CIO & CISO
Your board is making technology decisions without a technology leader in the room.
We step in as your CIO, your CISO, or both interim or fractional, so the board has the technology leadership it needs without waiting 9 months for a permanent hire.
In twenty years of walking into complex, multi-site businesses, we have never failed to give a board the clarity it needed on its technology position.
That track record is why we take the work on and why we're confident enough to be judged on the first
90 days.
Years of technology leadership
at board level
Locations supported across multi-national operations
Employees managed under unified technology strategies
One leader, both capabilities, increasingly required by PE firms
We deliver change with people, not to people. The IT team that's been running your technology knows more about what's really going on than any external assessment will surface alone.
Our role is to bring the strategic lens they don't have, not to replace the operational knowledge they do.
This is for you if any of these sound familiar
The Leadership Vacuum
Your CIO or IT Director has left or should have.
The board is exposed, the IT team is drifting, and you can’t wait six months for a permanent hire.
You need someone credible in the chair within weeks, not months.
The Stalled Integration
You’ve acquired a business and the technology integration is behind schedule.
The DD report identified risks but nobody’s executing on the findings.
Synergies are evaporating while systems stay separate.
Approaching Exit
You’re 12 to 18 months from a sale event and technology is a liability in the data room, not an asset.
Technical debt is undocumented, cybersecurity posture is unclear, and nobody can articulate the technology equity story to a buyer.
Stalled Programme
A major technology programme has lost momentum.
The board has lost confidence in the current approach.
You need someone who’s turned around stalled transformations before, not another consulting report telling you what you already know.
The Capability Gap
Your IT manager is operationally competent but isn’t strategic.
Nobody is connecting technology to the business plan, challenging vendors, or presenting a technology roadmap at board level.
The CEO is spending hours every week on technology decisions they shouldn’t be making.
The Cybersecurity Question
The board is asking questions about cyber risk that nobody in the business can answer confidently.
You don’t need a full-time CISO. You need someone who can build the governance framework, present to the board, and give you and your insurers confidence.
The PE Governance Requirement
Your PE backer has told you technology governance needs strengthening.
The value creation plan includes technology transformation, but there’s no technology leader to own it.
The operating partner is asking questions you can’t answer.
The Vendor Problem
Technology costs are rising every year and nobody can say whether you’re getting value.
Contracts auto renew without challenge. Multiple teams buy overlapping tools.
Your MSP tells you everything is fine, but they’re the ones billing you.
Most businesses have all eight. The savings are a byproduct of seeing the full picture clearly, something an independent technology leader spots in days that an internal team misses for years.
The four phases of a Fractional CIO engagement
Understanding
Within the first week, we’ve met the people who actually run your technology, not just the org chart, the reality.
By day 30, we understand how the business works, where the dependencies are, who carries the knowledge, and what the real pressures look like.
This isn’t an audit done to your team. It’s done with them.
Clarity
The honest picture emerges.
Not just what the technology looks like on paper, but what it means for the business, what’s costing money, what carries risk, what’s holding growth back, and what’s actually working well.
The board starts receiving reporting in language they understand.
Direction
The board-ready technology roadmap lands. Prioritised, costed, sequenced by impact.
Vendor renegotiations are underway. The IT team has a plan they helped shape, which means they’ll actually deliver it.
Delivery
The roadmap stops being a document and becomes work.
Vendor renegotiations complete. The IT team delivers the plan they helped shape, which is why it actually gets delivered.
The board receives reporting it can act on, every cycle. This is where the first 90 days pays off.
Technology leadership is concentrated, accountable work.
Technology leadership across 4,000+ locations and 10,000+ employees in multi-national, PE-backed, and founder-led businesses. Specialising in M&A technology integration, cybersecurity governance, supplier consolidation, and exit readiness.
Published author of Building Your Private AI, Silence the Inner Noise, and The Strategy Bridge, available on Amazon. Non-Executive Director for Digital and Technology at Age UK.
How to Think, Decide, and Lead Beyond the Middle
Written for the middle management leaders doing the job of a system that was never built.
