Your MSP marks its own homework. We mark theirs.
An independent audit of your managed service provider: what you pay versus market, what you get versus the contract, and the renegotiation points to fix the gap.
Nobody inside your business knows what an MSP should cost, and your MSP is not going to tell you. Our principals have spent two decades benchmarking these arrangements. The pattern repeats: auto-renewed contracts that have never been market-tested, retail margins on wholesale products, and service reports written by the party being measured. Sometimes the finding is that your provider is good value; when it is, we say so, and you renew with confidence instead of doubt.
Book Your MSP AuditThe Un-Benchmarked Renewal
Your contract renews every year without a market test. Every year that passes, the gap between your rate and market rate compounds.
Self-Reported Performance
The party that runs your IT also writes the report card on how it is running. ACSC and AICD guidance is blunt about what that is worth.
Grown Past the Provider
The MSP that suited you at 40 staff may be out of depth at 150. Boards rarely hear that from the provider clinging to the contract.
The Exit You Can't Price
Single-provider dependency with no documented exit path is a business risk hiding inside an IT line item.
What We Test
- Your MSP pricing benchmarked line-by-line against comparable market arrangements
- Contracted service levels versus actually delivered service levels
- Security posture claims independently verified, not self-reported
- Licence and product margins: what is retail, what should be wholesale
- Fit-for-size: whether the provider still matches your scale and trajectory
- Dependency and exit risk, with a documented path either way
The Deliverable
The MSP Scorecard
An independent verdict on your provider, with the evidence to act on it either way.
- Market benchmark of every material charge
- Specific contract renegotiation points with target rates
- Service delivery assessment against the contract
- Independent security verification summary
- Renew, renegotiate or replace: a recommendation you can minute
The MSP audit, step by step
Four weeks, four phases, none of them disruptive. We work from documents and data, not your team's calendars, and your provider does not need to know until you decide they should.
Evidence collection (week 1)
Contracts, schedules, the last twelve months of invoices, licence reports and service tickets, gathered through a structured request list your finance team can satisfy in hours.
Benchmark and verification (week 2)
Every material charge benchmarked against comparable market arrangements. Contracted service levels tested against actually delivered service levels. Security claims checked against evidence, not the provider's own reporting.
Validation (week 3)
Findings tested with your stakeholders for factual accuracy, and every gap quantified: the benchmark delta, the licence count, the scope-drift line items. You can check our arithmetic.
The verdict and the plan (week 4)
The MSP Scorecard: renew, renegotiate or replace, with specific renegotiation points, target rates, and a documented path for each option. Presented to your executive or board.
Three ways to engage
| Engagement | Best for | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Contract & pricing review | A renewal inside 6 months | Market benchmark of every material charge plus renegotiation points with target rates |
| Full MSP audit | Board assurance or persistent doubt | Pricing, service delivery, security verification and dependency risk: the complete Scorecard |
| Ongoing oversight | Post-audit accountability | Quarterly independent review of provider performance and billing against the agreed baseline |
What happens after the audit
The Scorecard is built to be acted on. If the verdict is renegotiate, you take the benchmark pack into the conversation yourself or we manage the process with you. If the verdict is replace, you get a market approach plan and selection support, and we take nothing from whichever provider wins. If the verdict is renew, you renew with evidence, and the audit has still paid for itself in negotiating position and board confidence.
Why independence is the entire point
Every other party in this conversation earns from the outcome. The MSP earns from the renewal. Rival MSPs offering 'free assessments' earn from the switch. We earn our fixed fee and nothing else: no referral fees, no kickbacks, no preferred-partner arrangements, enforced in writing in our terms. Our principals have spent more than twenty years benchmarking Australian managed service arrangements, as former CIO, CTO and COO operators who have sat on your side of these contracts.
Straight Answers
2x value identified, or you don't pay.
The 4-Week Commercial IT Health Check is fixed fee, non-disruptive, and guaranteed in writing: if we don't identify value worth at least twice our fee, we refund it.