Managed IT— 02

When your MSP stopped answering, you noticed what you were actually paying for.

Most managed IT buyers aren’t shopping for features. They’re shopping for a replacement — because something broke, someone disappeared, or the person who knew their systems left. This page is written for that situation.

Who this is actually for

10 to 100 person firms in the Pacific Northwest — dealerships, construction companies, architectural practices, law firms, medical and dental offices, manufacturing operations, professional services. The owner or GM is the one making the IT decision, because the firm is too small for a dedicated IT director.

Three situations bring people here. One: their MSP took six hours to respond to a DMS outage on a Saturday morning, and they’re done. Two: they’ve been with the same MSP for two years and still don’t know who their actual technician is — every ticket opens with someone different reading notes wrong. Three: their internal IT person gave notice last month and they need managed IT coverage for the first time.

If one of those descriptions matches your situation, the rest of this page is for you.

What managed IT covers

Helpdesk and incident response. People answer. Tickets are tracked, escalation paths are documented, and the SLAs are real — not buried in contract language that disappears when something actually breaks.

Proactive monitoring. Monitoring catches the problem before you do. Disk filling up at 3 AM, firewall rule firing on something it shouldn’t, endpoint that stopped checking in two days ago — the first call you get is us telling you about it, not a user telling you it’s already broken.

Network, firewall, and wireless. Including pfSense and OPNsense environments. Not just the Windows network.

Identity and endpoint management. Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, or hybrid — including Azure AD / Entra ID configuration, conditional access policies, MFA enforcement, and endpoint patching via RMM. EDR deployed and monitored, not just installed.

Backup and disaster recovery. Backup verified. Recovery tested. Not assumed.

Linux infrastructure. If you run Linux servers, Linux-based network appliances, or Linux workstations, they’re in scope — not carved out. See the Linux page for what that actually means.

Vendor and license management. Your software renewals, your hardware warranties, your ISP and carrier relationships. We track the dates.

Compliance support. FTC Safeguards Rule preparation for dealerships. HIPAA Right of Access compliance for medical practices. Documentation and policy work that your cyber insurance carrier or auditor is going to want — we prepare you for assessment. We don’t certify or attest; that’s an auditor’s job.

Strategic alignment. Quarterly reviews that aren’t a vendor pitch. We talk about what’s coming, what should be retired, and where the risk is — before it’s a crisis.

What we don’t do

This section is more useful than the one above, because it tells you whether we’re actually a fit before you spend time on a call.

Scope item

In scope

Managed IT for 10–100 person Pacific Northwest firms

Yes

Linux infrastructure management

Yes

Microsoft 365 / Google Workspace / hybrid identity

Yes

FTC Safeguards Rule preparation (dealerships)

Yes

HIPAA compliance support (medical/dental)

Yes

AI workflow integration (where it actually helps)

Yes — see AI page

24/7 in-person staffed SOC

Cybersecurity attestation or certification

No — auditor’s job, not ours

Clients outside our operational depth

No — we refer out

Enterprises requiring 20-truck fleets and NOC infrastructure

No — we’ll point you at the right firm

We don’t resell antivirus and call it a security posture. We don’t take on environments outside our depth and figure it out as we go. If your situation needs a large regional MSP, we’ll tell you and point you at one. We’d rather be honest than win the account wrong.

Questions every qualified buyer asks

You’ve evaluated 2–3 MSPs before landing here. You’ve heard the same answers. Here are the actual answers to the questions that matter.

“Why not an established MSP that’s been around for 20 years?”

That’s the right question. The Craftwork Group was founded in 2025 — we don’t pretend otherwise. What we can say honestly: Ryan Collier, TCG’s president, has been in IT since the late 1990s and most recently served as Director of IT at a Pacific Northwest MSP before founding TCG. The practitioner background is real. What’s new is the entity — and with it, no legacy client base creating conflicts, no decade-old tooling decisions we can’t unwind, and no tier-1 ticket handlers between you and the person who manages your infrastructure. The buyer who ended up here because an established MSP failed them at 9 PM on a Saturday is weighing a different risk calculation than they think.

“Every MSP says the same things. How are you actually different?”

Three things that are verifiable, not claims: First, you talk to Ryan, who manages your infrastructure — not a sales person who hands you off to a delivery team. Second, Linux is in scope by default, not an upcharge or a carve-out. If you run pfSense, Ubuntu servers, or Linux workstations, they’re managed. Most PNW MSPs either don’t support Linux or quietly exclude it. Third, we lead with what we don’t do. That’s not common. MSPs that say yes to everything and qualify scope out later are a pattern the buyer in your situation has already experienced.

“What happens at 10 PM on a Sunday? Do I get a ticket queue?”

