About Brevity.Tech

Brevity.Tech is a managed IT and automation practice serving small businesses across Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley. We act as the outside IT department for teams of roughly one to twenty-five people: the help desk, the servers, the network, the security, and the paperwork your insurer now asks for.

The name is the promise. Most IT providers explain too much, charge in ways nobody can predict, and leave the customer no better informed than before. We would rather give you the short version, in writing, and be right.

The gap we built for

Small teams get served badly at both ends of this market. The large regional providers are built around hundreds of seats, so a ten-person firm becomes the account nobody senior looks at. At the other end sit the break-fix shops, who are genuinely useful when something is on fire and structurally uninterested in the maintenance that stops the fire starting.

The result is predictable. A business runs on systems it cannot describe, backed up in a way nobody has tested, secured by whatever was default, and supported by someone who only appears once it has already gone wrong.

Brevity.Tech exists in the middle: the discipline and documentation of a proper IT department, priced and scoped for a company that does not have one.

What we commit to, in writing

One flat price per person, quoted before you sign
Response times written into the agreement, not implied
Unlimited help desk, with no per-ticket charges
Month-to-month, with no long-term lock-in
A written scope that says what is included and what is not
Your systems documented, and the documentation is yours

How the practice is organised

The work divides into four areas. Most clients start in the first two and grow into the others as the obvious problems get solved and the expensive ones become visible.

Managed support

The help desk and everything behind it: device enrolment and patching, Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace administration, onboarding and offboarding, backup monitoring and restore testing. Response times are contractual, not aspirational.

Infrastructure

Servers, Active Directory, file services, secure remote access, and small-office networking. Including the unglamorous judgement call about whether you still need a server at all, answered honestly rather than in favour of whatever is easier to bill.

Security and insurability

The controls that decide whether a small business is defensible and whether its cyber policy renews: multi-factor authentication, endpoint protection, email authentication, encrypted and tested backups, password management, and documented offboarding. We complete insurer questionnaires alongside the client rather than handing them back.

Automation and data

The practice area that is unusual at this size: removing recurring manual work, replacing spreadsheet-and-paper processes with small internal applications, and building reporting in Power BI and Microsoft Fabric so the month-end picture is a page rather than a project.

How we work

Every engagement starts the same way, with a free insurance-readiness review: a half-hour review of what you are running, what is exposed, and what would hurt if it stopped. You get the findings whether or not you hire us. It is a genuinely useful hour and it is the fastest way for both sides to find out whether this is a fit.

Onboarding runs off a written runbook rather than improvisation: accounts and licensing reviewed, multi-factor enforced, devices enrolled and patched, backups configured and tested, offboarding procedure agreed, and the whole environment documented. That document is the thing most small businesses have never had, and it is the reason the second year of working with us is cheaper than the first.

After that the work is deliberately boring. Patching happens. Backups get tested rather than assumed. Someone leaves and their access is gone the same day. The measure of this job done well is that you stop thinking about it.

The paperwork behind the service

Small providers usually run on a one-page quote and goodwill. That works until it doesn't, and the moment it stops working is the moment you need the paperwork to exist. Every engagement here is governed by documents written before we needed them:

Master Services Agreement. The terms of the relationship, including what happens at the end of it
Service Level Agreement. Response and resolution targets in writing, with the priority definitions that decide which is which
Service schedule and statement of work. The specific scope, per client and per project, so "in scope" is never a conversation held after the invoice
Data Processing Agreement. How your data is handled, where it lives, and on what basis, which is what a regulated client's own compliance obligations require of their vendors
Mutual non-disclosure agreement, signed before the insurance-readiness review if you want it signed before the insurance-readiness review

Internally the same applies. We maintain a written information security policy, acceptable use policy, change management procedure, incident response plan, and business continuity plan, and we operate against documented onboarding and offboarding checklists rather than memory. Our security baseline is modelled on the CIS Controls at Implementation Group 1, the level appropriate to a small business and the level most insurers are effectively asking about.

Any of these are available on request, before you sign anything. We would rather you read the service level agreement than take our word for what is in it.

Continuity and accountability

Ask any provider what happens if the person who knows your systems is unavailable. The honest answer at every size of firm is that it depends entirely on whether the knowledge was written down. Ours is written down, deliberately, and the arrangement is designed so that you are never dependent on one person's memory:

Every client environment is documented, covering systems, accounts, licensing, network, backup configuration and recovery steps, and kept current as part of the service
Credentials live in a managed password vault, not in anyone's head or notes, with your own administrative access retained by you
That documentation is yours. It is handed over on request at any point, and in full if you leave, with no exit fee and no hostage-taking of accounts
Escalation paths to vetted specialists are established in advance, not improvised during an incident

This is a deliberately better answer than the industry norm, where documentation is the first thing to be skipped and the client discovers it during a crisis or a switch of provider.

The part most providers skip

Keeping the lights on is the baseline, not the offer. The reason a small team hires us rather than a general IT shop is usually the second half of what we do: taking the recurring manual work out of the business, and putting the numbers somewhere the owner can actually see them.

That means automating the reporting, approvals, and re-keying that quietly consume a day a week, and building dashboards in Power BI and Microsoft Fabric so the month-end picture is a page rather than a project. Very few providers at this size do this at all, and it is the work that pays for itself fastest.

Our specialist network, and where we stop

No provider of any size covers everything credibly in-house; the ones that claim to are usually reselling someone you never meet. We work with a vetted network for the work that needs genuine depth: penetration testing, formal security audit, incident forensics, data-centre-scale networking, and legal and privacy counsel. We scope and coordinate that work ourselves. You get the specialist and a single point of accountability, rather than two vendors and a blame gap.

The boundary is stated plainly because it protects you: we are not a penetration-testing firm, we do not run SOC 2 or ISO audits, we do not certify anyone as compliant, and we are not lawyers. Any provider willing to claim all of that at this size is telling you something useful about the rest of their claims.

We also turn work down. If a business needs a full-time on-site technician, or runs a line-of-business system we have no honest way to support well, saying so early is cheaper for everyone than discovering it in month three. Plenty of providers will quietly say yes to everything. That is where most bad IT relationships begin.

Where we work

We serve Vancouver, Burnaby, Surrey, Richmond, Coquitlam, Langley, New Westminster, and Delta, and we work across the wider Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley. Most support is delivered remotely, which is why response times hold; we come on site when the problem is physical or the situation warrants it.

You can see the detail by city on our service areas page, or by sector under who we serve.

Talk to us

The insurance-readiness review is the front door. Half an hour, no pitch, no obligation, and you keep the findings either way. Email contact@brevitytech.ca, call 778-321-2372, or request the check.