Service · IT Strategy & vCIO
IT consulting and vCIO strategy for the seat you cannot justify hiring yet.
IT consulting gets practical when your IT services, vendor renewals, roadmap, and budget decisions need one owner in the room. Most operators between $3M and $20M in revenue need a CIO-level brain but cannot justify the $220,000 all-in for a full-time senior hire. The vCIO engagement fills that seat on retainer, using the CTGA score and a written roadmap instead of reactive renewal decisions and slide decks nobody reads.
IT strategy and vCIO services from Helix Stax puts a senior IT leadership seat at your table on a retainer. We score your technology maturity quarterly using the CTGA framework, write the IT roadmap your CFO can defend, sit in the vendor pitch before you sign anything, and run the cross-domain coordination that keeps your helpdesk provider, SaaS vendors, and internal team working toward the same plan. This is an ongoing consulting function, not a one-time report.
The engagement is built around the Helix Score. The score is the receipt. If the work is worth doing, the number moves. If the number does not move, the conversation gets honest about why. We do not produce 60-page strategy reports that sit on a shelf. We produce a quarterly score, a written gap list, a ranked action memo, and a 12-month roadmap your leadership team can actually use.
Key service areas
What the work looks like.
- Quarterly CTGA assessment, every quarter you receive a new 100-900 score, a written delta from the prior quarter, and the top three actions ranked by cost and risk
- IT roadmap authoring, a 12-month written roadmap that sequences investments, retirements, and projects in the order that produces the most CTGA score movement per dollar spent
- Vendor management, every SaaS contract, renewal date, and spend line reviewed monthly; vendor pitches read before you sign; SOWs reviewed before contracts execute
- Cross-domain coordination, MSP, helpdesk, security vendor, cloud provider, and internal IT team coordinated under one program so nobody points at the other when something breaks
- Board and leadership reporting, board-ready CTGA summary every quarter, written in plain English your CFO can hand to a sponsor or a PE firm without further translation
- Budget planning, the technology section of your annual operating plan, with investment priorities ranked and the business case for each written in your CFO's language
- M&A and growth diligence, IT assessment for acquisitions, technology integration planning for roll-ups, and the stack consolidation roadmap after a transaction closes
Named engagements inside this capability
How this shows up as a scoped engagement.
vCIO / Outsourced CIO
The on-retainer CIO seat. We run the strategy and governance function a full-time CIO would own, without the full-time salary, the benefits overhead, or the six-month recruiting cycle. The seat covers strategic planning, vendor management, board-level reporting, and the ongoing IT governance your business needs as it grows. "Fractional CIO" is a phrase some providers use; we call this an outsourced CIO on retainer because that is what it is.
- Monthly or bi-weekly working sessions with you and your leadership team, standing agenda, written action memo after every session
- Quarterly CTGA re-score with a written delta and a plain-English summary of what moved, what did not, and why
- Vendor pitch reviews before you sign: every technology contract over $5,000 reviewed by a senior IT eye before it executes
- Annual leadership briefing: the full-year technology story, score trajectory, savings booked, compliance posture, and next-year priorities, in one document your board can read in one sitting
IT Roadmap
The 12-month IT roadmap is the document that turns a list of IT problems into a sequenced investment plan. We score your current state against the CTGA framework, identify the gaps that cost you the most per dollar of exposure, and sequence the remediation in the order that moves the score fastest for the budget available. The result is a document your CFO can defend to a board, a bank, or a PE sponsor, not a slide deck, a written plan.
- A 12-to-24-month written IT roadmap, 10 to 20 pages, built on your actual CTGA score and gap list
- An investment-sequencing table: what to buy, what to retire, what to renegotiate, and when, with the business case attached to each line item
- Every roadmap item pinned to a CTGA pillar so the quarterly re-score tracks roadmap progress in a number, not just a status update
- The technology section of your annual operating plan, written in your CFO's voice and ready for the board packet
CTGA Score & Free Call
The CTGA assessment is where every engagement begins. A free call, no pitch, and at the end you have your 100-900 Helix Score, a pillar-by-pillar breakdown, and the three gaps that cost you the most. The Controls pillar scores your security posture. Technology scores your infrastructure and tools. Growth scores your revenue-enabling technology. Adoption scores whether your team actually uses what you bought. Together the four pillars produce a number that benchmarks where you stand and a gap list that tells you what to fix first.
