What is a fractional COO?
Simply put, a fractional COO is a person you hire for a fraction of the time and a fraction of the cost. Mostly as a freelance or other third party vendor.
Benefits
The biggest benefit of hiring a fractional COO is that you are able to get high level operational leadership of your company for a fraction of the cost. Most small business owners are unable to pay the salary of a full time executive COO, but they desperately need this help. A great fractional COO for your small business can come in and work with the business owner at a strategic level and immediately go and put those strategies into tactical execution.
As hinted above, this gives you the strategic partner to move your business forward. Co-solving your most pressing issues and more often than not, owning the solution process.
This allows the business owner/CEO to focus on:
- Things that are best use of the owners skillset
- Things that move the company forward
- Things that the owner actually likes doing
Most business owners that I have met and worked with have a distinct distaste for the daily operations of the business. They do it because they have to, but often make any excuse they have to not do it. A fractional COO solves this for you.
Not only do you pay less for the service, this is generally a freelance hire so the associated taxes and insurance do not have to be taken into consideration. Also due to the contractor relationship you can easily sever the relationship at any time if you are not getting the results you are looking for. Most consultants are aware of this and will work harder than most full time hires to keep the results coming.
Drawbacks
The main drawback on hiring a fractional COO is that you do not get them all the time. Operations and associated operations issues happen 24/7 and you may need them solved by your fractional COO on times they do have allocated to you. Most fractional COO’s have several clients so they need to manage time appropriately. This may mean you may get stuck with an urgent issue until your consultant has time available.
While this does not happen often, it is worth noting that the time commitment you make with your fractional COO is important. You should have a deep conversation with the fractional COO you are considering to make sure the time commitment works for your business while keeping the cost savings down.
Are you are wondering how a fractional COO can help your business? You should set up a meeting with TOTAL COO and we will provide a free consultation to talk about your business situation and how we can help.