Frequently Asked Questions —
UK IT Consultancy, Microsoft 365 & Copilot.

INNOLIGO is a director-led UK IT consultancy for ambitious SMEs across the UK and Europe. We provide fractional CIO/CTO leadership, Microsoft 365 & Azure cost optimisation, AI & Copilot adoption, Microsoft 365 security hardening, cloud & data-centre migration, and UK–EU compliance & resilience — all vendor-neutral and led personally by a senior director. See the full breakdown on our Services page, or learn more about us.

A fractional CIO or CTO gives your business senior technology leadership on a part-time or retained basis. You get the strategic oversight of an experienced IT director — roadmap, budget, vendor management and risk — at a fraction of the cost of a full-time hire. It’s ideal for SMEs that need senior IT direction but aren’t ready for a full-time CIO — read more on our UK IT Consultancy & Fractional CIO page.

Most clients begin with a free 30-minute call to discuss their goals. From there we agree either a clear fixed-scope project (for example a security hardening sprint or a cloud migration) or a flexible monthly retainer (for fractional CIO/CTO advisory) — so you always know exactly what you’re getting and what it costs.

Yes — INNOLIGO is remote-first and works with clients across the UK and Europe, with a remote office in Bracknell, Thames Valley and a registered office in Poole, Dorset. Most engagements run online, with on-site visits arranged when they add value.

Yes. INNOLIGO is vendor-neutral and frequently works alongside in-house teams or your current IT supplier, providing the senior strategy and oversight they may lack. We don’t resell products, so our advice is based only on what genuinely fits your business.

We regularly support financial services, healthcare and NHS, legal (SRA-regulated), manufacturing, retail & eCommerce, and public-sector organisations — bringing practical knowledge of the compliance and security requirements that shape technology decisions in each sector, including NIS2, DORA, FCA and NHS frameworks.

Microsoft Copilot is an AI assistant built into the Microsoft 365 apps your team already uses — Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams. Grounded in your own business data through Microsoft Graph, it drafts documents, summarises meetings and email threads, analyses spreadsheets and answers questions in seconds. See Microsoft’s official Copilot page for feature details, and our Adopt Copilot & AI with Confidence resource for how to roll it out safely.

Microsoft 365 Copilot is a per-user, per-month add-on that sits on top of a qualifying Microsoft 365 licence (such as Business Standard, Business Premium, E3 or E5), so the true per-seat cost is the add-on plus the base licence. There’s also a lighter Copilot Business option aimed at SMEs and a free Copilot Chat tier included with eligible plans. Microsoft re-prices periodically, so the right answer depends on the licences you already hold — see our Microsoft 365 Licensing Guide for current indicative UK pricing.

Deployed well, Copilot typically delivers a meaningful productivity uplift in knowledge-worker roles — drafting emails and proposals, auto-creating decks, summarising meetings and surfacing insights from Excel. The gains are real, but they depend on the right data permissions and governance underneath, and on not paying for seats that won’t be used. A Copilot readiness assessment identifies which teams will benefit before you commit.

Because Copilot can surface anything a user has permission to see, the essentials are: reviewed data permissions and sharing settings, sensible data governance and labelling, a well-designed pilot with measurable goals, and usage policies for staff. Our AI & Copilot Adoption service puts this governance in place — including readiness for the EU AI Act — so you capture the gains safely.

The EU AI Act is the European Union’s framework for regulating AI systems by risk level. UK businesses that sell into the EU, serve EU customers or deploy AI tools within EU operations can fall in scope. For most SMEs adopting tools like Copilot, the practical impact is on governance: knowing what AI you use, how it handles data, and being able to evidence sensible controls. The European Commission’s AI Act page is the authoritative source on scope and timelines. We build AI-Act readiness into every Copilot adoption engagement.

For up to 300 users: Business Basic suits startups and budget-conscious remote-first teams (email, Teams, web apps); Business Standard adds full desktop Office apps for growing SMBs; and Business Premium adds advanced security, Intune device management and data-loss prevention — often the best-value licence for SMEs scaling securely, and the plan Innoligo most frequently recommends for regulated or security-conscious businesses. Larger organisations (300+ users) move to E3 or E5. Full comparison and indicative UK prices are in our Licensing Guide.

