Last October I finished ten months as fractional eCommerce Director at ARNE. I wrote about it on LinkedIn at the time and the post did better than anything I’d written about strategy, which told me two things. People are curious about what the job actually is, and almost everyone who asked me about it afterwards wanted to know the same thing first, which was what it costs.
So here is what it costs, what I charge, and when I’d tell you it’s the wrong thing to do.
What the job is
A fractional eCommerce director is a senior person who runs the eCommerce side of your business for part of the week rather than all of it. It’s a different thing from an advisor who turns up quarterly with a deck, or a contractor doing a project. It’s someone who sits in your trading meeting, owns the roadmap, manages the agencies and answers to the board, for 1 or 2 days a week, for an agreed stretch of months.
The best way I can describe it is the structural engineer on a house extension. You don’t employ one full time, because most weeks there’s nothing for them to do, but there are 3 or 4 moments in the build where their judgement is the whole job. The builder does the work and the engineer decides what will hold. A fractional director is that, for a business that has outgrown the way its eCommerce is being run but isn’t yet sure what the permanent role should look like.
At ARNE that meant arriving in January to a fast-growing brand with no eCommerce leadership and a looming future vendor bill of $600,000, and leaving in October with the app built, the platform moved and a team who could run it without me. That shape, in and then out, is the point of it.
What it costs
The market is wide, so I’ll give you the range I found and then mine.
Fractional, from others. I looked at the UK providers who publish anything, and the honest answer is that most don’t. The ones who do run from about £1,800 a month for a day or so a month up to £8,000 a month for a more involved arrangement, and I saw one at “from £3,000”. The quieter end of the market, the senior independents, tend to say the fee is outlined on a call.
Mine. Advisory starts at £8,000 a month. At that level it’s regular board briefings and your questions answered between them rather than days in the business, and it goes up from there with the number of days a week you want me in. Most of my engagements are rolling and monthly, so you’re never tied in for the long term, and I take one new seat a quarter. The prices are on the site because I’ve had enough of asking for them myself.
Against a permanent director. A permanent eCommerce director at a £20M to £150M brand costs £150,000 to £200,000 a year plus employers’ costs, and takes most of a year to find, hire and settle. If the role is clear, that’s the right spend. If it isn’t clear yet, you’re about to write a job description for a role nobody has done in your business, and the fractional seat is how you find out what the job actually is before you commit to it.
Against an agency. Agency retainers at this level run from about £5,000 a month into the tens of thousands, and an agency gives you hands and a scope. What it can’t give you is someone on your side of the table whose only job is to read the invoices and ask whether the work is pointed at the right problem. I ran an agency for 5 years and I’d say the same thing if I still did.
When it’s the wrong answer
I’d rather you worked this out before the call than after, so here are the 3 cases where I’d tell you not to do it.
The first is when you already know what the role is. If you can write the job description in an afternoon and the board agrees with it, hire the person. A fractional director in that situation is an expensive way of delaying a decision you’ve already made.
The second is when what you actually need is capacity. If the roadmap is right and the strategy is agreed and the problem is that nobody has time to do the work, that’s a hire or an agency, and a part-time director will spend 2 days a week being frustrated about the other 3.
The third is scale. Under about £20M in trading, the eCommerce decisions are usually the founder’s to make and the business can’t carry another senior salary, fractional or not. The free things on my site are there for exactly that stage, and I’d start there.
How you know it’s working
The test I use is whether the business needs me less each month, not more. At ARNE the handover was built in from the start, so by the summer the team were running and owning their own roadmap and I was listening. With a jewellery brand I work with 2 days a week, the board pack now answers its own questions about spend against budget because we built the thing that answers them, which means the conversation has moved on to what to do about the answer.
If a fractional director is still indispensable in the second year, something has gone wrong, and it’s probably either the brief or the director. Good advisory should come to an end.
Questions people ask
How many days a week is normal?
1 or 2. Less than a day a week and you’ve got an advisor, which is fine but a different thing. More than 2 and you should probably be hiring.
How long does an engagement last?
Most of mine are rolling and monthly, because the point of a fractional seat is that you’re not tied in for the long term. Some are attached to a programme with an end date, a replatform for instance, and finish when it does. Either way the business should need me less each month, unless we are reshaping the brief.
Is a fractional director the same as an interim?
Close, but an interim usually fills an empty chair full time until the permanent hire arrives. A fractional director is part time and often works alongside the existing team rather than in place of someone.
Can you work with our existing agency?
Yes, and most of the time that’s the job. The agency does better work once someone inside the business owns the brief and reads the invoices, and the good ones will tell you the same.
Mark Leach is an independent eCommerce consultant based in Manchester, working at board level with UK consumer brands between £20M and £150M. The prices are on the eCommerce consultant page.