From 2015 - 2025 we provided IT Strategy and Direction to SMEs in Cambridgeshire. This service is no longer offered since March 2026. We are now focused on Integration services. This page is retained for historical information.
After selling Signify, through my consulting business IS Online Ltd, along with other supporting people such as Rick Griffiths, other software development teams and commercial off the shelf software providers, and the staff at the SMEs I worked with, I provided ICT strategy and direction aligned to enabling their success. Effectively I was a fractional Chief Information Officer - a vCIO - of several SMEs in Cambridgeshire. A CIO is not just responsible for the technology, but for enabling the flow of information throughout and across a business. In the modern world, managing information usually involves technology, either for real-time fast communication, or asynchronous communication and storage of information across days, weeks, months and years. Therefore a good CIO requires a blend of understanding of both communication, and technology.
At IS Online, we lead, manage, and coach your IT team - whether internal or outsourced, dedicated IT team or a virtual team members who's main role is elsewhere in the business. We guide them to manage the Information, Communication and Technology strategy across your team, aligned to delivering your business goals and success. We do this primarily for SMEs with 10 - 250 staff. What SMEs need is broadly the same as a larger business, but with a few differences. An SME doesn't normally need a full time CIO, unless the business is a technology business itself. (Where an SME may need someone full time, is if the business is a technology startup or established software, hardware, or cloud business. In this case, there will normally be good reason to have a CTO, responsible for the operational delivery of the technology to the customer, and they are often ideally placed to be accountable for overall communication and technology.).
For SMEs without a CTO, in the modern world to be successful, as well as a strong Marketing/Sales leader, operations leader and finance & a HR leadership, it's important to have a strategic IT leader, operating at board level, ensuring that all forms of information, communication and technology strategy is aligned to the wider business functions. For an SME, this is normally only needed on a part-time basis - a virtual CIO.
What you should expect from a CIO
A good CIO, will usually deliver the following:
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leading, managing, and coaching IT staff and developing department goals;
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ensuring IT strategies, architecture, and processes support company-wide goals;
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developing and overseeing the IT budget;
- planning, deploying and maintaining IT systems and operations;
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managing the organisation's software development, effectively documented, if needed;
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developing IT policies, procedures and best practices;
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staying updated on IT trends and emerging technologies;
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developing and enforcing IT best practices across the organisation;
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overseeing relationships with vendors, contractors and service providers; and
- explaining to the board of directors and other executives the benefits and risks of new IT-related projects.
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able to ask the right questions of key staff and key vendors to in order to effectively manage those staff and vendors in a way to align to the businesses needs and architecture;
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and to coach and mentor staff, continuously delegating and elevating, so that the appropriate team members are able to ask the right questions of other staff and vendors, to build knowledge, resilience, and strength in depth within the team, to ensure the business doesn't become dependent upon the CIO's knowledge or any one person.
What we deliver - not the average virtual CIO
At IS Online, we deliver a Virtual CIO service to SMEs with 10 - 250 staff.
We are not an average virtual CIO. Most virtual CIOs learned their trade by working in IT teams in large organisations, and working their way up to be IT Manager or IT Director at a fairly large business. They know IT and IT strategy very well. But they know it from within the context of how big businesses work. They do not usually have hands on experience of working within Sales & Marketing, of managing company finances. And they very rarely have experience of the mindset of being an owner shareholder or managing director/CEO of an SME.
Unusually for a virtual CIO, Dave Abraham's experience has come exclusively from working within SMEs, although often those SMEs have been serving larger customers. As a result, Dave has hands on experience of technology and applying it, including working hands on within sales and marketing teams delivering technology to automate them. Dave has been cofounder and CTO for 6 years in a technology startup, Signify. Dave went on to become CEO of Signify, through to successfully selling the business, and has subsequently been MD and co-owner in further SMEs, with accountability for managing sales and marketing teams, and oversight of the finance function. As a result, we have a unique perspective to be able to shape IT strategy to suit SMEs.
Therefore as Virtual CIO, we tailor the CIO service to apply the appropriate amount of time, effort and resources across the following areas, depending upon your goals for success, organisational maturity relative to your success goals, always with in mind getting the appropriate balance of efficiency, resilience, and cost, for your business.
We aim to make the IT simple and clear for other managers, turning complex tech, into simple building blocks that enable business success. And if there is a potential CIO within your team, we'll aim to develop them to be able to take over from us.
Therefore we deliver an appropriate, and prioritised subset of the following, depending upon your goals and your team:
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leading and coaching IT staff and developing department goals;
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ensuring IT strategies, architecture, and processes support company-wide goals;
-
developing and overseeing the IT budget;
- planning, deploying and maintaining IT systems and operations;
-
managing the organisation's software development, effectively documented, if needed;
-
developing IT policies, procedures and best practices;
-
staying updated on IT trends and emerging technologies;
-
developing and enforcing IT best practices across the organisation;
-
overseeing relationships with vendors, contractors and service providers; and
- explaining to the board of directors and other executives the benefits and risks of new IT-related projects.
-
able to ask the right questions of staff and vendors to in order to effectively manage those staff and vendors in a way to align to the businesses needs and architecture;
-
and to coach and mentor staff, continuously delegating and elevating, so that the appropriate team members are able to ask the right questions of other staff and vendors, to build knowledge, resilience, and strength in depth within the team, to ensure the business doesn't become dependent upon the CIO's knowledge or any one person.
We aim to enable your success, whilst also aiming to make our role redundant each year, by elevating other people into as many areas as possible.
