The need for a fractional operations manager is usually driven by a change to the way a business has to operate, which might come about through strong demand for their services, changes within the team or pressure from third parties such as clients, investors or regulators. These changes amplify the challenges a business is already facing, whilst increasing the number of them to a point beyond what a single founder can manage themselves.
In this article, you’ll learn about the common events that trigger the need for a fractional operations manager, whether you’re a good fit for one and instances where another service would suit you better.
If any of the following has happened to you in the past six months, you may benefit from bringing in a fractional operations manager.
The biggest priority for early-stage businesses is creating market interest and finding paying customers. Founders therefore begin by optimising for lead generation and sales conversion, with the goal of establishing steady revenue.
As the customer base grows, the constraint instead shifts to their ability to fulfil the work whilst maintaining high standards. Inevitably, the demand starts to squeeze resources, existing processes and systems become strained, and small inefficiencies stack into noticeable time losses.
There may have been an exceptional individual responsible for leading operations and delivery, so you didn’t have to. This person might have been a co-founder, an early hire or a trusted third-party service. Regardless, replacing them with a suitable individual can be a lengthy process depending on the depth of the candidate pool, your budget and their availability.
If you have an immediate need to backfill their role whilst you identify a replacement, a fractional operations manager is a good solution for help in the interim.
The refresh of a business strategy usually produces new milestones that the business is aiming to achieve. For most, this will be a revenue, profit or market share figure, so founders reshuffle their time to focus on sales and marketing efforts.
Other founders come from technical backgrounds and are best placed to deliver a new product or service improvement. For some, their biggest priority will be spending time with family, pursuing a passion project or looking after a loved one. In all cases, removing themselves from daily operations is the key to freeing them up for these activities.
One of the challenges that comes with having a large team is managing them. Each new team member is another avenue for questions and issues, all of which eventually make their way to you. Even if you’ve built a team that is autonomous and self-sufficient, it can still be time and energy intensive to keep tabs on everyone’s progress and contributions.
Perhaps your business has just completed an investment round, which has secured funding but also introduced ambitious growth targets. Achieving them requires an improvement to your operational efficiency so you can get the most output from the resources you have available.
In the case of a merger or acquisition, someone needs to be dedicated to synchronising ways of working, unifying systems and training new team members. Another common scenario is adapting to new regulatory obligations by ensuring compliance is embedded in day to day operations.
You may or may not have recognised your own business as having gone through one of these periods of change. But regardless, what’s important is that you understand the effects that these changes bring about so you can understand whether a fractional operations manager is right for you.
Read through the statements below and count how many apply to your business. Focus on whether you recognise them in your business as it stands today, rather than how you intend to run it in the future.
If more than half of these statements resonate with you, it’s a good sign you’ll benefit from a fractional operations manager. Your next step is to decide how much ownership you want to retain over your operations, as this will affect the structure of your engagement and what you pay.
Before engaging one, you should also be aware of when they’re not the most appropriate solution. These are a few common situations where a different kind of arrangement or service is better suited.
A business under roughly five people would benefit from investment in other areas. At this stage, a founder can usually still be across everything going on, so it’s often better to focus on expanding delivery-facing resource.
Another option is to explore making the business leaner through operational efficiencies, including software configurations and workflow automation. In these cases, a fractional operations manager can support on a per-project basis rather than via an ongoing arrangement.
If one of your main issues is inbox management, scheduling, travel booking or other administrative tasks, you need a personal or virtual assistant instead. Fractional operations managers are there to support you with leading the business and operating it effectively, whereas assistants are better placed to assist with managing your professional and personal life.
For work that involves a defined scope or clear set of requirements, project-based engagements are better suited due to their short nature and commercial alignment with the project’s outcomes. Examples of these projects include a process or policy review, software configuration or framework implementation.
A fractional operations manager is most appropriate when your business has varying priorities and a continuous stream of work, as they can adjust to the most pressing need each month whilst balancing business improvement projects with delivery.
If you compile a list of projects or tasks that need managing, and it feels closer to a full time job, it’s better to invest in a permanent hire so you can develop them and build long-term stability at the position. Fractional working is better suited to businesses that either don’t have this workload or can’t afford to hire top operational talent on a permanent basis.
By this point, you understand what causes the need for a fractional operations manager and when your money is best spent elsewhere. The most useful next step is to jot down the key problems you want solved, the current state of your business and your goals moving forwards.
Then engage a fractional operations manager with a short summary, which will allow them to propose a structure for delivering these outcomes and set expectations around what’s achievable given your budget. If you already understand your main challenges, or want to work them out, that’s what our fractional operations service is built for.