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Fractional CIO for an IT department that exists: one capability is missing, not one headcount.

For IT leaders in companies of a hundred people or more, in Europe or running European operations from the US or the UK. Senior reinforcement on a bounded scope: the migration nobody on your team has run, the decision that needs someone with no stake in it, the seat that is empty while you hire.

Tell us about your projectReply within 48 hoursFractional CIO or fractional CTO?
  • Fixed fee on a written scope
  • You keep the mandate
  • The exit is in the contract
Two engineers working through an architecture diagram on a whiteboard (illustration photo)

What is a fractional CIO?

A senior IT leader who works part time for a company that already has an IT department, on a defined mandate: the systems the company runs on, its vendors, integrations, infrastructure and security posture. Your IT leadership keeps the mandate; the fractional CIO brings the capability that is missing, then hands back.

When the seat itself is empty, the same engagement becomes an interim CIO mandate: we hold the role while you recruit, and the permanent hire, briefed and handed the documentation, is the deliverable.

For a company with European operations, the inward half of the estate now carries engineering decisions that regulators look at: where each vendor hosts personal data, which sub-processors sit behind it, which contract covers each flow. A fractional CIO based inside the jurisdiction settles those as part of the vendor decision, not in a questionnaire afterwards.

Four situations your IT team knows, and that wait too long.

None of them fits a permanent requisition, which is precisely why they sit unaddressed for a year while the cost compounds.

  • A key person left and took the system with them.One engineer understood the integration everything depends on. The handover was two weeks and a folder, and hiring takes four months you do not have.
  • A decision needs someone with no stake in the outcome.A vendor proposes a migration and your integrator says it is necessary. Both are paid by the answer being yes.
  • A program is late and nobody will say why.Status is green in the steering committee and the date keeps moving. Usually the scope was never closed, and it takes someone outside the reporting line to say so.
  • One capability is missing, not one headcount.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.

One capability, one period, written down. That is the whole engagement: fill the gap, document it, and leave.

Fractional CIO, interim CIO, integrator or a hire: which one your gap calls for.

A fractional CIO, an interim CIO, a systems integrator and a permanent hire, compared on four criteria
A fractional CIO, an interim CIO, a systems integrator and a permanent hire, compared on four criteriaFractional CIOInterim CIOSystems integratorPermanent hire
What you getOne missing capability, part timeThe vacant seat held full timeA team staffed on a large programA person on the payroll
Who holds the mandateYour IT leadershipThe interim, until the hire arrivesThe program contractThe person you hired
How it endsDocumented handover, one person trainedThe permanent hire takes over, briefedWhen the program closesA notice period
Right whenThe gap is one skill for a few monthsThe role is empty and hiring takes monthsYou need twelve engineers for eighteen monthsThe capability is needed every day, for years

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. Your internal team may be right, and may also be defending a decision it made two years ago. Nobody is acting badly; nobody is positioned to give you a disinterested answer.

Start with technical due diligence
  • An assessment priced on its ownIf the recommendation is to renegotiate rather than rebuild, we are paid the same. It is the only structure in which the advice is worth anything.
  • Then, if the answer is yesThe same people run the modernization, or the automation when the real cost is people moving data by hand.

10+business applications rebuilt, one at a time

CFAO engagement, case studies page

CFAO, international distribution group

More than ten applications rebuilt, one wave at a time.

The problem
Infrastructure and middleware that had reached end of support across several countries, and management applications the business ran on, with no room for a single high-risk cutover.
What was delivered
Infrastructure modernized and the applications rebuilt one at a time, wave after wave. Hosting consolidated onto a unified cloud, which moved a category of operational risk to a provider contractually accountable for it.
Read the case studies

What you sign for a fractional CIO, in short.

Scope
One capability, one period, written down before the start. A new request is costed and decided, it does not drift in.
Price
A fixed fee set by the technical due diligence. If our estimate turns out wrong, the overrun is ours.
Mandate
Your IT leadership keeps it. We report to it, and your vendors keep one point of contact.
Procurement
Insurance certificates, tax and social security clearance and company registration supplied. French law, negotiable where it genuinely matters.
Exit
Documentation, one of your people trained, every credential transferred. Written in, not offered at the end.
How we work, and the limit of each commitment

Who works alongside your IT team, and on what.

On an engagement inside an IT department, the pair is Laurent and Clairmont: one takes the decisions and the steering, the other the infrastructure and integrations. Laurent started inside the IT departments of media, telecoms and banking companies, which is why he reads a vendor proposal the way your team does. Measured in July 2026, across every engagement delivered since 2019: no client has had to call us back on an emergency after handover. The few follow-on contracts extended a warranty or widened the knowledge transfer, never to repair something we had left behind.

The team, and the engagements they ran
  • Laurent Tulpan, founder of Coeur du WebLaurent, founder and CTOHolds the missing capability with your IT leadership, challenges vendor proposals, writes the decisions down.
  • Clairmont, technical leadClairmont, technical leadInfrastructure, middleware and integrations: the migration plan, the waves and the tested rollback.

Scale, cost, exit, paperwork: what IT leaders ask us.

What is the difference between a fractional CIO and a fractional CTO?

The two roles look at different halves of the estate.

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. Below roughly a hundred people, they are usually the same job.

Are you replacing our CIO or reporting to them?

Almost always the latter, and it works better that way. 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.

How much does a fractional CIO cost?

We do not sell days, so there is no day rate to compare with a staffing agency. The engagement starts with technical due diligence at a fixed, public price, 2000 € to 3000 € excluding VAT (value-added tax) for 2 to 5 days, credited in full if the work continues.

It fixes the scope and the fee of the mandate before anything is signed, and an overrun caused by our own estimate is ours.

Three people. Can you handle enterprise scale?

On a bounded scope, yes, and that qualifier is the whole answer. Our work 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 program 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.

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.

Measured in July 2026 across every engagement since 2019, no client has 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.

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.

When the gap turns out to be something to build.

Custom software, automations and AI, hosted in the EU with the source code in your name, run by the same people.

Build and automate

Software, automations and AI hosted in the EU, sources in your name.

Closer to your case

All services

Describe the gap in your team. 20 minutes, with an engineer.

We will say whether we have closed one like it and what it would take. If a systems integrator or a permanent hire is the better answer, that is what you will hear.

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