up. Both were overwhelmed. Support tickets were taking 2-3 days to resolve. Nights and weekends were covered by no one.

The security picture was worse. A recent internal review found unlicensed software, stale user accounts from departed employees, no MFA enforcement, and inconsistent patching across the fleet. The firm handles sensitive financial data for hundreds of business clients — the regulatory and reputational exposure was significant.

A major client had recently informed the firm that maintaining their contract required achieving SOC 2 Type I certification within 12 months. The firm's current IT infrastructure and security posture were nowhere near audit-ready. Hiring additional IT staff to meet the requirement would have cost more than the contract was worth.

Full managed IT. M365 optimization. Defender deployment. SOC 2 roadmap.

BluetechGreen took over the firm's complete IT function under a managed services agreement. The existing two-person IT team transitioned to other roles in the business within 60 days of handover — one moved into an operations coordinator role, the other to a client services position where their technical background added value without the constant firefighting.

The first 30 days focused on security remediation: MFA was enforced across all accounts, stale user accounts were removed, Defender for Business was deployed to every endpoint, and a complete Microsoft 365 license audit identified $18K in annual savings from unused and improperly assigned licenses.

The SOC 2 roadmap was built into the engagement from day one. Over 90 days, BluetechGreen configured Intune device compliance policies, Purview data classification, Entra Conditional Access, and audit logging — producing the documented evidence required for the SOC 2 Type I assessment. The firm passed their audit on the first attempt, 10 months after the engagement began.

$95K saved. Better coverage. Cleaner audit than ever before.

• $95K annual savings — the managed services engagement replaced two full-time IT salaries, benefits, and overhead at a fraction of the cost, while delivering broader coverage and deeper expertise.
• 24/7 support coverage — tax season evening outages, weekend incidents, and after-hours emergencies are now handled under SLA. The firm no longer has a coverage gap when the office closes.
• 99.9% uptime — proactive monitoring and automated remediation replaced the reactive approach that had allowed minor issues to snowball into outages.
• SOC 2 Type I passed on first attempt — the client's major contract was retained. The audit findings were clean across all five trust service criteria.
• $18K in M365 license savings — the license audit during onboarding identified immediate cost reduction that partially offset the managed services fee in year one.