Fractional CTO · Part of Your tech department
A fractional CTO for small businesses, with a team that does the work
What to buy, what to build, what to bin. Someone senior who knows your setup, sits in on the tech meetings, deals with the suppliers and gives you a straight answer.
Most businesses don't need more technology
They need someone to tell them which bits are worth it.
A typical small business pays for a dozen or more subscriptions, some of which do the same job and some of which nobody has logged in to for a year. There's usually a project with a supplier that's been "nearly finished" for months. And there's a list of things the team would love to fix, but nobody has the time or the technical background to work out how.
Big companies have a CTO or an IT director for this. Small ones have the managing director and a lot of guesswork. A fractional CTO fills that gap: the same senior judgement, for a day or two's worth of time a month rather than a full-time salary.
There's a longer explanation in our guide, what is a fractional CTO?
Advice is the easy part
Plenty of fractional CTOs are very good. Most of them advise. They write the plan, recommend the supplier and then hand it back to you to get done, which is fine if you already have developers or an IT team to hand it to.
Most small businesses don't. So the plan goes into a drawer, or it goes to a supplier who quotes for it, and you're back to needing someone technical to tell you whether the quote is any good.
Ours is different in one dull but useful way. Behind the CTO there are developers who build software every week and a sysadmin who looks after Linux servers every day. When the plan says "fix the backups" or "connect the shop to the stock system", the same people do it. If they'd rather it went to someone else, they'll say so and manage them.
What our fractional CTO actually does
A technology plan in plain English
What's risky, what's costing too much, what's worth building or buying, and in what order. Kept up to date as a rolling 12-month plan, not written once and forgotten.
Supplier and licence wrangling
Licences, renewals, contracts and the support tickets that never get answered. We deal with them so you don't have to, and we often find subscriptions you can simply stop paying for.
Someone in the room
We sit in on supplier meetings and tech decisions, ask the awkward questions, and translate in both directions.
Project management
When something needs doing, we run it, whoever is doing the work: our developers, your supplier or a bit of both.
A second opinion on quotes
Is this quote reasonable? Do we really need that upgrade? You get a yes or no and the reason, not a 40-page report.
The team to do it
Custom software, Shopify, open-source tools and Linux servers, built and looked after by the same people who wrote the plan.
Off-the-shelf software, and projects that have stalled
Off-the-shelf software, set up to fit
A lot of the time the right answer is a product that already exists. Accounting, payroll, HR, booking systems, project management: there's usually something good, and building your own would be daft.
The trouble is that these products get bought, half set up and then bent around. Nobody configured them properly, nobody joined them to anything else, and the team quietly went back to spreadsheets. We choose the product with you, set it up properly, move the data across, connect it to your other systems and show people how to use it. When we do recommend building instead, we'll say why. There's more on that in bespoke software vs off the shelf.
Getting a stuck project moving
One of the most common calls we get: a business has paid a supplier for a system, it's late, the supplier has gone quiet, and nobody inside the business knows enough to tell whether it's nearly done or nowhere near. We look at what's actually been built, talk to the supplier in their own language, and either get it finished or give you an honest view on whether to cut your losses.
For example
We took on a local professional services business whose developer had moved on to concentrate on another side of his business. Several web apps, a lot of complicated logic, and every shiny tool going, Laravel Forge included. The first job was understanding what all of it did. The next was a plan: the PHP underneath is out of date, and upgrading it across several apps is now on a roadmap, worked through carefully rather than all at once.
Is this you?
- A business of roughly 10 to 100 people with no IT department, or one person holding it all together on top of the day job.
- A managing director who ends up making technical decisions they don't feel qualified to make.
- Three or four suppliers (an IT support company, a web agency, a hosting company, a freelancer) and nobody in charge of the gaps between them.
- A growing list of things the business would like built or fixed, and no idea what order to do them in.
If you already have a strong in-house team and just need someone senior to lead them, a fractional CTO on their own may be all you need, and we can do that too. If you have one specific problem to untangle rather than an ongoing need, our consulting for people who hate consultants is the better fit. Not sure which? Our guide to fractional CTO vs IT support vs hiring goes through it.
Look first, then plan, then do
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1
A review of everything
Every system, subscription, supplier, server and login. What it does, what it costs, who has the keys and what worries you. Written down in one place you can read.
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2
A written plan
What to fix first, what to stop paying for, what to build, buy or leave alone, and in what order. Short enough that you'll read it.
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3
Then monthly
We work through the plan with you, run the projects, deal with the suppliers and keep the plan up to date. One monthly fee, a month's notice.
Rob, Jason and a small team
Rob Sherwood spent years in B2B publishing and media, from UNIX systems management through to running platform development, before starting Dev Partners with Jason Wheeler in 2011. Jason started out writing firmware for military and aviation hardware and has worked in tech support and large ecommerce operations since. Between us we've seen most of the ways a small business's technology goes wrong, usually from the inside.
Behind us is a small team of developers and a sysadmin who build and run systems every day. So the advice comes from people who'll have to live with the consequences, not someone who writes a report and leaves.
We don't take commission from suppliers. We've no reason to sell you anything, and quite often the advice is to stop paying for something.
What people ask us
A senior technical person who works for your business part time or on a monthly arrangement, rather than as a full-time employee. They help you decide what technology to use, plan projects and deal with suppliers. Ours comes with a team of developers and a sysadmin who can do the work as well.
Most small businesses don't need a full-time one, but they do need someone to make the technical decisions well: what to buy, what to build, which suppliers to trust and what to fix first. Without that, the decisions still get made, usually by whoever shouts loudest or the supplier with the best sales pitch.
Ask what's included after launch (hosting, updates, fixes), who owns the code, how changes will be charged, and what the supplier will hand over if you part ways. Then get someone technical to read the specification. Checking quotes is a normal part of what our fractional CTO does.
Buy when the job is the same in every business, like accounts or payroll. Build when the job is how your business is different, or when you're paying a lot of per-user fees for something you could own. We help you decide, and set up or build whichever it turns out to be.
It depends on the size of the business and how much time the plan needs each month, so we work it out after the first conversation rather than quote a number here. It is one monthly fee with a month's notice, and it costs far less than a full-time CTO or IT director, who would cost a six-figure salary in most of the UK.
Our consulting is for one specific problem: you tell us what's wrong, we untangle it and tell you what to do. The fractional CTO is ongoing. We own the technology plan month after month and see it through, with the team to do the work.
Talk to us about your technology
Tell us what's worrying you and we'll tell you where we'd start.
What systems you have, which suppliers you use, and what keeps going wrong. If a fractional CTO isn't what you need, we'll say so.
What we will cover:
- What we'd look at first
- What a plan for your business would cover
- How the monthly fee would be worked out
- Whether you need us at all
Rather talk now? Book a call or ring 01474 639 089.
We reply within one working day.
