Transparency
How a quote is put together at OKTO, step by step
We do not publish prices on this site, because a number posted without knowing your environment means nothing. What we can publish is the method: what we ask you, what we look at, what makes the result move, what the document contains and what happens afterwards.
An IT services quote is built in six steps: a first call, a real inventory of the equipment, a review of the state of the systems, the drafting of the proposal, a walkthrough meeting, then the decision. The amount comes after the inventory, never before, because it follows from the device count and the starting condition.
The first call
What we ask you the first time
The first meeting commits you to nothing and it is not there to walk you through our plans. It is there to understand what is going wrong today, what has already been tried, and what would happen to your business if the systems went down on a Tuesday morning. The questions are always the same: how many people work with you, how many devices, are there servers on site, where do your email and files live, who takes care of IT right now, and what made you go looking for a provider at this particular moment. That last question tells us the most. A company shopping because its provider stopped answering does not have the same need as a company that just lost data.
The inventory comes before the number. Always in that order.
What we do not do at that point: give you a number. A figure thrown out on the phone before the inventory is either a useless average or a teaser price that climbs later. We prefer to tell you when you will have it.
The sequence
The six steps, from discovery to proposal
No step gets skipped, even when the company is small. That is exactly what lets us hold the announced amount instead of correcting it three months later.
- First call. A conversation to understand your situation, your size, your constraints and how urgent this really is. No commitment and no number at this stage. We tell you plainly if your need is bigger or smaller than what we do.
- Inventory. A count of what you actually have: workstations, servers, mobile devices, licences, email, files, backups, network gear, line-of-business applications. Most companies discover devices here they had forgotten about, and sometimes accounts belonging to former employees that are still active.
- Review of the current state. We look at what is still supported by its vendor, what has reached end of life, what is genuinely backed up and what is exposed to the internet. This step is why two companies of the same size do not get the same proposal.
- Building the proposal. We pick the plan that matches your real need, add the vCIO module or not, and separate clearly what is recurring from what is a one-time project. Nothing gets buried in the monthly fee to make a project look lighter.
- Presentation meeting. We walk you through the document and answer questions line by line. You leave with the written version, not with a memory of a meeting and a verbal promise.
- Decision and transition. If you accept, we plan the takeover with you. If you decline, the inventory we did stays with you and you can use it elsewhere.
The variables
What makes a price go up or down?
Six items explain nearly every gap between two proposals. None of them is an amount: they are facts observed at your premises that raise or lower the quantity of work to be done.
The number of workstations
Plans are counted per device. It is the simplest variable and the one the inventory settles: we count what exists, not what you believe you have. A laptop forgotten in a drawer does not count; a former employee’s workstation still plugged in does.
Servers and the starting condition
A server needs monitoring and upkeep that a workstation does not. And a fleet where three machines run an end-of-life system, with a backup nobody has ever tested, needs a catch-up project quoted separately from the monthly fee.
The level of security expected
The Base, Standard and Complet plans do not cover the same ground. Base is a safety net with no user support, Standard adds support and maintenance, Complet adds advanced cybersecurity and service guarantees.
Hours of coverage
An office that closes at five and a plant running three shifts are not buying the same availability. Covered hours and the guaranteed response time get chosen according to how much downtime you can absorb, not according to your size.
Sites and travel
Support happens remotely first, but some work calls for someone on site. A company at a single address and a company spread over three do not need the same schedule of planned visits.
Strategic guidance
The virtual CIO module is added to the plan and comes in three levels: Essentiel, Standard and Stratégique. It earns its place when decisions span several years, such as an equipment refresh, a migration or a budget to defend.
A telling example
Why two twenty-workstation companies get different proposals
Same headcount, same industry, two proposals with nothing in common. Here are the points that explain the gap, as they come out of an inventory.
| What the inventory shows | Company A | Company B |
|---|---|---|
| Servers | None. Everything already sits in Microsoft 365. | Two servers on site, one of them out of warranty. |
| Condition of the workstations | Consistent fleet, bought in two waves, up to date. | Machines accumulated over the years, four on an end-of-life system. |
| Backups | In place and successfully restored within the past year. | Configured, never tested. Nobody knows whether they would come back. |
| Security | Two-factor authentication active on every account. | Two-factor authentication on management accounts only. |
| Sites and hours | One office, Monday to Friday. | Three addresses, including a warehouse open on Saturdays. |
| What it adds up to | A recurring plan, no groundwork project needed. | A recurring plan, plus a catch-up project quoted separately. |
Company B is not badly run. It simply grew faster than its IT did, which is the most common case there is.
- The length of the agreement, the conditions for ending it and how you get your access back if you leave
The document
What the proposal contains
The document is written to be compared with another provider’s, line by line. If a sentence reads as vague, that is a mistake on our part, not contractual subtlety. We put as much care into describing what is not included as what is, because that is always where the bad surprises hide.
- The picture of your environment as inventoried, with the count of devices and servers retained
- The plan proposed and the reason for that choice, in one sentence a non-technical reader can follow
- The list of what is included, service by service
- The list of what is not included, written in black and white rather than left to interpretation
- The one-time projects we recommend, priced separately from the recurring fee
- What happens if your device count changes during the agreement
No surprises
What we never bill without telling you first
Trust in an IT services relationship is decided on the second invoice, not the first. Here is what will never show up on ours without you having seen it coming.
No hidden onboarding fees
The initial takeover and the rollout of the monitoring tools are described and priced in the proposal. If they are not listed there, it means they are included.
No overrun decided on our own
A project that runs past its scope stops and comes back to you. The extra work happens after your written approval, never before.
No hidden markup on hardware
When we buy equipment or licences for you, the supplier invoice is shown to you. You can also buy it yourself; it makes no difference to our work.
No call billed out of the blue
What your plan covers is covered, full stop. If a request falls outside the scope, we say so before starting, not when the invoice goes out.
Commitment
How long it ties you in, and how you get out
Our managed services agreements are normally signed for twelve months, renewable. That length is not there to hold you captive: it matches the time it takes to absorb the takeover work, stabilize the environment and start getting something out of it. A three-month agreement would force us to bill the setup far higher, and that would serve nobody. One-time projects have no term at all: the scope gets done, the project ends.
Leaving happens through a written notice before the renewal date, with the notice period stated in the agreement. No penalty, no cancellation fee. We hand back the documentation of your environment, the administration passwords, access to the subscriptions opened in your name and the current inventory, then we work with the provider taking over. We have done it in both directions and it goes fine when everyone stays professional.
You leave with the written version, not with a memory of a meeting.
Worth reading before you call us
These pages round out this one and will give you more to go on before you call.
Questions and answers
Common questions about our quotes
Why are there no prices on your website?
How long before we receive the quote?
Do we have to give you access to our systems for the inventory?
Can the amount change after we sign?
Can we start with something other than a monthly plan?
What happens if we turn the proposal down?
Have a quote built for your business
We start with a conversation, we run the inventory, then we hand you a document you can compare line by line with another provider’s. The first meeting commits you to nothing.