Top 10 SMB Tech Issues: Lack of IT Service Ownership
29 July 2025
Issue 7: Who owns IT in your business?
The problem
In many small businesses, IT responsibility is shared across multiple roles—or worse, nobody owns it outright. Marketing owns the CRM. Ops owns the ordering platform. Finance manages SaaS billing. But when things go wrong, no one’s accountable.
This lack of defined service ownership means tech issues get passed around, fixes are reactive, and long-term improvement falls through the cracks. Everyone assumes someone else will sort it. Until they don’t.
The impact
- Minor problems become major outages because no one took early action
- Ownership gaps lead to shadow IT, unpatched systems, and no end-to-end picture from a monitoring perspective
- Customer issues linger because no team takes full accountability
What good looks like
Clear service ownership doesn’t require a huge IT department. It just needs clarity. Each core service should have a named owner—even if they’re wearing multiple hats. That owner should understand the full picture: the users, the tech stack, the SLAs, and the risks.
Good ownership means:
- Single points of contact for each core system or service
- Defined roles in issue management and resolution
- Ownership over roadmap, performance, and cost
Where to start
- List out your core systems and who actually manages them today
- Assign clear ownership—even if it’s informal at first
- Ensure those owners have the visibility and support to do the role
The takeaway
If nobody owns the service, nobody fixes the problems. SMBs don’t need more IT — they need more accountability. Start small, stay consistent, and make service ownership part of your ops culture.
Want some help to map the overall service landscape? Let’s talk.