Temporary Management
An experienced manager in the company, when and as much as needed
Small and medium-sized enterprises need high-level management skills, but often cannot afford the cost, or the weight, of a full-time executive. Everyone knows the temporary manager: they arrive for a project, with a start and an end. What an SME almost always needs, though, is something more lasting, the fractional manager: the same experienced professional, present one or two days a week on an ongoing basis. The project ends; keeping control of the figures, the people and the decisions does not.
Fractional Management
The skills of a manager, for the cost of an employee
The fractional manager is an experienced professional who works alongside the business owner one or two days a week, on a permanent basis. Not a consultant who drops in once and then leaves: they get into the processes, lead the people, set up methods and tools, and stay.
A finance and administration director costs the company about €120,000 a year; an experienced administrative employee just under €60,000, less than half. The fractional manager is the way for an SME to have the skills of the former with a financial commitment close to that of the latter.
Why it delivers as much as a full-time manager, or more
For three reasons. They are independent: not tied to the structure and with no internal career to protect, they can afford to tell the business owner what they think. They bring experience built in other companies, which someone who has always worked in the same one cannot have. And they provide continuity: one or two days a week are enough to follow the figures, the people and the decisions month after month, without losing the thread.
They work where an SME most needs method: planning and controlling, with business plans, budgets and rolling forecasts; cash flows and relationships with the banks; cost accounting and quotation modelling; business reorganisation and production efficiency.
When change has to be led, not endured
There are times when a company has to decide quickly, handle a transition or face a crisis. That is when an external manager gives the most concrete answer, and the most uncomfortable one for those who think it is enough to wait for better times.
Entrusting a project or a function to a professional manager is not a sign of weakness but a clear-headed choice: a high-level management competence enters the company, with full operational responsibility, transferring method and delivering measurable results.
Those who choose this route are not looking for a consultant but for an experienced decision-maker: a former executive who takes charge and leads the transformation through to the finish, with clear objectives, fixed timescales and entirely variable costs. No hidden costs: what they set up stays with the company, in the procedures and in the people they have trained.
Many SMEs grow in turnover while their organisation stays the one they had when they were small. Everybody does a bit of everything, roles overlap and every decision ends up back on the owner’s desk, leaving less and less time to think. That is exactly what the external manager is for: they put things in order, establish who does what and get the company working by processes and objectives, with control tools that turn data into decisions.
Where we step in
In the work nobody ever has the time to do, and in the most delicate moments in a company’s life:
- the administration, finance and control function, to be made reliable and timely;
- processes, procedures and regulations, that is what needs to be done, and organisation charts, roles and job descriptions, that is who has to do it;
- recovery plans and turnarounds, when the accounts have to be brought back into balance quickly;
- generational handover and management succession, so that the change at the top does not bring work to a halt;
- new business lines and foreign markets, from the plan to the first sales;
- extraordinary transactions: acquisitions, disposals and the enhancement of individual divisions;
- staff training, so that method and skills become part of the company’s assets.
There is no need to wait for the next crisis, or the next missed opportunity, to change course. It only takes deciding to do it now.
A fractional management case
Management reorganisation and generational handover
A family business in which growth risked becoming a trap: the founder’s experience had turned into a limit, the new generation was struggling to emerge and the company’s value remained stuck between past and future.
The problem
The generational handover was difficult: father and son had overlapping roles and the tensions showed in every decision.
The plant was small and outdated, no longer suited to the volumes and standards customers required.
And there was no sales structure: turnover depended on long-standing contacts and almost nothing was being done on foreign markets.
A company with good potential, held back more by internal limits than by the market.
The intervention
Twelve months, with one goal: to turn a well-run family business into a managerial company.
- Organisation: roles, duties and responsibilities defined for everyone.
- People: training and involvement of the team, to work with more autonomy and a greater sense of belonging.
- Generational handover: a gradual, planned transfer from father to son, with no gap at the top.
- Production: support in designing the new factory building, with a lean flow layout, less work in progress waiting and less handling.
- Sales: a quotation model based on an analysis of real costs, a stronger commercial network and a new key account manager for the European market, scouted, selected and brought on board.
The result
After twelve months the company had switched to a fully managerial way of running the business, with better-coordinated functions, greater production efficiency and a real presence on international markets. The generational handover, at first a source of conflict, became an opportunity for renewal, and the new production set-up increased capacity and profitability.
And afterwards
The twelve months are over, the relationship is not: the owner asked us to stay, and today we are their fractional manager. Every month our Predictive Analysis Simulator tells us where the results are heading, and cost accounting shows where the company makes money and where it does not. The quotation model, which we keep updating, is the moulding one you will find on the Quotations page.
Another case
An experienced CFO for the big leap
A company growing fast and in a disorderly way: behind positive figures there were no tools to plan, measure and govern.
The problem
There was no structured process of strategic and operational planning and controlling. Margins were measured only in aggregate and not by job, so they were no use for deciding anything. Logistics, outsourced, was expensive and gave little visibility over storage, deliveries and returns. In short, turnover was growing but the compass was missing.
The intervention
Twenty-four months at the head of administration, finance and control, to give the company the tools it lacked to plan, measure and decide on the figures. The work was carried out in four phases.
1. Vision, mission and indicators
Where the business wants to go and why it exists, translated into measurable indicators shared between owners and management. The internal language moved from hunches and emergencies to decisions based on data and objectives.
2. Strategic analysis
Strengths and weaknesses, Porter’s five forces (barriers to entry, the power of customers and suppliers, substitute products, competition) and an operational SWOT from which the competitive levers of the plan emerged. For the first time owners and management were looking at the same data on the market and the competitors.
3. From strategy to action
A plan on two levels. The first is continuous improvement with the OKR method: a few clear, measurable objectives, achievable without new investment. The second is medium-term strategic initiatives, built on four levers:
- growth: new customers, products, channels and markets;
- efficiency: fewer activities that create no value, targeted outsourcing, rationalised costs;
- organisation: roles, procedures and responsibilities reviewed;
- people: more involvement, more training and accountability for results.
4. Advanced controlling
We introduced management accounting, with the move from Zucchetti to SAP Business One, to read profitability by customer, brand, key account and individual campaign. We wrote the five-year industrial plan and put the annual budget, monthly reporting and the rolling forecast into operation, to analyse variances and correct course. The supply chain was revised, with rotating inventories, digital information flows and lower logistics rates, and the analysis of treasury and operating cash flow kept growth and financial sustainability together.
The result
After 24 months the company had changed the way it worked:
- vision and mission shared and applied in everyday work;
- integrated strategic planning and controlling;
- margins read by customer, product and project;
- an optimised, digitalised supply chain;
- a stronger, more transparent financial structure.
And afterwards
Here too the twenty-four months are over, the relationship is not. We stayed on as fractional managers, leading controlling across all the group’s companies. On this basis the company signed a basket bond with Banca Intesa, a structured finance instrument supporting the industrial plan, and started the listing process on Borsa Italiana’s AIM segment (now Euronext Growth Milan). Turnover, meanwhile, has grown from €40 million to over €100 million, and the group has expanded abroad, in both EMEA and APAC.
The question is not whether you need a full-time manager
The real question is whether the company can afford to do without the right expertise: let’s talk.
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