Virtual Chief Information Officer (CIO)

The biggest IT problem for most companies is a lack of resources.  This is true even in the largest of enterprises, but small business owners feel these pressures more.  This is especially the case when IT is needed to operate the business, but isn’t an integral part of the company’s mission – there are just too many other mission-critical priorities in the budget to justify anything more than “just enough” IT.

Crowflight offers virtual CIO services to support your businesses IT needs, without the need to hire a full-time chief information officer.

While some SMBs employ full-time IT help, the days of the jack-of-all-trades “IT guy” are long gone for any responsible business owner – technologies are just so broad and deep that no individual can manage it all.  So the shift for most IT support needs has been a migration to managed service providers.  For hardware and software expenses we’re experiencing a similar, monumental shift to “the cloud”.  These trends have been great enablers for SMB companies because they bring the power of enterprise-level services at an affordable buy-in price.

Most managed services providers in the SMB space do great at filling many of these important, fractional FTE needs:  traditional computer and network maintenance, information security, DR and backup services, compliance and auditing services, and helpdesk support are all examples of the support roles required by most companies. 

But “just keeping the IT lights on” isn’t enough in today’s world, and that’s where virtual CIO services add a lot of value.  The virtual CIO brings a world of experience and insight, and skills that can only be honed after years of making significant, high-level IT decisions.  The virtual CIO understands concepts like budgets, returns on investment, and the correct recovery point and time objectives for your business. 

The virtual CIO not only knows what strategies to apply to keep your business relevant but also how to prioritize current deficiencies within your environment.  In addition, adding a virtual CIO to your IT ranks can help to provide checks and balances that may be missing with your current support arrangements.

Virtual CIO services from Crowflight can be used in any way you see fit and this is a great alternative to choosing a la carte services from us or any other service provider. 

For example, if you need to prioritize DR planning but you also need help to reduce IT expenses, we work toward those goals as your employee and without the need to establish specific engagements for those projects.  Specifically in this example, this means that your company incurs none of the recurring cost-reduction fees that we would otherwise charge under a spend and procurement engagement.  This example also provides a great way to develop basic disaster recovery plans while avoiding the minimum requirements of a full DR planning engagement.

Why do we take this approach? 

To be clear, offering virtual CIO services – especially in this “as your employee” way – is not the most profitable way to run an IT consulting business.  Dedicated engagements with clearly-defined scopes, guaranteed minimums, and secured, long-term revenue streams present better profit margins for us.  But many SMB companies don’t have expansive needs in all areas where a CIO can really help. 

A small company that provides support for emergency services may have a need to develop a comprehensive DR plan, and it probably makes more sense to engage specifically for that project.  But that company’s cost savings and information governance needs may be minimal and that’s where covering those services under a virtual CIO engagement makes better business sense.

But a dance studio that’s expanding to a second site and needs help establishing new contracts and scaling out its student management system probably needs nothing but general virtual CIO services for the duration of that project.

At Crowflight our focus is on building a successful business that delivers unmatched service to great clients.  So we’ve come up with this specific virtual CIO approach because, while less-profitable – it’s the best way to deliver on our mission and vision.

What are the minimums and how does it work?

Virtual CIO services are offered at competitive hourly rates and require a minimum commitment of ten hours per month.  Terms are established for either a set number of months, or to align to the completion of a large project.  Payment terms are net-30 and you have the opportunity to exit the contract, without any further commitment, in the first month.

Most services are provided remotely with interaction occurring over phone calls and web-based meetings.  Time entries are maintained contemporaneously and provided in detail with each monthly billing statement.  When services are required onsite, we never charge for travel time, we only pass along actual costs that are incurred, and we always get approval from you before booking any significant travel expenses.