Usually, by the time someone reaches out to us, important technology decisions are on the table and nobody on the leadership team clearly owns them. The people making them are doing their best with partial information.
It tends to look something like this:
- The organization is growing quickly, and the informal way technology decisions used to get made doesn't hold up anymore.
- You're setting things up for the first time (platforms, security, maybe an office) and want choices that will still make sense in three years.
- Staff have quietly built workarounds for a system everyone dislikes: spreadsheets, double data entry, a shared folder called "FINAL_v3_USE THIS ONE."
- The board, a funder, an auditor, or a partner is asking about AI, cybersecurity, or both, and someone needs a real answer.
- A big platform decision is coming up, and the only advice you're getting is from the vendor.
- Your outsourced IT provider keeps things running, but nobody is thinking about where any of it is headed.
- Whoever set things up has moved on, and you've inherited an environment nobody fully understands.
If a few of those sound familiar, that's the work we do. A fractional CIO puts an experienced technology executive at your leadership table for as much time as the work needs, without the cost or commitment of a full-time hire.
What we actually do
We work with your leadership team to decide what to do about technology, then help make sure it happens. In practice, that's usually some mix of:
- Figuring out what you have. Systems, contracts, who owns what, and which parts are held together with tape.
- Deciding what to keep, fix, replace, consolidate, or retire. That includes the platforms people complain about, which are often fixable.
- Getting more out of vendors and your IT provider. We review their recommendations before you sign and translate between them and leadership.
- Building a roadmap and budget you can explain to your board.
- Setting up practical governance. Who decides what, who owns which systems, and how new tools (including AI tools) get approved.
- Making sensible decisions about AI. Where it's useful, where it's risky, and what needs to be true about your information first.
- Overseeing major projects so the plan survives contact with implementation.
What we don't do: we aren't a help desk, we don't resell software or take vendor commissions, and we won't try to replace an IT provider or internal team that's doing good work. We'll occasionally roll up our sleeves on configuration or integration work when it helps, but we aren't a software development shop.
Who you'd be working with
Every fractional CIO engagement includes two senior advisors. You get two people who know your organization, a built-in second opinion, and no single point of failure when one of us is out.
Abby Clobridge focuses on the leadership side: strategy, governance, knowledge and information management, and AI.
Matt Clobridge focuses on what's happening underneath: Microsoft 365 architecture, security, integrations, and figuring out why a system behaves the way it does.
We're a small, admittedly nerdy team. Everyone at FireOak either has a degree in library and information science or years of work in information-heavy organizations. That turns out to be surprisingly useful when the real problem is that nobody can find anything. The people on your first call are the people who do the work.
What this has looked like
We've been doing this for more than 16 years. Most of our work is covered by NDAs, so no names, but here are a few examples:
An environmental startup went from a small U.S. team to staff in Europe, Africa, and South America within its first six months. We built its IT infrastructure and security program from scratch and chose platforms that would work for the organization then and as it grew. We also helped build a small internal team for hands-on support, while we focused on strategy and fast decisions that wouldn't need to be undone a year later.
A small organization was living with an old Salesforce instance built by people long gone. Nobody knew how to change much of it, so everyone worked around it. Instead of starting from "fix Salesforce," we started from what they actually needed to accomplish. Because we were their fractional CIO and could see across all of their platforms, we found a far simpler way to get there.
An organization facing a year of big changes had a new CRM and donor management platform, a new donation processing tool, a move from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365, and a list of overdue security improvements, all at once. They realized they couldn't manage it alone. We provided the guidance and vendor management to get them through it.
A growth-stage biotech had years of overlapping software and no one clearly owning technology decisions. As fractional CIO on the executive team, we rationalized their application stack, put vendor and decision governance in place, and built an internal knowledge portal that made onboarding easier. In the first year, they cut more than $100,000 in software spending they didn't need.
"FireOak brought order, clarity, and strategy to a chaotic technology environment." — Executive, growth-stage biotechnology company
How it usually starts
- You tell us what's going on. A few sentences in the form below is plenty. No RFP or pitch deck required.
- We talk. Usually about 45 minutes. We'll ask a lot of questions and tell you honestly whether this looks like something we can help with. Sometimes the answer is a smaller engagement than you expected, or a referral to someone better suited.
- If it's a fit, we start by listening. The first stretch of any engagement is about understanding what you have and why, before we recommend changing anything.
Fair warning: we'll tell you what we actually think. Sometimes that's "don't buy that." Sometimes it's "keep the system and fix the process around it." Our longest client relationships have been built on exactly those conversations.
Questions people usually ask first
Will you replace our IT provider or internal team?
No. Most of our clients have an outsourced IT provider, internal IT staff, or both. They keep things running; we help leadership decide where things should go and hold everyone to the plan.
How much of your time do we get?
It depends on what's going on. Involvement usually shifts over time: heavier at the start or during a big decision, lighter when things are running smoothly. We'll talk through what makes sense in the first conversation.
Do we need a crisis or a big project before calling?
No. Some of the most useful work happens before a major decision, when there's still time to make it well.
More answers are in the Fractional CIO FAQ for executives. If you're still deciding whether the model fits, start with the Executive Guide.
Tell us what's going on
A few sentences about your situation is plenty. We read every message ourselves and reply within one to two business days. If you're writing on a Saturday night, you're in good company; plenty of our clients do their best thinking off-hours.
Prefer email? Write to us at [email protected].