The honest answer: we don’t staff a 24/7 in-person SOC. What we do have is monitoring that doesn’t sleep and a defined escalation path for after-hours critical incidents. For most SMB environments, the middle-of-the-night event that matters is caught by monitoring — not by a person sitting in a queue. Critical-incident coverage and exactly what that means for your environment is something we discuss in the first call, before you sign. If the honest answer to “what happens at 10 PM” reveals a mismatch with what you need, we’d rather surface that in the conversation than after you’re onboarded.

“We’ve switched MSPs before and it was a disaster. Why would this be different?”

MSP transitions fail for a specific reason: the incoming MSP doesn’t document your environment thoroughly before it matters, so the first incident becomes the documentation process. Our onboarding is documentation-first. Before we close out onboarding, you own: an asset inventory, network diagram, credential vault with documented ownership, vendor contact list, and recovery runbooks. If something happened to TCG tomorrow, that documentation would let another provider step in without starting from scratch. That’s the design principle — it’s not a pitch, it’s what the engagement produces.

Who is doing the work

Ryan Collier (President) is the principal practitioner. He has worked in IT since the late 1990s, most recently as Director of IT at a Pacific Northwest MSP where he supported SMBs across automotive, medical, dental, legal, construction, and professional services verticals. When a dealership’s DMS is down, Ryan knows what a deal jacket is and what it costs when the sales floor can’t access one. When a construction firm’s Procore integration breaks, he’s worked in that environment before.

The Craftwork Group was founded in 2025. We say that directly rather than obscuring it. The practitioner background Ryan brings is real; the entity is new. That distinction matters because it’s the reason you talk to the same person on every call, rather than getting a different tier-1 technician who reads the notes wrong.

Ryan’s prior-role experience spans enterprise endpoint management, server infrastructure, dental and medical practice IT, post-production data infrastructure, and engineering-firm workflows. None of that experience accrues to TCG entity tenure — but it’s what Ryan brings to the work TCG does now.

On certifications: TCG’s orientation is toward demonstrated operational ability over credentialed performance. The pattern of a cert-holder who can pass an exam but can’t diagnose a live environment is not rare in this industry — and practitioners with deep hands-on experience have consistently outperformed it. That said, certifications do carry real value for a growing entity, both as a signal to clients and as a forcing function for structured knowledge. TCG holds certifications where they add verifiable client value and is actively evaluating additional ones.

05a

How engagements are structured

TCG prices two kinds of engagements, and they work differently.

Managed IT / MSP engagements are per user, per month, with defined scope agreed upfront. The scope is established through a structured intake, not discovered over time. TCG takes ownership of the IT function; the measure of success is whether things work and whether you’re informed when they don’t — not how many hours we log. You grade us on outcomes.

Consulting and specialty engagements are project-scoped: a defined deliverable, a defined timeline, a fixed scope. These are used for one-time infrastructure work, migrations, assessments, or specialty engagements that fall outside the MSP wrapper — or for clients who need a specific project done without a managed services relationship. If that’s what you need, that’s a conversation we can have.

What you own at the end of onboarding

At the close of onboarding, you hold — not us:

A documented asset inventory. A current network diagram. Credentials in a vault you control. Vendor contacts and contract renewal dates. Recovery runbooks written to a standard that a competent third party could execute. EDR and RMM configured, with you as the account owner.

If we ever parted ways, you wouldn’t start over. That’s the operating model. It’s also the answer to the question every buyer with a bad MSP transition on their resume needs to hear before they can move forward.

The same principle applies to AI integrations we build alongside your managed IT environment. If you’re curious how that works, the AI Integration page covers it.

Verticals we work in

The managed IT practice is built around firms where the owner is the IT decision-maker and where the specific operational software matters. Generic IT support that ignores DMS integrations, EHR access controls, Procore-to-accounting sync, or F&I workflow continuity is not the same as managing IT in these environments.

See the Industries hub for vertical-specific coverage — what we know about your environment before the first call, what the regulatory context looks like for your vertical, and where IT decisions have specific industry implications.

Managed IT is the operational foundation. These are the practices that build on it.

03 — Practice Linux Most MSPs don’t support Linux. We do — as a standard managed IT capability, not a specialty upcharge. 01 — Practice AI Integration Where AI actually helps in your workflows — and where it would create more problems than it solves. 05 — About About TCG Who is behind the work, what we’re built on, and what we’re not. 04 — Industries Industries Vertical-specific coverage for dealerships, construction, law firms, medical practices, and more.

Next step

First call: 30 minutes, no pitch.

The first conversation covers what you’re running, what’s not working, and whether we’re a fit — for you and for us. There’s no “discovery questionnaire” beforehand, no proposal deck on call one. If it’s a fit, we’ll scope it. If it’s not, we’ll tell you that too and point you somewhere useful.

Talk to TCG →