What does a vCIO do for your business?
What is your long-term business strategy? Where do you want to see your business in 3-5 years?
These are questions that many business owners and senior executives often ask themselves. But it is important to ask yourself other questions surrounding this.
Do you have the people in place to help you grow? Do you have the skills in place to help you achieve your goals? And, this is where this article comes in: Do you have a technology plan in place to support you with that growth and scale with your business as it grows?
In all likelihood, when it comes to this last question, the answer will be “no.” Recent studies show that more than 40% of UK small to medium-sized businesses feel unprepared for technology advancements in their industries, and 60% find it difficult to access the tools and resources to scale effectively.
This is why it is important to either;
1 – Have a CIO (Chief Information Officer) in place.
2 – Partner with an MSP to support you.
3 – Partner with an MSP to support your growth who understands your unique business needs and offers a vCIO service to constantly support your business to achieve its growth goals, and ensure that you have the support, tools, and resources to scale effectively.
If you haven’t guessed yet... TwentyFour IT Services is the last one in the list.
Many small to medium-sized business owners can’t justify hiring a full-time Chief Information Officer (CIO) to guide their IT decisions. This is where a Virtual CIO, or vCIO, comes in.
A vCIO is essentially an outsourced CIO: an experienced technology leader who works with your business, understanding who you are, what you do, what is important to you, where your pain points are, what you want to improve, and where you would like to see your business grow. By doing so, a vCIO can provide strategic IT guidance without the overhead of hiring a full-time executive, especially when, for many businesses, they would not be needed all the time. In other words, you get enterprise-level expertise as part of your MSP partnership for IT Support & Cyber Security.
In short, a vCIO is like having an experienced IT strategist on call who understands your business and its growth goals and steers your technology in the right direction to support you in achieving those goals. That’s exactly what a vCIO offers.
But let’s look at this in a bit more detail.
What is a vCIO?
A vCIO, also known as a Virtual Chief Information Officer, is an external IT expert who acts as your business’s CIO. However, unlike having an in-house CIO who would be a full-time executive, a vCIO works remotely to provide high-level IT leadership and direction in line with your business growth strategy. This happens both in the background as part of quarterly and annual business reviews with your dedicated Account Managers, but also on an as-needed basis as your business looks to grow and expand or implement new projects in line with your growth strategy. This is ideal for businesses that need strategic technology guidance but lack the resources for a full-time CIO.
Think of a vCIO as a strategic technology partner. They don’t replace the IT support that we provide to our clients; instead, they complement the wider services we offer by focusing on big-picture planning of your technology alignment in line with your business growth strategy and any dedicated projects/improvements you are looking to implement.
Our vCIO works to understand your business’s vision, assess your current IT setup, identify gaps or risks, and then develop a roadmap to use technology in smart ways that support and drive your growth.
What are the responsibilities of a vCIO?
IT Strategy Development
One of the core parts of a vCIO’s role is to support your business by crafting a long-term technology plan in line with your business’s overall strategic goals. This involves assessing your current systems and solutions, recommending improvements, and ensuring your IT roadmap not only supports your business growth plans but enables them to succeed.
IT Budgeting & Vendor Management
What does your IT budget look like? Do you even have an IT budget? Do you know the best ways to set an efficient IT budget so that you invest in the right solutions and manage relationships with tech vendors? Our vCIO can help you manage this budget as well as negotiate with vendors and evaluate options to ensure you get the best value for the products and services that you require as part of your technology infrastructure.
Cyber Security & Compliance Oversight
Cyber and Data Security are becoming increasingly important, especially as 67% of the 8.58 million UK businesses that were targeted in a cyber attack or data breach in 2024 were small to medium-sized businesses. A vCIO will work with your business to ensure that you have the correct cyber security measures in line with your business operations, ensure they align with industry regulations, and oversee data protection policies to ensure you align with the minimum standards for your industry.
IT Policies and Governance
In addition to ensuring that your IT strategy aligns with your business, it is also incredibly important that you have strong IT (and Cyber Security) policies in place to be able to ensure that not only do you have processes and best practices in place for areas such as backup policies, but that they also align with a business continuity and redundancy plan, meaning that your business can get back up and running quickly and seamlessly in the event of a major outage. However, these policies also include those such as Password Policies (including enforced MFA practices), Device Use Policies, Cyber Security Training, and much more, to keep your business running smoothly and securely.
Futureproofing & Innovation
Keeping up to date with emerging technologies (such as the industry developments surrounding AI, Machine Learning, and Automation) is incredibly important. But how do you know which of these solutions could benefit your business? A vCIO helps you to stay ahead of the curve and maintain a competitive edge in your industry by advising you on the implementation and benefits of these new tools in an easy-to-understand format, without all the technobabble.
A vCIO provides the kind of strategic guidance a high-level CIO would, but on a fractional basis. For small to medium businesses, that means access to experienced and knowledgeable IT professionals without paying for a full-time salary and benefits (we do that part). It is a cost-effective way to get the same expertise larger companies enjoy, scaled to your needs.
How could a vCIO benefit different industries?
Just about any industry can benefit from the strategic IT & Cyber Security guidance and support that a vCIO offers. Let’s take a look at a few different examples:
Manufacturing:
Downtime in manufacturing could mean that your entire workforce is unable to operate, but also every minute of downtime results in increasingly lost revenue, and rollbacks could even mean added cost of scrapping production.
A vCIO helps ensure your production lines and systems stay up and running at all times, planning robust, high-availability infrastructure that will automatically pick up in the event of an outage on your primary infrastructure.
Not only this, but they will introduce solutions like predictive maintenance (using IoT sensors and data) to reduce outages and allow scheduled maintenance.