Most overspend comes from a handful of repeatable causes: over-provisioned or idle resources, licences that no longer match real usage, pay-as-you-go rates on steady workloads that belong on reserved or savings plans, and unmonitored egress and storage. The quickest wins are right-sizing, switching off what you’re not using, consolidating licences, and putting cost monitoring in place. Our free Microsoft 365 & Azure Cost Calculator shows where your spend is going in about two minutes.

Before any renewal, audit three things: unused or inactive seats (leavers and duplicates are the most common waste), whether each user is on the right plan for what they actually use, and whether an annual commitment or CSP pricing would beat your current rates — especially with Microsoft base-licence prices rising periodically. A pre-renewal review typically pays for itself. As a Microsoft CSP Partner, Innoligo can run this audit for free.

CSP (Cloud Solution Provider) is Microsoft’s partner programme for supplying licences with added support and flexibility. Buying through a CSP partner like Innoligo means you get help choosing and right-sizing plans, flexible monthly or annual terms, and a single point of contact who understands your setup — often at pricing that matches or beats buying direct.

Yes. Microsoft funds several no-cost assessments for eligible UK organisations — covering security, AI readiness, cloud migration and VMware exits — delivered through partners. They’re a low-risk way to get a structured view of your estate before committing to any project. See our guide to the 4 free Microsoft assessments to check eligibility.

A fixed-scope sprint to lock down your Microsoft 365 tenant against the most common attack routes: Conditional Access and MFA enforcement, Microsoft Defender configuration, data-loss prevention (DLP), and a Microsoft Secure Score uplift report. Clear price, clear deliverables, and a measurable improvement in your security posture — and a strong foundation if you’re working towards Cyber Essentials certification. Start with our free security & cost audit.

Very often, yes. Default settings age badly: legacy authentication left enabled, MFA not enforced for all users, over-broad sharing, and Defender features you’re already paying for but never switched on. A security & cost audit identifies these gaps quickly — and frequently finds savings at the same time.

NIS2 is the EU’s updated network and information security directive for essential and important entities; DORA is the EU’s digital operational resilience regulation for financial services. UK firms serving EU customers or operating in EU markets can be in scope. Our UK–EU Compliance & Resilience service starts with a gap assessment, maps NIS2/DORA requirements to specific technical controls, and covers data-residency, backup and continuity planning — assessment-led and jargon-free.

Many SMEs are re-evaluating VMware after licensing changes. The main routes are migrating workloads to Azure (often the most cost-effective exit), moving to an alternative hypervisor, or renegotiating. We plan and run time-boxed VMware-exit projects with enterprise discipline — assessment, Azure landing-zone design, and migration with minimal disruption. Our Cloud Migration ROI Calculator models the real payback before you commit.

Done properly, far less than most teams fear. Every migration starts with an assessment and plan, workloads are moved in waves with rollback points, and cutovers are scheduled around your business. We also handle tenant-to-tenant moves for mergers and acquisitions. The goal is enterprise discipline without enterprise overhead — minimal disruption, clearly communicated.

Use our free Microsoft 365 & Azure Cost Calculator. Enter your user count, current plans and Azure spend, and in about two minutes it shows where your money is going and where the typical savings sit — unused seats, wrong-tier licences and workloads that belong on reserved pricing. No sign-up required. You can cross-check plan features and list prices against Microsoft’s official Business plans page, then book a free call if you’d like us to validate the numbers against your actual tenant.

Our free Cloud Migration ROI Calculator models the business case for moving on-premises or VMware workloads to Azure: current hardware, licensing and power costs versus projected cloud running costs, giving you an indicative payback period before you commit to anything. It pairs well with Microsoft’s own Azure Pricing Calculator for detailed per-service estimates — ours answers “is it worth it?”, Microsoft’s answers “what exactly will it cost?”. For eligible organisations, a Microsoft-funded migration assessment can then firm the numbers up at no cost.