Modernise your technology, protect your business from cyber risk, and build the digital capability your operations demand — led by directors who have done it before.
Manufacturing businesses, traditional professional services firms, and established SMEs that need to lift digital capability and govern cyber risk — but lack in-house senior technology leadership.
Fractional CTO + Fractional CIO
Most traditional businesses know they need to transform digitally.
The challenge is not the ambition — it is the leadership.
Technology vendors offer solutions in their own interest, not the business’s.
Internal IT teams are skilled at maintaining what exists, not designing what should replace it.
And the board lacks the technical fluency to govern the investment decisions that digital transformation requires.
The result is a pattern that repeats across sectors: large technology investments that underdeliver, ERP implementations that overrun, cyber risk that accumulates without board-level governance, and digital transformation programmes that are perpetually planned but never quite launched.
Every year of delay is a year of competitive disadvantage building against businesses that have already made the journey.
Digital Lift is a senior-led, vendor-neutral technology transformation programme that provides the CTO and CIO leadership required to make it real — designing the right architecture, selecting the right systems, governing cyber risk at board level, and ensuring the technology investment delivers the operational and commercial outcomes it was purchased to produce.
Technology landscape audit and programme design: the fractional CTO and CIO jointly assess the current technology infrastructure, systems landscape, digital maturity, and cyber risk position. Programme plan developed and agreed: which systems need replacing, in which sequence, and which cyber risks require immediate attention. Vendor relationships reviewed — underperforming suppliers placed on notice, and the technology procurement framework established.
Priority transformation underway: the highest-impact technology change programme active and governed, key system implementations in progress with the fractional directors personally accountable for delivery. Cyber governance framework operational at board level. Staff digital capability development programme underway.
Transformation embedded: priority systems live and operational, cyber controls in place and tested, digital capability embedded in the operating model. Technology governance handed to the board with a clear ongoing framework. Final technology roadmap — covering the next 18–24 months — delivered and agreed by the board.
Digital Lift is priced from £4,500 to £8,000 per month for the two-director programme — typically less than the annual cost of a single full-time IT Manager, and a fraction of the cost of the failed technology projects it is designed to prevent. The programme duration is four to nine months, depending on the complexity of the transformation agenda and the starting position of the technology landscape.
Digital Lift is a packaged twelve- to eighteen-month engagement for mid-market businesses where technology, data, and digital capability are constraining commercial outcomes. It combines a fractional CIO or CTO with operations and finance leadership, plus specialist digital, data, and security expertise as required, to lead an integrated digital transformation tied to specific commercial outcomes — not technology for its own sake.
It is designed for established mid-market UK businesses that have outgrown their technology estate — manufacturers running on ageing ERP, services businesses dependent on spreadsheets and email, retailers with fragmented digital channels, and any business where technology debt is creating risk or slowing commercial decisions. Typical clients are between £20 million and £200 million revenue, with technology change that has been promised internally for years but never delivered.
Digital Lift covers technology strategy, target architecture, application and data landscape, cyber and resilience, programme governance and vendor management, change management and adoption, and the commercial business case that ties technology investment to revenue, margin, and risk outcomes. Where applicable the programme also leads major system implementations or migrations, ERP replacements, and cloud transitions.
Systems integrators implement what you tell them to implement. Digital Lift sits at the client side of the table — defining what should be implemented, holding integrators and software vendors accountable to that definition, and protecting the business from the typical failure modes of large technology programmes. The fractional team owns the outcomes; the integrators and vendors deliver the components.
Digital Lift is typically £20,000 to £35,000 per month depending on the size and complexity of the engagement. The fee covers the Transformation Lead, the fractional CIO or CTO, supporting functional directors, and specialist input. Where major capital expenditure on software and services is involved, Digital Lift typically pays for itself many times over through better vendor selection, tighter scope, and reduced over-run.
Yes. Digital Lift increasingly includes a fractional Data & AI Director or equivalent specialist input to define the data foundations needed to make AI useful, identify the use cases that will generate measurable commercial value, and avoid the common trap of investing in AI tooling before the underlying data is fit for purpose. The programme is deliberately pragmatic — AI investment is justified by commercial outcomes, not novelty.
Book a discovery call to discuss whether Digital Lift is right for your business.