I have been spending a lot of time talking about “progressive business and technology solutions”, but what does this really mean? What is a Virtual CIO? How does it help the small- to medium-sized business?

In other words, how does a Virtual CIO increase your business’ competitiveness in today’s marketplace?

Let’s first understand why a business would bring on a CIO. According to one of our other articles, a Chief Information Officer is “is the person in an organization who is responsible for the information technology and computer systems that support enterprise goals. As information technology and systems have become more important, the CIO has come to be viewed in many organizations as a key contributor in formulating strategic goals … Typically, a CIO is involved with analyzing and reworking existing business processes, with identifying and developing the capability to use new tools, with reshaping the enterprise’s physical infrastructure and network access, and with identifying and exploiting the enterprise’s knowledge resources.” ^[READ]

That’s quite a bit of information to soak up, but essentially at a fifty-thousand foot view this is precisely what a CIO does inside of an organization.

But do most SMBs need that kind of individual?

Here are three types of businesses that could benefit from this type of role:

• Start-up businesses that are just rolling into the marketplace. You’ve got a hot product and it’s going to be huge! Now it’s time to get started on the road to building some dollar value into your company. IT is one of the business foundational layers, so it’s one of the logical places to begin making sure that you’re getting started on the right track.
• Start-up businesses that are preparing to enter their growth stage. You’ve proven your ideas and you have a team of top-tier talent that brought you there. Now it’s time to step back and take a look. What corners were cut to get where you’re at?  You’ve got revenue and your sales are really taking off. But can the rest of the business scale or will you be left floundering while your competition catches up?
• Growth businesses that are looking to enter maturation or acquisition stages. Your business has taken off like a rocket and now you need to start thinking about what comes next. You’re being courted by large enterprises looking to add your company to their portfolio. It’s time to shore up your business to peak efficiency and get everything running smoothly for a hand-off so that you and your shareholders can receive maximum returns on their investments.
• You are a large enterprise and you’ve acquired smaller competitors for augmentative purposes. You’re buying up companies and augmenting your portfolio. Pre- and post-acquisition requires due diligence to make sure that you are investing your dollars wisely.

A CIO would be a fantastic way to address each of these circumstances. Someone with the knowledge and expertise in several diverse areas of business and technology to bridge those communication gaps between management and IT. But, if you’re a start-up, or a growth company, you probably are not going to be able to afford the average CIO salary which is around $165,000 (CIO Insight magazine, April 2008). If you could, you would.

If you could, what about on-boarding and retention? Most top-tier executives probably aren’t going to be interested in joining a start-up or growth company without a significantly more valuable compensation package, including stock options, bonuses, and wider influence boundaries. There are also cultural changes associated with bringing on a CIO, and the wrong choice can be costly due to entrenchment. Lastly, does your start-up or growth business need a full time executive manager for IT concerns?

• Your company needs a CIO, but not full time. You really only need a CIO for a fifth of the time.
• Your company needs a CIO, but can’t afford the costs. You really would like to pay a CIO for only a fifth of what they’d demand as compensation.

What if these two concerns could be met? What if you could bring on that type of person, but only for one day per week for a fifth of the cost (or less)?

This is where Bradman Group comes in. We are a technology management think-tank that brings the type of executive experience that is needed for these types of businesses. We bring the expertise in technology, business, and leadership that can help your organization prepare for growth from the start, or we can step in mid-stream and help you perfect what you’ve already invested so much time and energy into.

Bradman Group’s Virtual CIO (VCIO) program has a proven track record for our clients and a philosophy that is vetted and works. We deliver strategy and leadership by the day, as our clients need. We are skilled negotiators, technologists, managers, and leaders. We do this because we’ve seen what poorly implemented management can wrought to a start-up and we’ve seen the successes of doing things correctly.

One of our clients whom engaged us early on has grown from a two-person operation to an international company with revenues in the millions in less than three years.

Another case where we were involved resulted in a growth company being acquired by a larger enterprise where we were told, directly, that the quality of the technology in use and its management resulted in adding over seven-figures of real dollar value to the offer price.

This advantage, the Virtual Advantage, to the SMB, start-up, and growth companies are numerous: leadership and strategy that is sound, cogent, and most importantly, extremely cost effective in both the short- and long-term.

Contact us today to find out more about how we can help your organization achieve its maximum potential.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 at 3:04 pm and is filed under Executive Briefs, Virtual CIO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.