Managed IT Support Vancouver: Saving 17 Hours a Week and Receiving a 2.84x ROI

Now picture doing all of that with no integration between your job management software, your accounting platform, and your field staff’s devices. No real-time job costing, no inventory tracking, payroll done by hand, and a cybersecurity posture that would fail more than half the checks on a standard audit.

That was the reality when Tursa Group, a Vancouver-area managed IT support and digital transformation consultancy, completed an IT assessment for a BC-based electrical contracting business that was a 5-person company serving a wide regional area, including renewable energy projects, high-end custom home integrations, and commercial electrical work.

The assessment produced a fully documented technology roadmap with real financials. The outcome:

This was from efficiency gains alone, before any revenue growth is factored in.

Here’s exactly what was done, what it cost, and what came back, so you can see what a real managed IT support engagement looks like for a Vancouver small business.

This business was not struggling by any outward measure. It had strong client reviews, a unique competitive position as the only certified generator authorized dealer within 250 km, and a growing book of renewable energy work.

But internally, the technology picture was fragmented. The owner was handling most initial site inspections, quotes, and office administration manually. The team used personal phones for site photos and client communication. There was no network infrastructure at the shop. Payroll was processed by hand out of QuickBooks. Projects were managed in one tool, quotes in another — with no integration between either of them and the accounting system.

Key gaps identified by Tursa Group:

• Job management, quoting, and accounting were three separate, disconnected systems with no data flow between them
• All office and admin work was completed manually by the owner, estimated at a minimum of 1 full FTE in wasted labour
• No inventory tracking system was in place
• Staff were using personal devices in the field with no company mobile device management
• Cybersecurity risk was rated medium to high, failing 11 of 21 criteria on a NIST framework audit
• Google Workspace was underutilized despite already being licensed and paid for

The single highest-impact recommendation in this engagement was replacing the disconnected job management and quoting tools with a purpose-built field service management platform.

Tursa Group evaluated three leading platforms: ServiceTitan, Simpro, and Housecall Pro, against the specific needs of a trades business doing both service work and larger commercial and renewable energy projects.

The recommendation: Simpro.

Simpro is purpose-built for the electrical, HVAC, plumbing, and solar industries. It combines quoting, estimating, scheduling, dispatch, job costing, inventory management, and customer relationship management in a single platform. Its mobile app allows field staff to capture job photos, update inventory, close jobs, collect payment on-site, and access job history in real time from a tablet in the field.

Simpro integrates natively with Xero for accounting, enabling a two-way sync that eliminates the manual data entry between operations and finance that was consuming hours of the owner’s week.

For a 5-person team (1 office, 4 field), the monthly software cost came to approximately $314.60/month, which is a fraction of the cost of the 1 full-time employee in administrative inefficiency it was replacing.

For a deeper look at field service management software for trades, the right platform depends on whether your business primarily does service calls, larger projects, or a mix of both. Simpro was recommended here because of its strength in handling both workflows within one system.

What Does Managed IT Support Cost for a Vancouver-Based Trades Business

Here is the complete cost estimate breakdown from this case study:

Managed IT Support ROI

Here is the projected labour savings

Result: Increased revenue without increasing office headcount.

Return on investment from labour savings alone

2.84x in year one, and over six years, the cumulative labour savings project to $752,700. When projected revenue growth from the capacity freed up by these efficiencies is factored in at a conservative gross margin, the total ROI picture grows significantly further.

How Should a Vancouver Trades Business Connect Job Management Software With Accounting?

One of the most expensive problems in any trades business is the gap between how jobs are managed and how the books are kept. When these systems don’t communicate, someone manually bridges them.

In this engagement, the recommended approach was a three-platform integrated stack:

Simpro → Xero → Wagepoint

• Simpro handles all field operations: quoting, scheduling, job costing, inventory, invoicing, and reporting
• Xero receives invoice and financial data automatically from Simpro via two-way sync, handling bookkeeping, live bank feeds, and real-time financial reporting
• Wagepoint handles payroll, pulling operational data from Simpro and syncing financial data to Xero

The result: a job is created once in Simpro. Field staff update it in real time from their tablets. When the job closes, the invoice flows to Xero automatically. Payroll pulls from actual time logged. The owner sees profitability by job — in real time, not three months later.