- A scored CTGA assessment: 70 capabilities across Controls, Technology, Growth, and Adoption, producing a 100-900 Helix Score
- A pillar-by-pillar breakdown: each domain scored 0 to 225 with the gap list ranked by cost and risk
- A top-three gap memo: the three findings that cost you the most in your current posture, written in plain English your leadership team can act on
- A re-assessment at 90 days or quarterly to track whether the actions taken moved the score, the receipt that proves the work paid off
Digital Strategy
Digital strategy is the IT-roadmap conversation framed for leadership and investors, the written plan that answers how technology will support your business over the next one to three years, what it will cost, and why the sequence is right. This is not web design or marketing. It is the technology section of your operating plan, defensible at a board pre-read or an M&A due-diligence process.
- A written 12-to-24-month digital and technology strategy, 10 to 20 pages, with the investment thesis for each initiative stated clearly
- A build-vs-buy analysis for the three or four decisions your leadership team is actually wrestling with right now
- Platform and vendor selection guidance: which tools to standardize on and why, framed as a multi-year TCO argument rather than a feature comparison
- A risk and dependency map: the technology decisions that depend on each other and the sequence that avoids building on an unstable foundation
How we engage
Three tiers. The score picks one.
All three engagement tiers run on the CTGA framework. The difference is the depth of the seat, the cadence of the working relationship, and how embedded we are in the leadership conversation.
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vCIO Retainer
Monthly working session, quarterly CTGA re-score, one system audit per quarter, and async sanity-checks on vendor decisions and contract renewals. The right tier for owner-operators who need a steady, knowledgeable hand but not a full embedded seat.
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Helix Engagement
A defined-scope engagement built around one strategic output: an IT roadmap, a vendor portfolio audit, a CTGA baseline assessment, or a digital strategy document. We come in, do the work, and hand off a written deliverable your leadership team can use.
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Helix Operate
The full ongoing vCIO seat. Weekly sessions, a standing presence at monthly leadership meetings, board-ready CTGA reporting every quarter, M&A diligence on demand, and the complete cross-domain vendor coordination function. Built for organizations where IT strategy is a real operational lever, not a once-a-year conversation.
What you walk out with
Concrete deliverables.
- A quarterly CTGA score, the 100-900 number, the pillar-by-pillar breakdown, the delta from last quarter, and the top three actions written in plain English
- A 12-month IT roadmap document: investment sequencing, business case per line item, and every initiative pinned to a CTGA pillar
- Monthly working-session notes with a one-page action memo listing three ranked decisions and the owner for each
- A vendor decision write-up before any contract over $5,000 executes: options scored, recommendation stated, and the business case attached
- An annual executive summary your board or PE sponsor can read in one sitting: score trajectory, savings booked, compliance posture, and next-year priorities
Honest scope
What we do not do.
We do not run your IT operations. We coordinate the people who do. If you need someone closing tickets, patching servers, or staffing a help desk, you need an MSP, and we will help you select and manage the right one. We do not produce 60-page strategy reports that live on a shelf: the deliverable is a working document your leadership team uses. We do not make vendor decisions on your behalf: we give you a scored recommendation and the business case, then you decide. We do not manage individual software implementations ourselves at the advisory tiers, that is Engagement or Operate scope, and we will tell you when the work has grown past an advisory conversation.
Industries we apply this to
Where this service shows up most.
- Legal Practice management, a document portal, and the spreadsheet your senior partner will not give up.
- Distribution A WMS that only talks to the ERP through a nightly export that breaks every other Friday.
- Hospitality POS, online ordering, a loyalty app, and a scheduling tool the kitchen never opens. The assistant GM is the integration layer.
- Government Contracting The flow-down email wants your CMMC posture by the next option year. The audit floor is closer than you think.
You can have the number by Friday.
The free call is free, and the only thing you walk out with is your CTGA score and the three gaps that cost you the most. If we are not the right fit, you keep the score and we both move on.