You are not the problem. The system around you is.
Most leadership books assume you’re the problem. You’re not. You’re the keystone: the piece holding both sides in place while the arch was never designed to hold you back. Twelve structural tools to rebuild the system around you. No budget. No permission required.
Common questions
Can a fractional CIO replace a consulting firm?
A consulting firm delivers a report and moves on. A fractional CIO delivers the report, presents it to your board, and stays to execute the recommendations. The difference is accountability. Consultants are measured on deliverables. We are measured on outcomes. Most businesses that have used both tell us the same thing: the consulting report identified the right problems, but nobody was left behind to fix them.
How does a fractional CIO work on a part time basis?
Focused, senior technology leadership on a part time basis delivers more than full time unsupported internal effort. We prioritise ruthlessly: vendor negotiations, board reporting, cybersecurity governance, and the strategic decisions that nobody else in the business is qualified to make. Between sessions, your team executes against a clear plan with direct access to us when decisions need escalating.
Our MSP already gives us strategic advice. Why do we need you?
Your MSP recommends solutions they profit from implementing. Their quarterly business review is a sales conversation dressed as strategy. That’s not a criticism, it’s how their model works. Independent technology leadership has no product to sell, no margin on implementation, and no vendor relationship to protect. We hold your MSP to account on performance, pricing, and whether what they’re recommending is actually what your business needs.
Wondering whether an interim CIO is just a placeholder?
The person who assesses your technology is the person who presents to your board and stays to deliver the changes. There is no handoff to a junior team, no 200-page report from analysts who have never run an IT function. We take operational accountability, not an advisory position.
What does a fractional CIO cost compared to a full-time hire?
A full-time CIO takes three to six months to recruit. Another three months before they understand your business. You carry permanent hiring and severance risk throughout. A fractional engagement gives you the same calibre of leadership at a fraction of the cost, with no recruitment lag and no long-term commitment beyond results.
Choose your engagement model
For Urgent Situations
Interim CIO/CISO
Your CIO has left, an acquisition needs integrating, a transformation has stalled, or the board has lost confidence in technology leadership.
We step in embedded, typically within 1 to 2 weeks, 4 to 5 days a week, for as long as the situation demands.
Day rates, monthly rolling, no long-term lock-in.
PE-backed businesses, serial acquirers,
and companies preparing for an exit.
For Ongoing Leadership
Fractional CIO/CISO
You need a technology leader at the board level, but can’t justify or don’t need, a full-time CIO. Starting at 2 days per month.
Board attendance, technology roadmap, vendor management, cybersecurity governance, and IT team mentoring.
Monthly retainer, no lock-in, emergency availability included.
PE-backed businesses, serial acquirers,
and companies preparing for an exit.
For Acquisitions
Technology Due Diligence
You’re mid-deal and need an independent technology assessment of the target.
Architecture, cybersecurity, integration complexity, cost analysis, and risk register, delivered in 2 to 3 weeks, board-ready.
The same person who conducts the DD can lead the integration post-close. No handoff. No knowledge lost.
PE-backed businesses, serial acquirers.
Every month without strategic technology leadership
of ERP implementations fail
Average cost of a cybersecurity breach (UK, IBM 2024)
of acquirers discover major tech risks post-close that DD should have caught
of PE firms report they cannot fully capture value creation in exit EBITDA
Every month without strategic technology leadership is a month in which vendor contracts auto-renew without challenge, technical debt compounds, cybersecurity posture degrades without governance, and decisions with board-level consequences are made by people without board-level visibility.
These aren’t abstract risks. They’re the cost of not having someone whose job it is to see them coming.
“The Scorecard takes 3 minutes. The conversation takes 20. And in twenty years, we’ve never failed to give a board the clarity it needed.”
You already know something isn't right. The only question is what you do next.
Find out where you stand with a Technology Health Check
The Technology Health Check shows where your technology leadership has gaps, scored across eight dimensions with a one-line recommendation for each.
Book a conversation
A 15 minute conversation about your situation. We will tell you honestly whether we can help and what the first steps would look like. No pitch. No obligation.
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