Fractional’s come a long way, Baby.

Not that long ago, many SMEs saw fractional services as an 'end of the road’ stopgap - great for plugging a crisis or shoring up an under-resourced project at the last minute. All drama. No joy.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still great for that, but that’s not all.

Today, using this type of resource is a strategic operating model used by smart business leaders, who can tap into support resources to deliver outcomes, transfer capability, and scale up or down with the business as it's needed.

Fractional Baby

Finance has been at the front of this shift because its tasks can more easily be sectioned off (incidentally where fractional gets it’s name - a part of a whole rather than the whole thing) and it is much easier to hold these types of tasks to account (pun intended).

It’s also a myth that it’s only for big business or something that can be done through recruitment temp desks.

Here’s four examples of how we’ve supported businesses in the last 12 months fractionally:

· Provided back-fill support in the early days for a new in-house Finance Manager - it meant that they weren’t overloaded from the get-go, could learn their new role with a clear head, and received clear signalling from their new boss that they were supported and valued

· Filled the gap between a finance person leaving (their new role needed them urgently), and the new person being ready (they had trouble leaving their old role because their new person wasn't ready). Similar to everyone selling whilst their buying their houses simultaneously, rather than selling and then buying, the timing for everyone needs to be aligned - tricky in the current market

· Established a stop gap for an organisation who had been through five finance people in as many years. Something was off with the role design and the filters they were using to select their finance people. We could go in and impartially provide an outsider’s perspective AND complete the role before they hired number 6

· Created a ‘try-before-you-buy’ opportunity – in this case a CFO role. Did they really need a CFO or was a senior Financial Controller with CFO aspirations (with the skills and attitude to match) the right next step? No-one knew for sure but we could provide them with the space and resources to really design the right role and find them the right person with purpose, who turned out to be their new future CFO who would grow with them

So don’t discount it. You’re not too small, too established, too structured, too…anything. It might just change the way you match your people with what needs to be done.