Fractional IT Leadership — Advisory

What you'll walk away with

• Quarterly Technology & Risk report delivered to board / audit committee
• Monthly strategic checkpoint with leadership
• On-demand advisory on major IT decisions (vendor selection, architecture choices, incident response)
• Standing 12-month IT roadmap, maintained and re-prioritized each quarter

The problem this solves

Your MSP keeps the lights on. That's what they're paid to do. They handle the tickets, the endpoint issues, the password resets. What they don't do is walk into your board meeting, explain your technology risk posture, or tell you that your EQMS/EDMS vendor contract is up for renewal in sixty days and the new terms shift liability or cost in a way that matters.

Leadership at a 50-person biotech still needs a senior IT voice. Someone who owns the 12-month roadmap. Someone who can produce a board-ready Technology and Risk report each quarter — not a slide deck assembled the night before by someone who isn't sure what to include. Someone to call when a major vendor decision is on the table, or when an incident is unfolding and you need to know what it means.

Hiring a full-time CIO doesn't make sense at this scale. The Advisory retainer provides that senior voice, on a fraction of the cost, without adding to headcount.

What the engagement looks like

The rhythm is built around your company's calendar, not a clock. Most months run 8 to 12 hours of active engagement, distributed between scheduled touchpoints and async work in between.

Monthly: A 60-to-90-minute strategic check-in with leadership — CEO, COO, or whoever owns the IT relationship. I come prepared with a standing agenda: roadmap status, open decisions, emerging risks, and anything that's surfaced since last month. After the call, I send a short summary note so nothing falls through the cracks. The roadmap gets re-prioritized as needed when priorities shift.

Quarterly: I prepare and present the full Technology and Risk report to the board or audit committee. This isn't a summary of the monthly check-ins — it's a structured, board-grade document covering technology risk, regulatory posture, vendor landscape, and roadmap progress. Prep, presentation, and follow-up are included. You get the deck in PDF and editable source.

On demand: Advisory on major decisions as they come up — vendor selection, architecture choices, M&A IT diligence, incident response. You're not logging a ticket; you're getting a direct call or message back. A standing Teams or Slack channel with the leadership team makes this easy to invoke without scheduling overhead.

Everything is virtual unless travel is specifically needed for an event.

Who it's most useful for

• Companies that completed the Foundation Assessment and want the roadmap actually driven forward, not filed away
• Companies with an MSP that handles day-to-day operations competently but cannot lead strategy or own regulatory alignment
• Boards and audit committees that need quarterly technology and risk reporting from a named senior advisor — not a status update from the MSP account manager
• Companies approaching commercial launch, M&A activity, or a regulatory milestone where technology decisions carry real consequence

What you'll walk away with

At the end of each quarter, the board gets a Technology and Risk report it can act on. It's built to be presented — not summarized verbally in two minutes before moving on.

Over time, the value compounds. The risk register doesn't reset each quarter; it builds. Each entry gets tracked to resolution, and new risks get added as the company grows and the landscape changes. The roadmap stays current — not a document that was accurate once and is now two events out of date. By the end of the first year, leadership has four quarters of structured technology reporting, a risk register that reflects the company's actual history, and a roadmap they can hand to a new hire, a board member, or an auditor without apologizing for it.

Common questions

Do you replace our MSP? No. I work alongside the MSP, not instead of it. What changes is that someone is now holding them to a proactive standard rather than just reacting to whatever they surface. If the MSP relationship has problems — and sometimes it does — the engagement will surface that clearly. What to do about it is a separate conversation.

What's the minimum commitment? One quarter. The reason isn't contractual protectionism — it's that the first quarter's board report takes real prep work to get right. Committing to a single month and then stopping before the report lands doesn't produce anything useful. One quarter gives the engagement time to show what it's actually worth.

Can we scale up if we need more hours? Yes. The Advisory retainer can step up to the Embedded retainer if the scope grows — deeper operational involvement, larger change initiatives, or a transition period where more hands-on leadership is needed. That upgrade doesn't mean starting over; the roadmap, the risk register, and the working relationship carry forward.

Is this billed hourly or as a flat retainer? It's a retainer with an agreed intensity band — not a time-and-materials arrangement where the invoice is a surprise each month. The specific structure and pricing are covered on the discovery call, because the right band depends on company size, meeting cadence, and how much on-demand advisory is likely to be needed.

Deliverables

• Quarterly report deck (PDF + editable source)
• Monthly check-in summary notes
• Rolling risk register
• Maintained 12-month roadmap