Build the financial, commercial, and operational foundations your business needs to scale to the next level — without breaking what is already working.
High-growth businesses — typically VC or PE-backed, or ambitious owner-managed — between £5m and £25m revenue or 50–250 employees, where commercial growth is outpacing operational infrastructure.
Fractional CFO + Fractional CMO + Fractional COO
High-growth businesses consistently face the same structural challenge: the business grows commercially faster than its infrastructure can follow.
Financial controls designed for a ten-person team fail at fifty.
Marketing spend increases without the commercial rigour to ensure it is generating pipeline rather than noise.
Operational processes that worked at £2m ARR create chaos at £12m.
The founding team is brilliant at the things that got the business here — but the things required to take it to the next level require a different kind of leadership.
The result is a growing gap between commercial ambition and operational reality: forecasts that are wrong, investors who are asking uncomfortable questions, a management team that is working harder than ever but achieving less, and a CEO who is spending most of their time managing functional fires rather than leading the business.
Scale Ready closes that gap in six to twelve months — building the financial infrastructure, commercial engine, and operational architecture that allows the business to scale with confidence.
Joint diagnostic: all three directors conduct a structured assessment of the financial, commercial, and operational landscape simultaneously — identifying the highest-priority gaps in each function and agreeing a coordinated programme plan. Quick wins implemented in each workstream: management accounts upgraded, pipeline reporting established, and the top two operational bottlenecks addressed.
Foundation building: the financial infrastructure is rebuilt to investor-grade standard, the commercial demand engine is operational and generating qualified pipeline, and the operational architecture — processes, systems, and team design — is rebuilt for scale. Directors meeting monthly to align priorities and ensure workstream coherence.
Scale preparation: the business is now operating on solid financial, commercial, and operational foundations. The CFO is leading investor relations and preparing fundraising materials. The CMO is running a demand engine that consistently generates qualified pipeline. The COO has built the operational infrastructure to support the next growth phase. Exit from programme with all three workstreams handed to permanent hires or ongoing fractional retainers.
Scale Ready is priced as a single programme from £5,500 to £9,500 per month depending on director count and engagement intensity — significantly below the combined cost of three separate fractional retainers, and a fraction of the £600,000+ annual cost of three full-time C-suite hires. There are no long-term contracts beyond the agreed programme term, and the programme can be scaled or adjusted as business needs evolve.
Scale Ready is a packaged six- to twelve-month engagement for scale-ups crossing key revenue or headcount thresholds — typically £5 million to £25 million revenue, or fifty to two hundred and fifty employees. It combines fractional finance, operations, and people leadership delivered as a coordinated team, focused on the governance, systems, and management capability needed to support the next stage of growth without breaking the business.
It is for ambitious founder-led or owner-managed businesses that have proved the model and now need to scale operations, financial discipline, and management capability ahead of the next growth chapter. Typical triggers include an upcoming funding round, a step-change in customer demand, the impending exit of the founder or first executive, or the realisation that the current processes will not survive a doubling of headcount.
Scale Ready covers financial controls and management reporting, operational scalability, governance and board cadence, organisational design, key-hire planning and succession, systems and process maturity, and management capability development. The programme also includes a Transformation Lead who chairs the engagement, manages dependencies, and reports progress to the founders or board.
A Transformation Lead leads the programme, supported by a fractional CFO, a fractional COO, and a fractional HR Director. Each director works between one and three days per week depending on the scope. The team operates as the senior leadership group during the engagement, attending board meetings and management meetings, and is fully accountable for delivering the agreed milestones.
Scale Ready is typically £15,000 to £25,000 per month depending on the number of director days required and the scope of the engagement. The fee covers the Transformation Lead, all participating fractional directors, monthly reporting, and milestone reviews. Compared with hiring an equivalent in-house executive team, Scale Ready typically costs between thirty and fifty per cent of the equivalent fully-loaded salaries.
Most Scale Ready engagements run between six and twelve months, depending on the maturity of the business at the start of the engagement and the pace of underlying growth. The programme is reviewed at three- and six-month milestones with a clear option to extend, scale up, scale down, or transition to a smaller ongoing fractional engagement.
Book a discovery call to discuss whether Scale Ready is right for your business.