services
Fractional CIO for UK manufacturers and SMEs.
Strategic IT leadership for operating businesses between £5M and £50M turnover — ERP strategy, vendor management, AI deployment, and cost control.
what this is
A fractional CIO is an experienced IT executive on retainer — typically two to four days per month — accountable for your technology strategy, ERP direction, and IT spend. Sitting on your leadership team without the cost of a full-time hire your business isn’t yet ready for.
for
When does this make sense?
Your ERP project has stalled
Implementation is over time and over budget. The integrator is blaming the business, the business is blaming the integrator. You need someone on your side of the table.
Post-acquisition integration
You've inherited another company's tech stack. Two ERPs, three CRMs, overlapping licences, no documentation.
IT cost growth is outpacing revenue
Your SaaS bill has doubled in two years. You need someone to audit, rationalise, and renegotiate without breaking what works.
You want to deploy AI seriously
Your IT team has never run an AI project. You don't need a chatbot — you need to know where AI actually moves the needle in your operation.
deliverables
What’s included.
01
IT audit and benchmarking
A written read on your current estate: systems, licences, contracts, and the actual cost of IT against revenue. Benchmarked against the comparable bracket for your size, sector, and growth stage — so you know whether you're under-investing, over-paying, or roughly where you should be.
02
ERP strategy and selection
If your ERP is the constraint, this is the work that fixes it. Whether to consolidate, migrate, extend, or stay; which platform; which integrator; and how to run the project without it eating the business. I've lived inside Business Central long enough to tell you honestly when it's the right answer and when it isn't.
03
Vendor management and contract review
A line-by-line look at every IT vendor — what you're paying, what's renewing, what's overlapping, and what can be renegotiated. SaaS spend doubles quietly inside a growing SME; the work here is to take a hard look and recover the margin without breaking what works.
04
AI readiness and deployment plan
Not a slide deck. A written assessment of where AI actually moves your numbers, paired with a 90-day deployment plan for the highest-value use case. Drawn from day-job experience shipping agentic systems into a real operating business — not a desk-research exercise.
05
Cybersecurity and compliance baseline
The practical baseline: identity, access, backups, endpoint, MFA, and an incident response plan you've actually tested. Plus the certification path that fits your customer requirements — Cyber Essentials Plus is the usual starting point, ISO 27001 if your customers are asking for it.
06
Internal IT team development
The hardest hires you'll make and the easiest to get wrong. I help you write the brief, sit on the interview panel, and onboard the person — whether that's a first IT manager, an ERP analyst, or a data engineer. I'd rather help you hire well than become the dependency.
07
Board-level IT reporting
A clean monthly read on what IT is delivering, where the risk sits, and what's coming. Designed to be the IT line on the board pack — not a 40-slide deck no one reads.
process
How it works.
01
Discovery
Two weeks with your IT lead, finance, and operations — auditing systems, contracts, and the actual cost of IT.
02
Roadmap
A written 12-month IT plan tied to business outcomes, prioritised by risk and cost.
03
Implementation
I lead vendor conversations, ERP decisions, and AI deployments from inside your leadership team.
04
Optimisation
Measure, tune, hand over. Engagements typically transition into a lighter governance retainer.
questions
Common questions
- What does a fractional CIO actually do day to day?
- On retainer, I'm accountable for your technology strategy, your ERP direction, and your IT spend. In practice that's leading the difficult vendor conversations, sitting on the leadership team for IT decisions, owning the AI deployment roadmap, and giving the board a written read on technology risk and cost. The day-to-day operational work stays with your IT manager — I'm the executive layer above them, not a replacement for them.
- How is this different from an IT director?
- An IT director runs operations — the helpdesk, the network, the day-to-day vendor relationships. A CIO is strategic and board-facing — what we should buy, what we should retire, and what the technology spend should produce for the business. A fractional CIO sits in the executive role part-time, complementing your existing IT manager rather than replacing them. If you don't yet have an IT manager and you're running on a couple of outsourced contracts, we should talk about whether you need both.
- Do you work with Microsoft Dynamics / Business Central?
- Yes — extensively. I run a multi-tenant Business Central estate as my day job, including Continia for finance automation, HubSpot integration, and post-acquisition data migration. If you're on Business Central, NAV, or Dynamics GP, I've either led the project or rescued one. If you're on a different stack, the playbook still applies — but I'll tell you if I'm not the right person for that specific platform rather than wing it.
- Do you handle cybersecurity and compliance?
- Yes — Cyber Essentials Plus, ISO 27001 readiness, GDPR, and the practical security work that most SMEs neglect: identity, access, backups, and incident response. Day-to-day SOC operation goes through a managed service provider — I'll recommend one I trust and stay accountable for the relationship. I'm not the right person if you're regulated to a level that needs a full-time CISO.
- Can you support an M&A integration?
- Yes — that's often a discrete project alongside the retainer, sometimes instead of it. Typical engagement runs three to six months: tech diligence pre-deal, then ERP, identity, and policy integration post-deal, then transition to BAU. If you're acquiring, the cheapest version of this conversation is before you sign, not after.
- What size of business is this for?
- Typically £5–50M turnover, 30–250 staff, with at least one in-house IT or operations person to work alongside. If you're smaller than that, an MSP plus an MD with strong opinions usually does the job. If you're much larger, you should be hiring a full-time CIO and I can help you specify the role.
Want a fractional CIO who actually understands your operation?
A 30-minute call. No deck, no follow-up nurture sequence. I'll tell you whether I can help.