Your IT department exists. One capability is missing, not one headcount.
Senior reinforcement on a bounded scope: the migration nobody has done before, the decision that needs someone with no stake in it, the role that is vacant while you hire. Fixed fee, and the exit is written in.
Two roles, two halves of the estate
Fractional CIO, looking inward
The systems your own company runs on: infrastructure, business applications, vendors, integrations, security posture. The estate your employees depend on to do their jobs.
Fractional CTO, looking outward
The product you sell, the engineering that builds it, the architecture behind it. If that is the question, the fractional CTO page is the right one.
Below roughly a hundred people these are usually the same job and the distinction is academic. Above it, they stop being interchangeable, and hiring for one when you needed the other is an expensive way to find out.
When this gets called in
Four situations, and they all wait too long.
None of them fits a permanent requisition, which is precisely why they sit unaddressed for a year while the cost compounds.
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A key person left and took the system with them
One engineer understood the integration that everything depends on. Their handover was two weeks and a folder. Now every change to that system is a negotiation with risk, and hiring takes four months you do not have.
The person who knew - 02
A decision needs someone with no stake in the outcome
A vendor is proposing a migration. Your integrator says it is necessary. Both are paid by the answer being yes. What is missing is a senior read from someone whose invoice does not depend on which way it goes.
A disinterested read - 03
A programme is late and nobody will say why
Status is green in the steering committee and the delivery date keeps moving. Usually the problem is not capability but a scope that was never closed, and it takes someone from outside the reporting line to say so out loud.
Someone outside the reporting line - 04
One capability is missing, not one headcount
You do not need another generalist. You need someone who has migrated this class of system before, for four months, and then leaves. That shape does not fit a permanent requisition, which is why the need sits unaddressed for a year.
A four-month shape
One column has four entries. That is the whole engagement: fill it, document it, and leave.
Everyone advising you is paid by the answer
The vendor proposing the migration earns from the migration. The integrator confirming it earns from the implementation. The internal team may be right and may also be defending a decision they made two years ago. None of them is acting badly. They are simply not positioned to give you a disinterested answer.
What is missing is someone senior enough to read the technical proposal properly, with no revenue riding on the conclusion. Our assessment engagements are priced and delivered as their own deliverable for exactly this reason: if the recommendation is to renegotiate rather than rebuild, we get paid the same. That is the only structure in which the advice is worth anything.
In practice this often starts as technical due diligence, and continues as legacy modernization if the answer turns out to be yes.
Five answers, including where we are the wrong choice.
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What is the difference between this and a fractional CTO?
The two roles look at different halves of the estate, and the distinction matters for whether we are the right call. A CTO looks outward at the product: what you sell, the engineering that builds it, the architecture behind it. A CIO looks inward at the systems the company runs on: infrastructure, business applications, vendors, integrations, security posture. If your question is about the software your customers use, that is our fractional CTO work. If it is about the systems your own people depend on, it is this page. Plenty of situations involve both, and in a company under a hundred people they are usually the same job.
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Are you replacing our CIO or reporting to them?
Almost always the latter, and it works better that way. The usual arrangement is reinforcement: your IT leadership keeps the mandate and the relationships, and we bring one capability they are missing for a defined period. Where a role is genuinely vacant we can hold it on an interim basis, but then the engagement is explicitly about handing it to a permanent hire, and that hire is the deliverable rather than an afterthought.
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Three people. Can you handle enterprise scale?
On a bounded scope, yes, and that qualifier is the whole answer. Our track record inside corporate IT includes rebuilding more than ten business-critical applications for a multi-country distribution group and delivering national addressing infrastructure for a government development agency. What we do not do is staff a large programme with bodies. If your need is twelve engineers for eighteen months, a systems integrator is the right answer and we will say so rather than take the work and subcontract it.
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How do we know you will actually leave?
Because the exit is written into the engagement rather than promised. Documentation, one of your people trained, credentials transferred. We have handed a product ownership role to an internal hire and treated that as the point of the engagement. And measured in July 2026 across roughly thirty engagements since 2019, no client has ever had to call us back on an emergency after handover. That is a first-party number, so treat it as a claim we are accountable for rather than an audited fact, and it is the one we would most want raised in a reference call.
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Can you sign our procurement paperwork?
Yes, and we come with the documents a procurement file normally asks for: professional indemnity and general liability insurance certificates, tax and social security clearance, current company registration. Our engagements are governed by French law, which is the one clause a US buyer should read rather than skim, and it is negotiable where it genuinely matters.
Twenty minutes with an engineer, not an account manager.
Describe the gap. We will say whether we have closed one like it, what it would take, and if a systems integrator or a permanent hire is the better answer, that is what you will hear.