vCIO module
An IT director, without hiring an IT director. The vCIO module from OKTO Solutions gives you a named IT advisor who builds your IT master plan, plans your technology budget and prioritizes your projects with you, on a meeting schedule set in advance.
A vCIO, or virtual CIO, is a shared technology advisor who takes the long view of a small business’s IT: master plan, roadmap, budget, project priorities and risk. At OKTO Solutions it is a paid module added to a managed IT services plan, starting at ten workstations or servers.
In short
The vCIO module gives a company a named IT advisor who knows the file: the equipment, the contracts, the projects and the constraints. That advisor builds the master plan, keeps the roadmap current, plans the technology budget and settles priorities with management. It suits organizations of ten workstations or more whose leadership has to make technology calls with nobody in house to advise them, and those whose IT spending gets decided case by case, usually right after something broke. What changes is the order of the decisions: they get planned instead of endured.
The rhythm
The question comes up at every first meeting, and it is a fair one: a strategic advisor is harder to see at work than a technician fixing a printer. Here is how a real mandate runs, from the first month to the point where the cycle starts over. The first two months are for documenting and writing. The rest of the year follows a schedule set in advance, with meetings on the calendar rather than at the mercy of whatever is on fire.
We document what you have: equipment, licences, contracts, vendors, security, backups and dependencies. Above all we listen to your business goals for the next few years, because that is where the technical priorities come from.
The master plan puts the current state, the risks, the gaps and the ranked priorities in writing. It is the reference document we come back to at every meeting, instead of starting from a blank page each time.
Projects are ordered in time and sized in effort, with the budget planning that goes with them. The horizon runs from 12 to 36 months depending on the level. You know what is coming and when to set money aside for it.
Twice a year at the Standard level, quarterly at the Stratégique level. The meeting covers progress, the incidents that happened, the risks and the priorities for the period ahead. Recommendations are written down, not just said out loud.
One campaign per quarter, at all three levels. The results are used to aim the security awareness training where it is missing, never to point fingers.
A move, an acquisition, a customer requirement or an incident changes the priorities. The roadmap follows those changes instead of sleeping in a drawer until the next crisis.
At the Essentiel level, the master plan and the basic roadmap are included; the strategic review meetings are then billed as used.
Three levels
The level is chosen for the depth of advice you want, not for the size of the company. All three require a minimum of ten workstations or servers and are billed per workstation or per server. Four things separate them: the number of hours included, the depth of the roadmap, how often the strategic reviews happen and access to the business AI platform. The master plan, the documented recommendations and the four phishing simulations per year are there at all three levels.
| What is included | Essentiel | Standard | Stratégique |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hours included per year, per workstation or server | 4 h | 6 h | 8 h |
| IT master plan | Included | Included | Included |
| Roadmap | Basic | 12 months | Advanced |
| Strategic review meetings | Billed as used | Twice a year | Quarterly |
| Phishing simulations, 4 per year | Included | Included | Included |
| Documented recommendations | Included | Included | Included |
| Vendor management | Billed as used | Billed as used | Billed as used |
| Project management | Billed as used | Billed as used | Billed as used |
| Attendance at your business meetings | Billed as used | Billed as used | Billed as used |
| Business AI platform | No | Included | Included |
| Minimum workstations or servers | 10 | 10 | 10 |
Master plan and roadmap
The IT master plan describes the current state of your environment, the risks, the gaps that were found and the priorities in ranked order. The roadmap then places those priorities in time, along with what each one means for the budget. One says where you are, the other says in what order you move forward. Both are working documents revised at every meeting, not reports filed in a drawer after the presentation.
Budget planning
A company with no technology planning spends in jolts. A server dies in July, so the money has to be found in July. A licence renews without anyone having seen it coming. The advisor’s job is to place those deadlines in time: hardware life cycle, contract renewals, planned projects, replacements spread over several fiscal years. Spending then lands when it was planned for, which makes the year easier to budget and makes the conversation with management a lot shorter.
Projects get ordered by risk and business goals, not by whichever vendor called last.
Vendors
In a lot of small companies the answer is "whoever has time", and it is never the same person twice. The result: contracts that renew on their own, a line-of-business application whose exit terms nobody knows, an internet provider who only gets called during an outage. Vendor management means carrying those conversations for you, with the technical vocabulary and the history in hand. It is billed as used at all three levels, because the volume varies enormously from one organization to the next.
Awareness
Because one campaign a year measures a single day, not a habit. Four simulations spread across the year give you a trend: are people clicking less, are they reporting more, does one department need a hand. All four campaigns are included at every level of the module, Essentiel included. The results are used to aim the security awareness training, never to name publicly who clicked, which is the surest way to make the reports stop coming in.
Awareness rounds out the technical work described in our managed cybersecurity service: the tools block most of the messages, the employees catch the rest.
Compare
Three ways to steer the technology strategy of a small business. Here is what separates them in practice.
A module added to your plan, from ten workstations or servers up. Behind the advisor sits a team that sees dozens of different environments. The master plan is included at all three levels, and the documentation stays with you even if the person changes.
An executive position, with the salary, the benefits and the training that come with it. The experience is that of one person, and their departure often takes the memory of your decisions along. It is an excellent choice once the organization is large enough to justify it.
No financial commitment, right up until the first incident. Decisions get made under pressure, using whatever the last vendor said. The IT budget gets discovered on the day it has to be spent.
The vCIO does not replace your internal team when you have one. It gives that team a framework, a plan and a counterpart at the same level to settle priorities with, the way our co-managed IT services work. The module is available across Quebec: see our IT services in Trois-Rivières and our IT services in Laval. Governance rests on execution, and execution lives in our managed IT services.
Questions and answers
Tell us about your goals for the next few years and about what worries you in your IT. We will tell you which level of the module fits, no strings attached.
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