Start Tech: "It made us safer. Then it started winning deals."

Ian Groves runs a 23-strong MSP in Shropshire with Cyber Essentials Plus and IASME Assured Service Provider. His existing certifications already covered half the Assurix framework. Here is what the rest involved, and what it changed commercially.

It made us safer. Then it started winning deals.

Ian Groves is Managing Director of Start Tech, a 23-strong MSP based in Shropshire in the West Midlands, hitting 25 years in business. He runs the company without a vertical focus, leaning into cyber security on the basis that it crosses every sector and every boundary. Start Tech already held Cyber Essentials, Cyber Essentials Plus and IASME Assured Service Provider before starting the Assurix assessment.

The challenge: Explaining how you're different when every MSP sounds the same

To the businesses Start Tech talks to, every MSP does the same thing. Ian knew that wasn't true. Start Tech had built 25 years of operational maturity, three certifications and a genuine commitment to going further for clients. In a competitive sales conversation, none of that showed up.

"One of the biggest issues we have, and I'm sure a lot of MSPs have, is trying to explain how we're different from the next MSP and the next MSP and the next MSP." - Ian Groves, Managing Director, Start Tech

Three pressures driving the decision

144 tasks. He thought it would take a couple of weeks.

When Ian got onboarded onto the Assurix platform, he saw 144 tasks. Confident in 25 years of operations, three certifications and a strong team, he told his colleagues they'd knock it out in a fortnight.

They landed at the halfway mark. Around 70 tasks had real substance behind them. The rest had gaps, not because Start Tech was running badly, but because the evidence, the documentation reviews, the proof hadn't been pulled together in one place.

What the work actually involved

Ian is straight about the workload. The framework asked more of Start Tech than he expected, and he did not think that was a problem. "It was work we should do, and I’m not afraid of the hard work to get there, because that’s one of the reasons we did it."

The 144 tasks sit across the 59 controls in the Trustmark framework, and they were not 144 new jobs. Most covered work Start Tech was already doing across 25 years, three certifications and a team of 23, spread over different tools, different documents and different people’s heads. What the platform did was put all of it in one place.

"I say this not to put anybody off the workload that’s involved in it, but to make people realise that when you lay it all out like that, and it’s in front of you as a complete jigsaw to fill, you’d be surprised how many pieces you may be missing."

On the other side of it, the day to day load came down. "My role as the CEO has meant I can step back a little bit and breathe, and know that the systems are in place and we have a framework."

The other thing MSPs ask about is what happens afterwards, because the Trustmark can be lost if you stop doing what you said you would. Ian sees the consequence as the point, and the process behind it as a fair one. "It isn’t do or die. You are not going to come in one morning and find you have been kicked out and your Trustmark has been revoked. There is a proper process around this, and there is opportunity to rectify anything. There is common sense applied to this, because things happen."

"I took for granted that our hodgepodge level of controls we've put in place pulling from forever. I really thought we'd be 80 or 90% there. As it is, we weren't. We had too much fragmentation, we had too many holes, and a lack of real control. This has plugged those gaps and really levelled us up, which is why I sleep much easier at night." - Ian Groves, Managing Director, Start Tech

The evidence that fixed the controls started winning the deals

Start Tech's Assurix assessment did not end with internal improvements. The same evidence that gave Ian confidence in his controls became an outward-facing tool in sales conversations.

"How many tools make you more secure, make you sleep easier at night, but ultimately solve that problem every MSP seems to have, which is I don't have enough leads, I don't win enough conversations, I don't know how to differentiate myself? This actually delivers value in both worlds for me." - Ian Groves, Managing Director, Start Tech

144

Tasks across the 59 controls in the Trustmark framework. Ian’s existing certifications already covered 70 of them.

Ian's advice to other MSPs

"Proof, not promises, is the slogan for Assurix, and I absolutely love it, because it simplifies this rather creative and elaborate system into basically what it does, in a really simple way." - Ian Groves, Managing Director, Start Tech