Strategy and budget
A technology plan the leadership team can read, costed for the year, reviewed each quarter.
Fractional CIO
A CIO for businesses that cannot justify one full time, and should not have to.
Most owner-led businesses in South East Queensland run their technology through a managed IT provider and a handful of vendors, with nobody accountable for the decisions above them. That is the seat Power to Automate fills: independent of the provider, on your side of the table, Daniel as your CIO, month to month.
01 / What the seat covers
Decisions, vendors, risk, money, roadmap.
The seat sits above your providers and inside your leadership team. It owns the decisions that cost money when nobody makes them.
Vendors and your IT provider
Contracts, renewals and service held to what was promised. The independence clause is in every retainer.
Security posture
A plain-English risk register, cyber insurance questions answered, and the controls that matter first.
Board and leadership reporting
One page a month: what changed, what it cost, what needs a decision.
The AI and automation roadmap
Where the hours go, which ten per cent is worth automating, and in what order.
Delivery, when you want it
Consulting plus Action adds a monthly budget the CIO spends to get things done, through the P2A team or vCIO partners.
02 / How an engagement runs
Three phases. Automation is the third, not the first.
Automating a shaky environment just makes the mess run faster. The order protects you from paying twice.
Phase one
Stabilise
Inventory what you have, who you pay, and what is exposed. Fix the things that would embarrass you in an audit or an outage. Set the reporting rhythm.
Phase two
Optimise
The technology plan and budget. Vendor and provider contracts renegotiated where the numbers say so. Security controls in order of risk, not vendor pitch. Reporting the leadership team actually reads.
Phase three
Automate
Now the process audit, the workflow builds and the team training, delivered by the P2A team and handed over to yours. By this point the environment can carry them and the team trusts the person recommending them.
03 / Two ways to engage
Advice only, or advice with a budget to act.
Consulting
Daniel as your CIO: strategy, vendors and your IT provider, security posture, budget, leadership reporting, and the AI and automation roadmap. Remote, month to month, with a monthly time ceiling. Independent of any managed IT provider by contract.
Monthly retainer with a time ceiling. Quoted in the proposal.
Consulting plus Action
Everything in Consulting, plus a monthly action budget deployed at the CIO's discretion to get things done, through the P2A team or vCIO partners. Always spent on your priorities, never banked, reported each month.
Retainer plus action budget, monthly. Quoted in the proposal.
Both are Daniel's time as your CIO. There are a small number of seats, which is the point.
04 / Who it fits
Businesses with real operations and thin internal IT.
Five patterns turn up again and again across South East Queensland. If you recognise yours, the first conversation is short.
Aged care and allied health
Compliance and rostering admin, incident and care documentation, funding paperwork, thin internal IT. Staff turnover means the handover matters as much as the build.
Agriculture and regional multi-site
Many sites, thin IT, vendor sprawl, connectivity limits, and a leadership team that wants one accountable adviser above the providers.
Distribution and wholesale
Order, quoting, invoicing and inventory admin; supplier and customer collaboration; margin pressure on the back office.
Trade and field businesses
Job notes, quote follow-up, onboarding and recurring reporting from the field, with nobody in the office to chase it.
SME office team
Staff already using AI tools unmanaged. The owner wants rules, guardrails and a result they can point to.
05 / Fair questions
Straight answers.
We are too small for a CIO.
That is what fractional means. The seat is sized to the decisions, not the hours, and the value is having someone accountable for them.
Our IT provider already does this.
A provider runs the environment. A CIO decides what it should be, holds the provider to it, and stays independent of them. That independence is written into the retainer.
Is this just a way to sell us automation?
Automation is phase three, and only where the audit says it pays. “That process does not need AI, a small off-the-shelf tool fixes it” is a sentence you will hear from us.
What does it cost?
A monthly retainer, quoted in the proposal after the discovery call, with the time ceiling and the independence clause spelled out. No lock-in beyond the month.
Who does the work?
Daniel is your CIO and the accountable lead. Builds and hands-on work are delivered by the P2A team under that accountability, and every build ends with your team owning it.
06 / Start here
Forty-five minutes. No deck.
A discovery call ends with a recommendation: a written audit, a training day, a fractional CIO seat, or an honest "you do not need us".