Fractional COO Services

Hiring & Retention

You know you need to grow the team, but each manager has their own process and there’s no central system to track candidates. The last hiring process ended in disagreements between staff that took longer to resolve than the search itself. And when you do make a hire, getting the wrong person — or losing a good one — kicks off an expensive cycle of recruiting, backfilling, and starting over.

What changes:

• A structured, repeatable hiring process your team can run confidently without you in the room
• A hiring committee decision process that clearly delineates who gives input and who has the final say
• An applicant tracking system selected and configured for your actual workflow
• Job descriptions and candidate assessments that reflect what the role actually requires

Financial Decisions Create Analysis Paralysis

You know you need to make budget reductions, but it’s hard to see where to start, or what the real trade-offs are between cutting staff, systems, individual department budgets, or benefits. Revenue forecasts were too ambitious and you’re looking at a negative EBITDA projection and aren’t sure where to even begin.

Or the opposite: you have additional budget to invest and want to allocate it wisely without risking profitability. Maybe you’re preparing for a merger, acquisition, or investment round and need your financials to be GAAP compliant and your operations to hold up under scrutiny.

What changes:

• A clear picture of fixed vs. variable costs — short-term and long-term — so every decision has real trade-off visibility
• A budget connected to your revenue forecast, cash position, and organizational goals, not just last year’s numbers
• Projections reset to something honest, and a path back to stability
• A restructuring or reallocation plan grounded in both financial reality and cultural sustainability
• GAAP-compliant financials and clean operational documentation that holds up in due diligence
• A documented contingency plan so decisions are made before the emergency, not during it

The Unwieldy Spreadsheet

It started as a clean spreadsheet created by one resourceful staff member five years ago. Now there are multiple versions maintained by multiple people, and nobody fully trusts the numbers. Every report takes a day to compile — chasing individuals for data that should already exist in one place. The spreadsheet has become your operating system, and nobody has the time or mandate to fix it.

What changes:

• A single source of truth for the data your organization actually runs on
• Clean data collection processes with clear ownership and accountability
• Reports that run in minutes, not a day of chasing people
• A system your team actually uses because it’s easier than the workaround

Everyone Running Their Own Small Business

Your team of consultants each tracks their own projects, hours, and revenue. Weekly reporting means chasing individuals to enter data that should already exist somewhere. There are no real checks and balances. One junior employee logged an invoice as recognized revenue and it wasn’t caught until the money was spent. That’s not a people problem. It’s a systems problem.

What changes:

• Connected systems with real checks and balances built in
• One place for project data, revenue tracking, and reporting — visible to the right people at the right time
• Errors that surface before they become expensive lessons
• A team that spends less time entering data and more time doing the work

The Tech System Nobody’s Actually Using

You invested in a new technology platform that was supposed to solve multiple problems. Six months later, adoption is inconsistent. Half the team uses it, half doesn’t. Shadow spreadsheets are running alongside it. There’s more than one system of record, version control is a mess, and the data coming out of it can’t be trusted. How do you untangle if the problem is the software or the adoption?

What changes:

• An honest assessment of why adoption failed — and whether the platform is the right fit or needs to change
• A change management plan that addresses the human side of technology transitions, not just the technical side
• Shadow systems retired, with a clear single system of record
• Training and accountability structures that make adoption stick
• Data you can actually trust coming out the other side