Proposal for Castlewood Kitchens
Proposal for Castlewood Kitchens
A practical plan to stabilise the environment, document what's there, and move Castlewood Kitchens into a properly managed, proactive IT setup.
Thanks again for taking the time to walk us through everything onsite and for putting together such a detailed briefing document.
It gave us a really good understanding of where the current frustrations are, what is working, what is not working, and where the business is heading moving forward.
A lot of the issues we discussed are pretty common when businesses grow quickly and the IT environment evolves over time without a proper long-term structure behind it.
The good news is none of this looks unfixable. It just needs the right systems, proper documentation, proactive management, and someone taking ownership of it properly moving forward.
That's where we believe JCR can help.
After reviewing the environment and discussions onsite, these are the main pain points. Individually most are manageable. Together they create downtime, frustration, and inefficiency across the business.
Our goal would be to stabilise the environment properly first, document everything clearly, improve visibility, and then move the business into a much more proactive support model.
Based on the environment and the way the business operates, we recommend moving onto one of two Managed IT Plans. Plan 2 is the minimum from our side. Plan 3 is worth considering if you'd like more regular onsite support included as part of the ongoing arrangement.
Covers the majority of what we discussed. The right baseline for stabilising the environment and getting onto proactive support.
Everything in Plan 2, plus more regular onsite support included as part of the ongoing arrangement. A good fit if you'd prefer more face-to-face presence at the factory and office.
The biggest thing here is moving away from reactive "something broke again" IT support and into a properly managed environment where issues are identified and handled before they become bigger problems.
Based on what we discussed onsite, the environment currently appears to consist of approximately the following. We'd confirm everything properly during onboarding and the initial audit phase.
| Device type | Estimated quantity |
|---|---|
| Office PCs | 11 |
| Factory PCs | 4 |
| CAD workstations | 6 |
| Laptops | 6 – 7 |
| Servers / NAS | 2 – 4 |
| Mobile devices | 9 – 10 |
| Total approximate endpoints | ~ 38 – 42 |
Before making major changes, we want to properly audit and document the environment. There are quite a few moving parts that nobody has full visibility over right now. We want to get everything documented and manageable.
Recommended initial support block
20 Hour Support Block
Enough time to properly start cleaning things up, documenting systems, and addressing the bigger frustrations without stopping for approvals every few hours. Additional blocks can be added later for larger projects or infrastructure changes.
This sounds like one of the bigger operational frustrations currently. Staff are spending too much time finding files, working around permissions, dealing with inconsistent structure, and generally not trusting the system.
We'd recommend restructuring SharePoint properly so it becomes logical, easy to navigate, secure, and manageable moving forward. The goal is to make the system easier for staff to work with day-to-day rather than becoming another frustration point.
Modern threats move far beyond traditional virus scanning. Proactive monitoring, layered email security, and properly backed-up Microsoft 365 data are the baseline we'd recommend for a business at Castlewood Kitchens' scale.
Managed antivirus and endpoint monitoring is part of Plan 2 and Plan 3. This gives us visibility into threats, suspicious behaviour, infections, and device issues before they become major problems.
Human risk management
One of the biggest risks to any business now is still human error. Helps staff identify phishing emails, fake invoices, credential theft attempts, QR phishing, malicious links, and social engineering.
Email & collaboration security
Microsoft's built-in filtering is good, but for businesses handling operational, supplier, and financial information we add another security layer on top. Significantly stronger protection against phishing, malicious attachments, fake login pages, account takeovers, business email compromise, and internal email threats.
Data protection
A lot of businesses assume Microsoft automatically backs everything up forever. That's not actually how it works. Protects against accidental deletion, ransomware, mailbox corruption, retention issues, and user error.
Brand consistency
A centrally managed email signature platform that keeps all staff signatures consistent across all devices automatically. Easy to update company-wide, add promotional banners, and automatically onboard new staff signatures.
As discussed onsite, here's a bit more information about Amplor. A lot of the operational and workflow conversations we had with you align very closely with what we're building.
AI Operations & Business Intelligence
Amplor is our AI operations and business intelligence platform, currently being developed internally to help businesses centralise operational knowledge, automate repetitive admin tasks, improve document workflows, improve process visibility, and provide internal AI-powered assistance to teams.
The conversations we had around documentation, process consistency, visibility, operational bottlenecks, and reducing repetitive admin work line up almost exactly with what Amplor is being built to solve.
Visit AmplorWe want the environment to feel stable, documented, secure, easy to work with, and properly managed moving forward. We keep things practical, approachable, and explained in plain English rather than overcomplicating things with technical jargon. The goal is to become a long-term partner to the business, not just another external provider fixing tickets as they appear.
A practical sequence to get Castlewood Kitchens onto a proactive, properly managed IT footing. We'll walk through each step together as we go.
Choose between Plan 2 (our minimum recommendation) and Plan 3 (with regular onsite included).
We pencil in the start date, the initial onsite audit, and credential handover sessions with key staff.
Everything documented properly into our system so nothing relies on someone remembering it.
Using the 20 Hour Support Block to address the biggest pain points without stopping for approvals every few hours.
Logical structure, sensible permissions, working shared calendars, plus staff training where useful.
Roll out training, phishing simulations, Check Point Harmony, and Microsoft 365 backups.
From here it's proactive management, monitoring, and a real partnership rather than reactive ticketing.