Without a CTO or Chief Architect,
you may be
leaking money
Every midsized company can benefit from a Chief Architect or Chief Technology Officer to prevent complexity or hasty decisions from destroying value. Few can afford one. Our Fractional CTO services and CTO team resources offer an affordable high-value solution.
The traits of a good CTO
A chief technology officer is an expensive resource. A full time CTO can demand a salary of $250,000 or more, which means a fully loaded cost of $300K or greater. They can take months to come up to speed. When will you see a return on that investment? Consider the traits of a successful CTO and ask yourself: do we need someone full time to deliver on them?
The value of a CTO comes from vision, leadership, decision making, and positional authority. You may not need a CTO full time to get those benefits.
- Decision Making – Technology people argue. They argue with business stakeholders, with their own relationship managers, and with each other. A CTO provides the executive decision point to stop the arguments. A CTO or Chief Architect must be able to negotiate, communicate, and understand… but they also must be able to decide and stick to their guns.
- Vision – the business provides a strategy for how they want the company’s value to be created. The CTO envisions how technology will support that company vision. Your organization may already have some good decisions in place. You need a person who can communicate a clear coherent vision.
- Credibility – Your fractional CTO cannot be a developer with delusions of grandeur. Experience is required. Experience in product development, IT engineering, and IT operations. The CTO must be able to present to your board, your customers, and your internal stakeholders with clarity and effectiveness.
- Leadership – This is more than a political skill. Leadership comes through trust, credibility, clarity, persistence and personal magnetism. Your CTO needs to be someone that your technology team can believe in. They have to have earned the respect of their peers and the CxO suite.
- Technical Savvy – your CTO or CA cannot be an accountant or attorney or MBA. They must be a deeply connected technologist: an expert in the field they are leading.
- Positional Authority – It helps to have the word “chief” next to your name. Some folks need to have a person with a higher rank make a decision before they will follow it. This is human nature and a smart CTO or Chief Architect will carefully leverage this fact.
All of these are the traits of a good CTO, but none of them require a full time employee. A part time, or fractional, CTO can provide each and every one of these traits in an organization for FAR less cost than the fully loaded cost of a CTO or Chief Architect.
Rebuild your Enterprise Architecture Function
Many companies and agencies have attempted to build Enterprise Architecture into their way of life. Most have failed. CTO Resources founder Nick Malik has built and rebuilt EA teams in multiple top companies to make them efficient, effective, and aligned to value. See our EA Impact Catalyst offering for more information.
Large Program Oversight
Is your vendor-led IT program doing things correctly? Are they following your standards, integrating in the right places, and using the correct data masters? Or are they creating a fearsome mess that will cost a bucket of cash to fix? CTO Resources can oversee your program and ensure that the system you are buying is the one you want to own.
Detailed Platform Inspection
Every system has weaknesses. Some are known but others are not visible (or you are not told about them). Whether security risks, poorly automated processes, or unnecessary delays in information flows affecting business processes, don’t let these hidden weaknesses rise up to bite you. Use a CTO Resource to find the holes and help you to fix them. Before they bite.
Product Selection
Whether selecting an AI platform, Auth provider or a CRM SaaS, selecting a commercial product to fill an important need is complex and time consuming. It’s also fraught with risk. Many senior IT leaders have lost their job after an ERP or CRM implementation fails. Offload the product selection effort to an expert to save you time and ensure you are protected from decisions that could hurt the company.
What is the problem that you hope to solve?
Request a free consulting session to see if a Fractional CTO is right for you.
Large Consulting Programs Can Benefit
Large scale consulting programs can reap tremendous benefits from a CTO Resource.
- Most very large projects do not have an architect or technology decision maker involved for the duration. These resources are expensive and they are only needed on occasion.
- Highly capable technology professionals are not easily available for part time roles. Your company may struggle to put a highly billable resource onto a part time engagement.
- Your engagement managers and sales engineers may not be sufficiently capable to take on the oversight of a highly complex project for months or years on end.
- Your “Account CTO”, if you have one, may be an expense that your client is not willing to cover. Our costs are low and spread out over the duration of your program.
- Any flaws in the design you provided during the bid process reflect on your company. Having a third party CTO “bless” and, if necessary, improve the design can avoid expensive account issues.
- A CTO Resource is low cost, dedicated to your project, and adds credibility by avoiding the conflicts of interest.