If you’ve ever contemplated beefing up your data security, or offering a new, technology-based service to your customers, or just buying a new office communications system, you may have thought to yourself “I wish we had a CIO around here.”

Of course many companies aren’t big enough to justify hiring a full-time chief information officer who can offer expertise on the technology questions they face. That’s where Virtual CIO services come in.

Like a real CIO, a Virtual CIO, or vCIO, develops a deep understanding of a business and then offers individualized guidance about technology strategies. But, by working on a part-time contract basis, a Virtual CIO is affordable for a much broader range of businesses.

A Virtual CIO’s functions may include evaluating new software or services to find products that provide the most value to a company, looking at business processes and finding technology that can save time and money, and evaluating the way the company handles data to make sure everything is secure and reliable. Getting that kind of support upfront can help a business avoid costly, dangerous mistakes that are difficult to correct.

Virtual CIO clients get regular meetings to discuss their business’s most important needs. Not only does this provide a way to bounce technology ideas off someone with the experience to evaluate them, but it may also generate new concepts that less tech-savvy staff might never have thought of on their own.

If you think a Virtual CIO might make a great addition to your team, please let me know. I’d love to talk with you about how this service could help your business out.