The technology advisor on the buyer’s side of the table.
When you evaluate an MSP once every three years and the vendor does it every day, the table is not level. I spent 25 years on the vendor side of these deals and now work for the companies buying them, across managed IT, cybersecurity, connectivity, cloud, ERP, and AI.
Based in the Piedmont Triad · You work with me, not an account rep · 25 years in the industry
Start here
Four ways to find out where you stand.
Free, instant, and scored. Most advisory firms make you book a call before you learn anything. You get your result on the screen, and you keep it whether or not we ever speak.
Business Technology Scorecard
A structured review of your entire technology position: providers, contracts, security, connectivity, and spend. The broadest of the three and the right starting point if you are not sure where the problem is.
Get your scorecardIT Fitness Check
Score your MSP across responsiveness, strategic guidance, cybersecurity, compliance, contract clarity, and leadership confidence. Best used before a renewal, not after.
Score your providerTelecom & Connectivity Readiness
Score your connectivity and voice position: circuit redundancy, multi-site design, carrier contracts, and whether a single outage can take more than one location offline. The one most companies have never actually checked.
Check your connectivityAI Strategy Readiness
Find out whether your data, processes, and governance can actually support the AI projects being pitched to you, and which use case is the sensible first one.
Check AI readinessThe CIO gap
No CIO?
We’ll sit in that seat for you.
Many growing companies make six- and seven-figure technology decisions without a dedicated technology executive. LevelTech fills that gap: we help you evaluate vendors, cut through the sales noise, and make the right call with no fees, because we are compensated by the supplier you ultimately choose.
Industries we serve
Deepest in construction and manufacturing.
At home across professional services.
The common thread is not the industry. It is a company that runs on technology without anyone internally whose full-time job is evaluating it. Construction and manufacturing get named first because the environments are hardest and most advisors have never worked in them.
Construction & Contracting
Your network moves every time a job starts. Most technology advice assumes it doesn't.
- Job site connectivity, cellular and satellite failover, and temporary circuits
- Multi-site redundancy so one office outage does not take the others down
- Procore, Sage 300 CRE, and Viewpoint decisions made on requirements, not demos
- Rotating crews: fast provisioning and, more importantly, fast offboarding
- Invoice and payment fraud, the attack construction firms actually get hit with
- Bonding, insurance, and owner security questionnaires you have to answer
Manufacturing
Plant floor uptime is the business. The technology decisions around it rarely get the same scrutiny.
- Separating plant floor and office networks without breaking production
- Connectivity between facilities, and what happens when the primary site goes dark
- ERP selection and the honest math on what a migration actually costs
- Legacy equipment that cannot be patched and has to be protected another way
- Customer and supply chain security requirements landing in your inbox
- MSP agreements written for an office, applied to a facility that runs three shifts
Also serving
Why this matters
Nobody in the room has the same depth
on your side of the table.
That is not a criticism of your vendors. Knowing their pricing, their margins, and which contract terms protect them is their job. The problem is that you are doing this once every three years, alongside running the business.
What the vendor optimizes for
- Term length and automatic renewal
- Margin on the products they carry
- Scope written to limit their exposure
- A solution inside their own catalog
- Closing before you compare alternatives
What you actually need
- To know what is negotiable and what is not
- A real comparison across the market
- Scope that covers the gaps you hit in year two
- An answer you can defend to your board
- Time to decide without pressure
What we advise on
Four decisions that are expensive
to get wrong for three years.
Connectivity & Network
Circuits, SD-WAN, redundancy, and multi-site design. Usually the fastest place to find money already being wasted.
Voice & Customer Contact
UCaaS, CCaaS, and VoIP. Compare providers, contracts, and what switching would actually cost in retraining.
Cybersecurity
Where the real gaps are versus where the spend is going. Practical prioritization without a full-time security leader.
Technology Advisory
Managed IT, cloud, ERP, and AI. Second opinions on major decisions, and vendor selection run on your requirements.
What it costs
You don't pay me. Here is who does.
When you select a provider through an engagement, that provider pays a residual, the same way it would pay its own sales team. Your pricing is not marked up to cover it. In most cases it is better than what you would negotiate alone, because I know what the floor looks like.
I will walk through exactly how this works in the first conversation, including where my incentives sit, so you can weigh the advice accordingly.
Doesn't that bias the recommendation?
Fair question, and you should ask it of anyone advising you. I disclose the arrangement up front, the shortlist includes options I am not compensated on, and every recommendation comes in writing with the reasoning attached so you can check the logic yourself.
What if I already like my provider?
Then the useful engagement is a review rather than a search. Plenty of them end with "your current provider is the right fit, here is what to renegotiate at renewal."
How long does it take?
A focused evaluation runs two to four weeks. A full selection with an RFP process runs six to ten, depending on how quickly your team can get to requirements.
Who you actually work with
You get me. Not an account manager assigned to your logo.
I am Darren Barnes. I founded LevelTech after 25 years in technology, including 13 years as Director of Strategic Accounts at a managed services provider. I know how these agreements are priced, where the margin sits, and which terms are negotiable, because I used to write them.
Most of the larger advisory firms have been bought up by private equity over the last five years. They have more people than I do. What they cannot offer is the person who ran your evaluation being the same person who picks up the phone in year two.
Proof
What clients say afterward.
★★★★★
We had worked with the same MSP for more than 20 years and their service had become inconsistent. Neither of us has any background in IT. Darren explained things in very easy-to-understand terms.
★★★★★
They helped us find the right Managed Service Provider for our firm, and the entire process was smooth and efficient. Professional, responsive, and a quick turnaround every step of the way.
★★★★★
What sets Darren apart is not just his technical knowledge, but his ability to listen, understand the bigger picture, and provide guidance that truly fits the needs of the business.
★★★★★
Darren has been a trusted advisor and a reliable resource. What has always impressed me is his ability to bridge the gap between technology and business.
★★★★★
Every review on this page came from a client who paid LevelTech nothing.
White papers
Longer-form analysis.
Written for decision-makers who want the reasoning, not the summary.
When the Vendor Holds the Leverage
What a software licensing enforcement action against a mid-market manufacturer reveals about the renewal terms most companies sign without modeling.
The Multi-Site Redundancy Problem
Why a single internet hub is the most common and most overlooked point of failure in distributed organizations, and what the alternatives actually cost.
Reading a Managed Services Agreement
Term, auto-renewal, notice windows, rate escalators, scope exclusions, and what happens to your data if you leave. Clause by clause.
Next step
Thirty minutes, and you will know whether this is worth continuing.
- No deck, no discovery script
- Bring your current contract if you have it handy
- You will leave with at least one thing you can act on
- If LevelTech is not the right fit, I will say so on the call