Function Black

19/08/2026

Most firms have IT support of some kind. The question is whether it's working in their favour.

Reactive support means someone fixes things when they break. It feels like a reasonable arrangement, especially if nothing has gone seriously wrong yet. The cost of that builds up quietly.

A single major outage can cost more than a full year of managed IT. Take twenty fee earners offline for a morning and you're already into thousands of pounds of lost productivity, before you've paid a penny for the fix.

The contract might say managed, but the day to day tells the truth.

If you want to understand what proactive IT management would look like for your firm, get in touch.

Read the full article: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/functionblack_managedit-itsupport-technology-activity-7495757776858808320-nPSt?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAACmTHtABMIIPyg95yNxIsACvD2ASqY0Qmy4

[email protected] | www.function.black

05/08/2026

IT, AI, tech strategy.

Usually that's a few suppliers and a lot of "not our department."

Here's the seven layers we manage instead. One partner across the lot.

[email protected]

https://function.black/

28/07/2026

Your staff are already using AI. The question is whether you know about it.

68% of UK organisations now report that staff use unapproved AI tools at work. A separate study from CultureAI found that 65% of businesses are still detecting unauthorised AI usage even when they believe they have full visibility. And according to Microsoft's own Cyber Pulse report, 84% of business leaders consider poorly governed AI agents a serious security concern.

This is what's happening right now, in most businesses, across every department.

What we're seeing

We onboard new clients regularly, and the pattern is consistent. Someone in accounts has been pasting client financials into ChatGPT to clean up wording. A marketing person has connected an AI writing tool to the company's SharePoint. Someone in operations is using a free automation tool that pulls data from Teams and emails without anyone in IT being aware.

None of these people are being reckless. They're trying to get work done faster, and the tools are trivially easy to access. Shadow AI isn't driven by bad intentions. It's driven by the fact that free, powerful AI tools are one browser tab away, and most businesses haven't given their people a sanctioned alternative.

That's just the start. The full blog covers the Microsoft 365 connector problem, why removing admin rights doesn't help, the rise of AI agents, and what actually works instead of banning everything.

Read the full piece here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/your-staff-already-using-ai-question-whether-you-know-functionblack-7c1ve/?trackingId=UNcUc3d1STikgiDpzogdXQ%3D%3D

24/07/2026

Your IT ran fine when you were a team of 5. Now you're at 15. Last month there were two outages, a phishing scare, and three new starters still waiting for their laptops. Growth tends to break what used to work.

When a business is small, IT is manageable. A few devices, cloud email, someone internally who can handle the odd issue. It works until it doesn't. The problem is that the point where it stops working tends to arrive quietly. Slower systems you get used to. Security updates that keep getting pushed back. New starters who can't do their job properly on day one because access wasn't ready. None of it looks like a crisis individually.
Together, it's the pattern that precedes one.

We're not a helpdesk you call when something breaks. We monitor systems around the clock, apply security updates on schedule, configure Microsoft 365 for how your business works, make sure new starters are set up and ready from day one and implement AI strategically. IT decisions get made ahead of growth, not in response to it.

Many of the new customers we work with are at exactly this stage. Growth has moved faster than IT has kept up, and the cost of that gap is starting to show. What changes quickly once it's addressed isn't just reliability. It's confidence.

If that sounds familiar, we’d love to chat. Not a pitch, just an honest look at where things are and what it would take to get your technology working properly again.

www.function.black

[email protected]
+44 203 468 3303

Cyber Essentials Plus certified managed IT, Microsoft 365, Copilot and Claude AI services for London businesses. Proactive support, security, and strategy under one fixed monthly fee.