This firm was already on a managed agreement at a lower tier. The monthly number was fine. What was not fine was that a bad month — a failed switch, a rebuild, a weekend cutover — arrived as an hours invoice nobody had budgeted for.
Why the tier changes the labor math
Our labor rates are a sliding scale, not a single published number. À la carte clients pay the full rate. Each tier above that reduces it, and Platinum takes remote, shop, onsite and rush-onsite work to $0. The only labor line that survives on Platinum is a true after-hours emergency call-out, and that falls from $260 an hour to $125.
Platinum lists at $240 per user per month and was written at $195 for the committed term. Against the tier they were on, the difference was smaller than a single moderate project month of billable hours.
What that changes day to day
- Staff stop rationing tickets because they are no longer worried about the hourly meter.
- We stop deferring maintenance that would have shown up as billable hours.
- The IT line in the budget is the same number twelve months a year.
- Documentation — credentials, diagrams, asset records — stays available to them 24/7 through the secure portal, as a contractual obligation.