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Services · Admin
Fractional IT director
The strategic conversation most small businesses never get: what to spend, what to retire, what the real risks are, and what to ignore.£1,800 to £6,000/month
What fractional it director actually means
A fractional IT director is a senior technology leader who works for you a day or two a month, rather than as a full time hire you cannot justify. It is the strategic conversation most small and mid-sized businesses never get to have: what your IT should cost, what to keep and what to retire, where the real risks sit, and which of the things being sold to you are worth buying and which are noise. The seniority of an IT director, at a fraction of the salary, and only when you need it.
Below a certain size a business cannot justify a full time IT director on six figures, but that does not mean it has stopped needing the thinking one provides. So the decisions get made by default: by whichever supplier shouts loudest, by the owner guessing, or by nobody, until something breaks or a bill arrives that nobody planned for. Technology quietly becomes a series of reactions rather than a plan, and the costs and the risks pile up out of sight.
The value is independent judgement from someone who has run IT at a serious scale and has no product to sell you. A fractional IT director plans the budget, reviews the suppliers, keeps a rolling three-year roadmap, and sits firmly on your side of the table, including when the supplier being challenged is us. The point is not more technology; it is the right technology, bought at the right time for the right reasons, and the confidence that someone senior is actually watching the whole picture.
See it work
Rather than take our word for it
Run a health check and see the kind of problems we catch and fix remotely.
Try one:
CheckingReception PC · Windows 11
A scripted demonstration on sample kit. On yours we run a real remote check and send you the plain-English findings before touching anything.
How it helps your business
The clearest benefit is money spent well instead of spent reactively. Most small businesses either underspend on IT until something fails or overspend on what a salesperson talked them into, and both are expensive. Someone senior planning the budget and challenging the suppliers typically saves more than the service costs, by cutting what is not earning its keep, timing the necessary spending, and stopping the impulse purchases before they happen.
The second is that the real risks get seen and handled before they bite. An experienced director knows where the danger actually sits, the ageing server with no tested backup, the security hole nobody owns, the single supplier the whole business quietly depends on, and deals with it deliberately rather than discovering it the hard way. For a lot of businesses this is the first time anyone has looked at the whole picture with the experience to know what matters.
The third is simply that the owner stops having to be the accidental IT department. Making technology decisions you are not equipped to make, on top of running the business, is a real and lonely burden, and it is where costly mistakes get made. Handing that to someone who does it for a living, and who reports in plain English rather than jargon, gives you back both the headspace and the confidence that it is being done properly.
What is included
- A day or two a month from someone who has run enterprise IT
- Budget planning, supplier review and a rolling three year roadmap
- Sits on your side of the table, including when the supplier being challenged is us
- Board and insurer facing reporting where you need it
Real examples
Illustrative cases. Tap one to see what happened and what could have been done.
The business one failure away from disaster
The case
A mid-sized firm was running on an ageing server with backups nobody had ever tested, a danger the owner did not fully grasp, while a supplier pushed shiny projects instead.
What could have been done
Reviewing the whole picture and making replacing the server and proving the backups the first priority means that when a drive fails a few months later they are back up in hours, instead of facing the ruinous, possibly fatal, loss it would have been before.
The stack full of things nobody used
The case
A professional-services business had accumulated a drawer full of software subscriptions and support contracts, signed up to reactively and never reviewed, and was paying handsomely for tools half the staff did not use.
What could have been done
Going through the lot, cutting what is not earning its place, renegotiating what is, and setting a simple annual review, saves more than the fractional director's time costs and puts the remaining spend on things that matter.
Ready to sort fractional it director?
Tell us what is going wrong and we will come back with a fixed price in writing, after a short scoping call. No obligation, and no jargon.
Common questions about fractional it director
How much does fractional it director cost?
£1,800 to £6,000/month. We agree the exact number before any work starts, so there are no open ended day rates.
How long does fractional it director take?
Most work of this kind is live within three to four weeks. We give you a date before we begin and tell you early if anything threatens it.
Do you work outside Edinburgh?
Yes. We are based in Edinburgh and work on site across the Lothians, Fife and Glasgow, and remotely across the United Kingdom.
Fractional IT director in your area
Same service, same prices, wherever you are. On site across central Scotland and remotely across the rest of the UK.
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