For accounts receivable, automated credit card collection and invoice payment reminders were recommended via Benji Pays. For accounts payable, Dext was recommended to automatically capture vendor invoices and classify expenses, with Plooto handling electronic payments and approval workflows.

With our Vancouver IT support services, our goal is not just to provide assistance when you need it, but also to redefine your IT infrastructure for efficiency.

What Does a Cybersecurity Audit Find in a Typical BC Small Business?

Tursa Group conducted a full cybersecurity assessment against the NIST Cybersecurity Framework with 21 criteria in total.

The result: this business passed only 8 of the 21 criteria and failed 11.

What was already in place: antivirus, anti-malware, multi-factor authentication, individual user accounts (no account sharing), a documented disaster response plan, remote access via encrypted connection, and Cloudflare protecting the website.

The five priority recommendations from Tursa Group:

1. Implement a password manager with 20-character unique passwords (Keeper recommended)
2. Back up QuickBooks Online and Google Workspace (Rewind for QBO, Spanning for Workspace)
3. Implement staff cybersecurity awareness training and phishing simulations (Phishing Box)
4. Add cybersecurity insurance as a rider on general liability coverage
5. Deploy mobile device management for all company and field staff devices

For a cybersecurity audit for small businesses, failing more than half the NIST criteria is not unusual in BC trades companies — particularly those that have grown quickly without a dedicated IT function. Most gaps can be closed within 90 days with the right managed IT support partner.

One of the highest-ROI, lowest-cost wins in this engagement came from Google Workspace — software this business was already paying for and largely ignoring.

What was active: Gmail with filters and labels, Google Calendar, Google Chat, Google Drive and File Stream, Google Docs, Sheets and Slides, Google Meet, and Google Keep.

What was completely unused: YouTube for both internal staff training and external marketing.

For a trades business, this gap matters more than most. The recommendation was to build an internal YouTube channel using unlisted videos to cover standard operating procedures, safety checklists, equipment how-tos, and onboarding guides for new field staff. This creates a lightweight, zero-cost learning management system that scales with the business — accessible on any device, from any job site.

Externally, a well-maintained YouTube channel showcasing completed projects, renewable energy installations, and educational content represents one of the most underutilized owned marketing assets in the trades.

Additional recommendations: configure Google Drive folder permissions by department (so access controls are in place before the team grows), and set up a Synology NAS device for local file backup alongside Drive File Stream.

For cloud workspace setup and migration, the opportunity almost always already exists in the subscription a business is already paying for. It just needs to be properly configured and activated.

What Hardware Does a Growing Trades Business Actually Need to Support Managed IT?

Beyond software, the assessment identified several hardware gaps worth addressing for a business with field staff spread across a large service area.

Equipping field staff with company-managed devices accomplishes two things simultaneously: it unlocks the full operational value of field service management software, and it closes the mobile device management gap identified in the cybersecurity audit — enabling remote wipe of any lost or stolen device.

This is a key principle of managed IT support: hardware, software, and security decisions should be made together, not independently.

What This Means for Your Business

The business in this case study isn’t unusual. Tursa Group sees the same pattern across trades companies and small businesses throughout Vancouver and BC: strong reputation, quality work, growing client demand — but internal systems held together by manual effort and the owner’s time.

The problem with that model isn’t that it fails immediately. It’s that it caps growth. When the owner is the integration layer between disconnected systems, adding revenue means adding burden. The business can’t scale without the owner working more hours.

The managed IT support engagement outlined here costs approximately $9,000 in setup fees and $4,075 per month across all solution areas. The return in year one: 17 hours recovered per week, $150,540 in annual labour savings, and a 2.84x ROI. Field staff who can do their jobs more efficiently on-site. An owner who can finally step back from administration and focus on growth.

If you want to see what this kind of technology assessment would look like for your business, book a free IT consultation with Tursa Group.

Tursa Group is a Vancouver-area technology consulting firm specializing in managed IT support, cybersecurity, software integration, and digital transformation planning for small and medium-sized businesses across BC. Visit www.tursagroup.com to learn more.