Fractional CTO Services for Growing Businesses

Our Firm

Excel Complete provides fractional Chief Technology Officer (CTO) services for growing businesses that need executive technical leadership without the cost of a full time hire.

Our experience spans software engineering, enterprise analytics, accounting, process automation, and operational strategy, enabling us to align technology strategy with business outcomes.

Discovery calls are led by Allen Frantsen, a licensed Michigan CPA, software developer, and SaaS founder with experience building commercial software platforms, custom business applications, and statistical tools. Schedule a consultation to start working with a fractional CTO.

Why Hire a Fractional CTO

For many companies, hiring a permanent CTO introduces friction:

• A full-time CTO has a base salary of $200,000+, plus bonuses and benefits.
• A fractional CTO can save you $150,000 or more per year.
• Executive searches can take 3 to 9 months, leaving your team without direction during critical growth phases.

A fractional CTO gives you access to experienced executive leadership:

• They instantly recognize engineering bottlenecks and technical debt they’ve already solved elsewhere.
• They bring a wide range of architectural designs, vendor experience, and management playbooks that other candidates may not have.

Common situations to hire a fractional CTO include:

• Lack of technology leadership
• Outdated systems and mounting tech debt
• Increasing technology costs
• Poor reporting and engineering visibility
• Security and compliance gaps
• Post-acquisition integration
• Leadership transition

Leadership transitions are one of our core specialties. Our Fractional CTOs step in immediately to assess undocumented systems and costly ERP initiatives, ensuring your business continues moving forward.

CTO Assessment

Excel Complete offers a CTO assessment for organizations looking to get started with fractional services quickly. The fee is $1,500, with a full day on-site for stakeholder meetings. The goal is to review technical bottlenecks and uncover opportunities to maximize technology use.

Within three business days, clients receive the CTO assessment outlining key findings, priorities, and recommended fixes. The roadmap can be used as a standalone planning document or serve as the foundation for an ongoing fractional engagement.

Common areas for this service:

• Detroit, MI
• Grand Rapids, MI
• Toledo, OH
• Akron, OH
• Columbus, OH
• Chicago, IL
• Cleveland, OH
• Cincinnati, OH
• Pittsburgh, PA
• Indianapolis, IN

*For other locations, scheduling may require 2–3 days, and travel costs may vary.

Fractional CTO Cost

Fractional CTO engagements start at $3,500 per month and cover up to 20 hours of executive technology leadership. This allows us to focus on your highest-priority needs, such as strategy, architecture, and vendor management, while keeping your overhead manageable.

Because every business grows at a different pace, our model is flexible. If your upcoming projects require a higher meeting cadence or hands-on application development, we can expand the engagement fee to match your needs.

The Fractional CTO Process

Every successful CTO engagement follows a clear process. At Excel Complete, we use a straightforward framework to understand your business, align technology with strategy, and build systems that improve decision-making and day-to-day operations.

1. Assess

We review your business model, current systems, workflows, and data environment and use process mapping to pinpoint risks, inefficiencies, and the technical issues limiting growth.

2. Plan

We develop a clear technology roadmap outlining the upgrades, integrations, and architectural changes that will have the greatest impact. Each recommendation includes priorities, trade-offs, and expected outcomes.

3. Execute

We implement the roadmap by improving infrastructure, optimizing cloud usage, modernizing legacy systems, and building the integrations or data pipelines your team needs. Throughout, we ensure every change supports your operational and strategic goals.

Technical Leadership

Our fractional CTO services provide the technical leadership that growing businesses often lack. We'll work with your internal teams and technology vendors to ensure projects stay aligned with business goals, technical standards, and long-term scalability.

We help organizations make better technology decisions before they become expensive problems. From selecting ERP platforms to designing system architecture, we provide guidance that reduces technical debt and keeps projects moving forward.

Common projects:

• Engineering hiring and technical interviews
• Development team leadership and mentoring
• Budgeting and technology planning
• Technology roadmaps
• Guiding AI strategy
• Vendor selection and management
• Project planning and technical oversight
• Software and infrastructure evaluations
• Cloud architecture and hosting strategy
• Security and technology best practices

Data Governance

Good decision-making starts with good data. We help companies build efficient data structures, eliminate duplicate records, simplify and map out business logic, and build data pipelines that scale as the business grows.

Whether you're integrating multiple systems, moving to a data warehouse, or improving reporting, our architectural guidance will put you in a position to succeed. Clean, well-structured data leads to more accurate KPIs, faster reporting (and month-end close), and better business decisions.

Common projects:

• Database design
• Data warehouse implementations
• System integrations and ETL pipelines
• Data quality, validation, and duplicate prevention
• KPI definitions and reporting standards
• Executive dashboards and business intelligence
• Process improvement for operational and financial workflows

Security and Risk Management

Protecting your systems and data is a core responsibility of a CTO. We help organizations evaluate security risks, strengthen access controls, secure system architecture, and implement best practices that reduce the likelihood of security incidents and costly downtime.

We help secure data pipelines, evaluate third-party integrations, improve audit readiness, and develop systems that support compliance requirements while protecting sensitive business and customer data.

For organizations investing in healthcare software development services, a fractional CTO provides the technical leadership needed to establish a compliant foundation before development begins. We help evaluate HIPAA and state compliance requirements so security is built into the application from day one.

Common projects:

• Security assessments and risk reviews
• Secure system architecture
• Access control and identity management
• Data backup and disaster recovery planning
• Vendor and third-party security reviews
• HIPAA and regulatory compliance guidance
• Audit readiness and documentation
• Security policies and best practices

Frequently Asked Questions

These questions answer how we help companies utilize technology. Our fractional CTO services often involve system modernization, data integration, process automation, and technical decision support for a wide variety of industries.

Do you provide CTO services for healthcare companies?

Excel Complete provides fractional CTO support to healthcare organizations that need stronger data infrastructure, security, and reporting capabilities. We help modernize systems, build HIPAA-compliant workflows, and give leadership clearer insight into operations.

Do you provide CTO services for transportation and logistics companies?

Excel Complete helps transportation and logistics companies modernize legacy systems, improve workflows, and automate manual processes.

Do you provide CTO services to support a growing business?

We partner with growing businesses to select the right software and build technical foundations. By establishing proper architecture early, we'll streamline workflows and protect your business from the technical debt that hinders long-term growth.

Do you work on-site?

Yes, our Fractional CTOs can work on-site. While many client engagements are performed remotely with occasional on-site meetings, we can tailor an engagement to be fully on-site based on your business needs.