What Coffee Can Teach You About IT Maturity
IT can be complex. Coffee isn’t.
When your team scales from a handful to a village, the way you support them needs to evolve. It’s just like how your office’s coffee needs also grow as you hire more people.
What made sense when you were small can become a bottleneck later. Sometimes, the right answer is to simplify again in a new context (like single-serve machines in a satellite office).
Growth isn’t just more of the same. It’s knowing when to shift the model.
Let’s discuss the five levels of IT maturity and compare them to the five levels of coffee needs to help you discern what level of IT your organization is at.
The goal, of course, for most small businesses is to reach Level 5, but no organization gets there overnight. And if your business grows but your IT doesn’t keep pace, you can experience decreased efficiency, increased security risks and customer dissatisfaction due to service disruptions.
Most of our clients are at Level 2, trying to reach Level 3, or Level 3, trying to reach Level 4. They may have had one person doing all the IT work — whether they were already on-staff or hired an “IT person” — but now that the organization has grown, it’s too much for one person to handle.
Level 3 is where IT becomes more than just fixing what is broken. And at Level 4, IT planning and budgeting for future expenses means you won’t be surprised by unexpected costs in the coming years as technology ages.
When IT Becomes More than Support
When we say IT becomes distinct from support, we mean:
Support is Keeping the Lights On
Support is essential, but it’s tactical. It answers, “What broke?” or “How do I fix it?”
- Reactive help desk tickets
- Fixing issues (VPN, printing, locked accounts)
- Resetting passwords, patching devices, troubleshooting
- Day-to-day maintenance to keep systems running
“Aligning your IT with your business goals allows you to enhance customer service, optimize costs and drive overall organizational strength.”
IT Strategy is Driving the Business Forward
IT strategy is proactive and consultative. It answers, “Where are we going, and what do we need to get there?”
- Aligning technology with business goals
- Planning infrastructure upgrades before things break
- Evaluating tools for efficiency, security and scalability
- Budgeting for IT in a way that anticipates future needs
- Creating policies for growth, compliance and risk management
- Leading initiatives like cloud migration, Microsoft 365 Secure Score improvements or cybersecurity frameworks
Why Distinction Matters
At smaller sizes, these roles within organizations are blurred: Your “IT person” might be doing both (badly or inconsistently).
As an organization grows:
- The cost of unplanned downtime or technical debt rises
- The need for foresight and planning increases
So, IT must grow from a reactive service into a leadership function.
That’s the moment when “support” becomes just one part of a broader IT operation, and when an MSP starts playing a vital role.
Ready to Take Your IT to the Next Level?
Aligning your IT with your business goals allows you to enhance customer service, optimize costs and drive overall organizational strength.
Still running a Keurig-style IT setup? Let’s change that.
Contact us to schedule a consultation. We’ll discuss our findings and implement a plan so your IT can grow as fast as your business.
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