IT Strategy
Manchester professional services: 92% less downtime
A Manchester professional services firm cut unplanned downtime by 92% and saw internal IT satisfaction rise from 4/10 to 9/10 in six months.
FNS Team · 2 min read · Updated September 2026
The situation
A professional services firm operating across three offices in and around Manchester was living with IT that got in the way of the working day. Staff were used to systems dropping out at inconvenient moments, and nobody had much confidence that the next issue would be handled quickly — or explained clearly once it was fixed.
The challenge
Frequent downtime across the three sites was the headline problem, but it wasn't an isolated one. Fault-finding took too long because nobody had a full, current picture of the network, and fixes tended to be reactive rather than planned. The firm's own staff had lost patience with IT as a function — an internal satisfaction score of 4 out of 10 told its own story about how the previous setup was landing with the people who relied on it every day.
What FNS changed
FNS was brought in to embed as the firm's IT department rather than sit alongside it as an outside contractor. That started with a proper audit of the network across all three offices, mapping out where the weak points actually were rather than guessing from symptoms. From there, the network was rebuilt with resilience as the priority — removing single points of failure, tightening up monitoring so issues could be caught before they interrupted anyone's day, and putting proactive maintenance in place instead of waiting for the next call.
How we worked together
This wasn't a one-off project handed over and left to run. FNS worked as an embedded partner, meeting regularly with the firm to review what was happening across the network, agree priorities, and keep the roadmap moving. Issues that did arise were dealt with directly and communicated clearly, so staff always understood what was happening and why — which matters as much to satisfaction as the technical fix itself.
The outcome
Within six months, unplanned downtime across the three offices had dropped by 92%. Just as tellingly, internal satisfaction with IT rose from 4 out of 10 to 9 out of 10 over the same period — a shift that reflects not just fewer faults, but a working relationship where staff trust that IT is being looked after properly. As one client put it: "They feel like part of our team. We stopped thinking about IT — which is the highest compliment I can give an IT company."
Relevant services
If your team is losing time to IT that keeps interrupting the working day, get in touch and we'll talk through what's actually going on.