The payoff that these kinds of benefits offer can be huge. Manufacturing businesses that modernise their IT under vCIO guidance avoid the catastrophic losses that come with outages.
Recently, we worked with a local manufacturing firm who were looking to modernise their processes as they continued to grow. After working with them on their current infrastructure, assessing business plans and workflow analysis, our vCIO recommended replacing failing servers with a hybrid cloud solution, introduced better cyber security, and even redesigned the network for a new facility, all while cutting IT costs compared to a full-time hire. When a key part in one of their servers failed one night, the team had a backup within 5 minutes of the issue, and without the manufacturing firm even being aware until we reported to them that they were working on backup infrastructure, whilst we awaited a replacement part. This goes to show that a rapid response kept the business operating, reducing downtime, and ensuring they could continue to operate. This illustrates how vCIO-driven planning and support can safeguard both your uptime and reputation.
Logistics & Warehousing
Companies in logistics rely on technology to manage transport, inventory/stock locations, and supply chains in real time. Downtime could mean that orders are not tracked, packages cannot be loaded, and even routes cannot be planned or updated in real time for their clients. Through our technology alignment strategy, our vCIO ensures you have reliable networks and systems across warehouses and fleets.
With some of our logistics clients, we have worked with them to implement cloud platforms to unify operations with specialist software for tracking shipments, as well as custom-built AI and Automation workflows to ensure that their team can save time and work effectively.
In a fast-paced logistics environment, a vCIO keeps your IT running like a well-oiled machine so deliveries aren’t delayed by server crashes or Wi-Fi dead zones in the warehouse.
Accounting & Finance
Accounting firms around the world handle highly sensitive financial data for customers and businesses alike, and as such, they are prime targets for cyber criminals.
So, how can a vCIO help? Well, as with any business, it is important to regularly review your cyber and data security strategy. However, when it comes to highly sensitive data such as this, it is important to implement ironclad security across multiple touchpoints (endpoint and database encryption, additional security authentication on client portals, continuous immutable backups, and more) to protect that data and meet standards like GDPR or industry guidelines for Cyber Essentials and ISO27001.
We also work with businesses and support them through the upgrade of legacy accounting software to modern cloud-based systems, recently working with 90 different businesses to migrate from legacy Sage 50 Payroll and Accounting solutions to more modern solutions.
Many accountancy practices struggle with balancing the need to preserve historical data and the need to modernise, often feeling stuck in the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mindset. A vCIO finds that balance, working with businesses to migrate archives to secure cloud storage while deploying new tools that improve productivity and efficiency, saving both time and money. The result is an accounting business that can serve clients faster, enable accountants to work securely from anywhere, and always know that their client data is safe.
Real Estate (Estate Agencies)
Real estate professionals are always on the go, this could be showcasing properties, meeting with clients, and much more. As such, they need so they need tech that moves with them and can keep up with their active workday.
For one of our largest Real Estate clients, our vCIO has worked with them to set up cloud and mobile solutions so agents can access listings, documents, and office systems from anywhere, but also on devices that they know will get them through the working day and can also be used to showcase properties to their own clients.
We have also worked with Real Estate businesses to deploy secure cloud-based file sharing systems, a mobile-friendly CRM and much more. This means a realtor can pull up a property contract on a tablet while with a client, or collaborate with their team from the field, all without worrying about data breaches.
Real Estate can be a fast-paced market, and working with our vCIO to implement agile and secure solutions has directly translated to closing more deals and growing your business. Our largest Real Estate client grew from 1,200 employees to over 3,500 between 2020 and 2024.
Legal Sector:
It is important to remember that legal firms/solicitors face strict compliance requirements for the handling of confidential client and customer information daily, and that cyber, and data security is of the utmost importance.
We work with legal firms/solicitors to implement ISO27001 & Cyber Essentials compliant document management systems (in line with the Policy of Least Privileged Access) with proper access and auditing controls, so only the right staff see certain case files. We enforce encryption across all devices, including restrictions on only authorised devices accessing sensitive business/customer data, to protect sensitive emails and client records, to reduce the risk of even unintended internal data breaches.
Additionally, our vCIO has worked with businesses to introduce productivity tools tailored for legal work. For example, implementing an internal AI and Automation Platform to securely review and compare legal documentation, saving hours of manual reviews, leveraging these latest technology solutions to deliver service quickly while staying fully compliant and secure.
How is a vCIO Partner for Long-Term Success?
These are just a handful of examples of how our vCIO can support businesses across a range of industries, but they also highlight a common theme: vCIOs can support businesses by tailoring IT & Cyber Security strategies to the unique needs of each industry. Whether it's manufacturing, logistics, professional services, real estate, or any other field, we work with businesses to understand your sector’s challenges and address them with the right tech solutions to help your business succeed and grow. But also, as you evolve, or regulations change, your vCIO adjusts the strategy so you’re always a step ahead.
However, perhaps one of the most underrated benefits of having a vCIO is the relationship that develops. By gaining access to a vCIO, you’re also gaining a partner who genuinely cares about your business success. They become an extension of your leadership team, with our vCIO often involved in board-level meetings for overall business strategy. Over time, they learn the ins and outs of your operations, your culture, and your ambitions. This means the advice we are able to provide only gets more finely tuned to what is best for you.
Thinking about leveraging a vCIO for your business?
TwentyFour IT Services offers vCIO expertise as part of our managed IT, cyber security, and consulting services. Our vCIO has a wealth of experience across multiple industries and is ready to work hand-in-hand with you to achieve your business successes.
Whether you’re looking to modernise your systems, strengthen security against modern threats, or just plan for future growth, having our vCIO in your corner can provide the guidance and confidence you need to achieve your goals. If you want to find out more, book a meeting today or reach out to our team at the form below.