What Use Is A Virtual IT Director?

Virtual What Now?
A Virtual IT Director or Virtual CIO is an outsourced IT executive who provides IT expertise to organisations that can’t find – or can’t justify – a full-time member of staff. They allowing your organisation to benefit from decades of knowledge experience for a fraction of the cost of employing a permanent IT director or an interim manager.

Being a flexible resource, it means that they can be onsite once a week or more often as needed, and that their time will naturally change

with the profile or stage of a programme or project.

Isn’t That Just Like an Interim Manager?

No. Interim managers don’t offer the same level of flexibility as a virtual CIO or virtual IT director. They are temporary resources that will be working for you full time for a certain period of time. Although Interims can be a good solution in a number of scenarios, they are not a resource that you can flex up and down with business requirements.

Oh this is a Big Company Thing Then?

Organisations of all sizes and types can benefit from Virtual IT Directors, either to help with a specific project, aligning business and IT strategy, get an existing IT function operating in a best practice manner. Some of the ways that clients are using Fifth Step’s Virtual CIO service include:

Business focused service to align your IT to best serve your business requirements
Strategic guidance and alignment, staff development and up-skilling, and IT project management
Systems analysis and service architecture design
Security analysis and system hardening
Performance of due diligence as part of a merger or acquisition
Platform and software recommendation and configuration support
IT Staff training
Expert troubleshooting and support
IT project management and reporting
Executive technology liaison

When Would I Use Such a Service?

Our Virtual IT Director services are designed to be broad and flexible, to support the requirements of your business. These are some of the situations what our Virtual IT directors are helping people with include:

Those companies that presently do not have, or can’t justify a full time IT Director or CIO but have identified a need
Businesses preparing for sale who recognise the need to improve their IT
Businesses looking to perform due diligence as part of merger and acquisition activity
Companies looking to establish offices in a new location, either as part of expansion or relocation
Companies that have a large or specialist project to deliver and don’t have the internal skills
Businesses looking to review the fitness for purpose of their existing IT software or infrastructure
Organisations looking to implement ITIL or a similar governance framework
Those organisations who are looking to update their business strategy and appreciate that maintaining Business and IT alignment is critical to modern business success

Your Next Steps

If you have a need for flexible senior IT resources with decades of experience to help with a specific project to to help your organisation meet its business objectives, then please feel free to ask a question of Fifth Step’s Virtual IT director team who will ensure you’re on the right path.