Fractional Executive

Fractional executives are professionals who offer their management services to organizations on a for-hire, part-time basis. These executives typically have extensive experience in a business environment in roles such as chairperson, owner, CxO, senior vice president, vice president, or director. Their skills can be focused in one discipline or be more broad-based, depending on their experience.

Overview

Fractional executives may work as independent consultants or as part of a consulting firm. However, they are not consultants in the classical sense, because they take an active leadership or management role in the company that hires them, implementing changes and leading the organization just as their permanent counterpart would. They are hired on a project basis, a time-limited basis, or in some cases, on retainer, but they do not work full-time for any particular organization.

They may also be known as an interim executive, contract executive, part-time executive, temporary executive, fractional business executive, on-demand executive or executive-as-a-service.

The advantages of hiring such professionals is their experience and that they do not require a full-time position. While fractional executives are highly skilled within their area(s) of expertise, they may require time to get acclimated to new industries.

Fractional management is in the end a particular declination of interim and temporary management originated by the demand coming from small entrepreneurial companies (less than US$10 million), for which a classical temporary manager may be redundant.

Specific definition and application cases have been discussed in a congress organized by the Italian HR Directors Association (AIDP) and the Italian Chief Financial Officers Association (ANDAF)/

A couple of examples of specifically names Fractional Executives are Fractional CIO, Fractional CMO, Fractional CEO, Fractional Sales Manager, VP of Sales, or CSO, Fractional CFO.