Challenge
A manufacturing company with 80 employees had grown organically over 10 years with no IT strategy. Hardware was a mix of different ages and vendors, software licensing was uncontrolled, and nobody had a clear picture of what was running where or why.
What I did
Discovery & documentation
- Inventoried all hardware (workstations, servers, network devices) and software, including version and licence status.
- Interviewed department heads to understand actual usage patterns and pain points.
- Mapped the network topology and identified undocumented connections and shadow IT.
Risk assessment
- Flagged end-of-life systems still running in production.
- Identified three servers with no backup and two with critical unpatched vulnerabilities.
- Found £4,200/year in unused or duplicate software licences.
Roadmap delivery
- Produced a prioritised 12-month IT modernisation plan with effort estimates and budget projections.
- Quick wins (months 1–2): patching, licence cleanup, critical backups.
- Medium term (months 3–6): server consolidation and virtualisation.
- Long term (months 7–12): cloud migration and helpdesk tooling.
Result
The client had a clear, actionable plan for the first time. Quick wins in month one alone saved more than the cost of the audit. The company reduced IT risk exposure and had a realistic budget for the year ahead.