What is a fractional IT director?

A senior IT leader who works with your business part-time, on a retained basis, giving you the strategic oversight of an IT director without the salary of one.

How is that different from an MSP?

An MSP delivers day-to-day support. A fractional IT director sits on your side of the table, deciding what you should buy, checking the MSP is delivering, and owning the strategy.

How much does a fractional IT director cost?

From £350 to £1,200 per month depending on how much time you need, with no VAT to add and no long contract.

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Fractional IT Director · vCIO

A Head of IT, without the salary.

Most small businesses need senior technology judgement a few days a month, not a full-time director on £115,000. That is exactly what this is.

Start with a free IT health check How it works

The gap this fills

Technology is now one of the biggest line items and biggest risks in a small business, but the people making those decisions are usually a director who is guessing, or a supplier with something to sell. Neither is a good place to make a five-figure decision from.

Recent research found that around three quarters of UK SMEs rank technology investment as a top strategic priority, while fewer than one in five have anyone with technology expertise at board level. That gap is where money quietly disappears: renewals nobody challenges, projects that overrun, security assumed rather than checked.

A fractional IT director closes it. You get someone who has actually run an IT function, sitting on your side of the table, for a few hours a month.

What I actually do

Own your IT roadmap, so spending follows a plan rather than whatever breaks next
Review supplier quotes and contracts before you sign them
Hold your MSP or IT provider to account on what they are delivering
Set and monitor an IT budget you can defend to a board or bank
Assess security and compliance risk honestly, and prioritise what matters
Support and mentor your existing IT person, rather than replacing them
Attend board or management meetings to translate technology into business terms
Plan projects properly before they start, and stay accountable while they run

How this differs from an MSP

An MSP delivers the service: the helpdesk, the monitoring, the patching. That is a genuinely useful thing to buy, and I am not competing with it.

What an MSP cannot do is objectively tell you whether you should be buying from an MSP, or whether the one you have is any good. I sit on your side of that relationship. Several of my clients keep their MSP and hire me to manage it.

Who this suits

Businesses of roughly 10 to 100 staff, usually with either no IT person or one capable person who has nobody senior to check their thinking against. It works especially well if you are growing quickly, have just been through an acquisition, are facing client security questionnaires, or have a big system decision coming up.

What it costs

£350 – £1,200 per month — depending on how much time you need.

For context, a permanent IT director costs upwards of £115,000 once you add pension and holiday, and specialist fractional firms typically start around £1,800 a month. This sits deliberately below that, because I am one person working with a small number of clients rather than a consultancy with overheads. No VAT to add, and it is rolling monthly — cancel whenever you like.

Where to start

Nobody should commit to a retainer with someone they have never worked with. Start with the free IT health check. You get a genuine view of where you stand, and we both find out whether we work well together.

Response times: within 2 hours during working hours, and never more than 24 hours.

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