1
Exceptional Expertise at a Fraction of the Cost
For most organizations, hiring top talent into a full-time role is little more than a pipe dream. You simply can’t rationalize the cost to pay them what they’re worth.
Because they work on a retainer, hourly or per-project basis and are not paid health and other benefits, organizations can bring on fractional experts at a rate commensurate with their experience, while still paying less than they would for a similar full-time hire.
How much less? For a Chief Financial Officer role in the U.S., taking into account median total pay, average annual per-person benefits costs and average fractional hourly rates, organizations could be saving an average of $94,000 per year with a fractional CFO.
2
Flexibility to Shift Based on Your Needs
One of the most valuable elements of working with fractional experts is an organization’s ability to turn on and turn off support based on their needs.
You need support for a specific project or to solve a specific problem right now, but that doesn’t mean you will need that same support 3, 6 or 12 months down the road. Fractional experts allow you to bring in the expertise you need when you need it, and to save the all-important dollars when you don’t.
If you’re only using in-house resources, you’re limiting your agility in the times that things change for better or worse.
3
Combination of Strategic and Tactical Support
Fractional experts, freelancers and consultants fill specific roles within an organization.
Freelancers generally take on more execution-focused projects, while consultants provide higher-level expertise but do not implement or execute the strategies they recommend. Fractional experts provide a powerful combination of the two models, providing both strategic insight and tactical execution.
With limited budgets and limited time, organizations are turning to fractional experts for their most important projects, as they know that the strategy and execution work will be done by someone they trust.
4
Advice You Need to Hear
Fractional experts bring their wealth of relevant experience to every project. While they may not have done it all, they’ve done a lot, and the lessons learned from their careers and past and current clients can be incredibly valuable for your organization.
And if you’re serious about improving and accelerating your organization, fractional experts can also be important sources for the advice you need to hear, not necessarily what you want to hear. As outside consultants, their role is to unearth both what is most likely to drive you forward and hold you back, guidance you’re unlikely to get from your in-house team.
5
Benefits to Your In-House Team
One of the oft-overlooked benefits of bringing on fractional talent is the positive and lasting impact on your in-house team.
Fractional experts bring with them expertise and experience from their own careers, as well as every lesson learned from working with their clients.
The most successful fractional relationships are those in which internal teams learn as much as they possibly can from these experts while they’re available.
