In an age of digital transformation, high growth and intense competition, many job roles are being virtualized. This new kind of job role is gaining traction as a cost-effective way to provide smaller companies with the senior experience and expertise of an executive role including CEO, CTO, CIO, GM or Heads of Departments etc.
Your ultimate goal has always been to be strategic and agile with road maps and plans in place, to leverage technology, best practices and streamlined methodologies to increase revenue and decrease expenses so that you can be agile in market, seize opportunities, ride out ebbs and flows and become a leader not a follower.
But is that the case?
Many business and companies get stuck in a rut, continuing to support outdated technologies and practices, which are usually reliant on redundant operational and logistic practices that further hinder performance and financial growth. Strategic planning is non-existent, and you feel like your putting out fires everywhere you look.
Let us focus on Technology for a moment as ‘fire.’ If you are not using the right technology to help you reach those goals mentioned earlier, there’s a good chance a big chunk of your budget is simply going down the drain.
When was the last time you took a good look at which applications and systems you’re actually using and which apps you’re wasting money on because no one is using them, which ones are out support, do you have a website, need an online store, do you even have a website or social media or an all in one digital solution that is agile and can make (and save you) money and generate leads whilst you sleep ?
You might have a great in-house IT team that is terrific at keeping your infrastructure up and running, but it often takes third party IT consultants or a virtual exec to bring a fresh perspective.
An objective “hired gun” is in a much better place to find issues that might have been overlooked and make recommendations about improving or replacing legacy systems and practices. For example
A Virtual C Suite Executive can supply cost effective and strategic value:

   1. Help set strategic priorities, key initiatives, and show ROI
   2. Supply methods and processes to drive change
   3. Offer input on regulatory and compliance matters
   4. Evaluate current team skills and alignment
   5. Manage your day to day technology and strategic direction
   6. Support strategic vendor, customer, and supplier relationships

You may be ready to:
  · Freshen up your Information technology,
  · Streamline and cut unnecessary cost
  · Develop new products or services
  · Set strategic smart goals and plans
  · Ensure your operations are a squeaky clean and running like a well-oiled machine,
  · Sell your business or create an exit Strategy (and we can help with this too!)

But why do you need to ‘bootstrap,’ waste time and try to do everything yourself? Yes, you could find a requirement firm, pay a large chunk of money to them to find candidates, appoint an executive and pay an executive remunerations package. Which could cost $250K plus ( at the lesser end of the scale), and that’s before you start to review and make changes or start down a transformations journey or you could find a virtual C suite exec and have all of those benefits for much less and for that costs almost have a complete digital transformation, website, and online supply chain completed!
Let us look again at our Virtual C Suite Executive from a more strategic point of view:
Developing a strategic technology plan can be a complex and challenging task, and not everyone has the skills to do it effectively.
A seasoned Virtual C Suite Executive will have had the advantage of seeing hundreds of other companies struggling with many of the same challenges as yours, and knows which methodologies, technologies, partners and the like are best for solving specific problems.
Beyond having deep technical expertise and being on top of the latest industry trends, a Virtual C Suite Executive needs to have a good understanding of business management across many varied subjects from Tech to Finance to operations to Logistics and sales.
This is a critical skill that is needed to understand your business goals, turning your goals into a robust, long-term strategic plans that aligns with your company’s unique needs and vision.
What about the costs?
Most small to medium sized businesses (SMB) cannot afford a full-time CIO, CTO, CFO or COO and here is why.
The compensation package for these execs at a large company is around $500k, dipping down to about $150k in smaller organisations. Of course, there is often overhead on top of this in the form of benefits, bonus, and profit sharing.
While pricing structures vary, a Virtual C Suite Executive generally charges based on either an hourly rate or a flat fee, with the latter working as a subscription model where the client pays on a monthly basis.
The hourly rate can vary widely based on your location and a few other factors but starts at $200 an hour and goes up from there.
A subscription service (monthly recurring) can be hard to calculate, but you can expect to pay anywhere from $2k to $10k a month, depending on the size of your organisation, the services you want, and many other factors.
If your business is growing quickly, you’re going to need to do quite a bit of strategic planning to make sure that your organisation can keep up, not to mention your Technology, vendors and teams!
If you would like to dig deeper, take a read of our case studies, blogs and reviews to see how MR &A’s Virtual C Suite Executive Services have helped the likes of AutoGuru, RSPCA Victoria, Tyrepower and others with their digital transformations, websites, security, branding, strategic plans, payments systems and expansion plans, ensuring they had the right technology and the right people and systems in place for future growth and stability.