BEN FIELDING Connect on LinkedIn →
Virtual CIO
Strategy  /  Governance  /  Change management

I help growing businesses put real strategy, governance and change management behind their technology decisions, without the overhead of a full-time CIO.

Founder of Quinset (email deliverability) and CIO at Nxt Gen IT (managed IT services). Working across recruitment, professional services and regulated organisations.

Strategy Governance Change management Infrastructure BF
STRATEGYGOVERNANCECHANGE MANAGEMENTINFRASTRUCTUREAVAILABLE FOR PODCASTS & SPEAKING STRATEGYGOVERNANCECHANGE MANAGEMENTINFRASTRUCTUREAVAILABLE FOR PODCASTS & SPEAKING
Sheet 00.1 / BriefScale NTS

Why a virtual CIO

Most growing businesses reach a point where technology stops being an operational detail and starts being a board-level risk. Email that never reaches the inbox. Systems that don't talk to each other. A provider change that goes wrong at the worst possible moment. A policy nobody owns until it's tested by an audit.

A virtual CIO brings the strategic thinking a full-time hire would provide, at the point growth actually needs it, without the cost or timeline of building that function in-house. That's the seat I sit in for the businesses I work with: close enough to the infrastructure to know where it actually breaks, senior enough to sit in the room where the growth decisions get made.

Sheet 01–04 / Practice areasRev A
01 / STRATEGY

Turning growth plans into technology decisions

Technology decisions should follow business strategy, not the other way round. I work with leadership teams to turn growth plans into a realistic roadmap: what to fix now, what to build for later, and what to deliberately leave alone.

02 / GOVERNANCE

The framework that makes growth durable

Governance is about how decisions get made and who's accountable for them, not just policy documents. I work with senior leaders to build governed ways of working around technology and the people who use it: clear ownership, sound decision-making, and controls that hold up under scrutiny. Governance done properly is invisible. Done badly, it's the reason growth stalls.

03 / CHANGE MANAGEMENT

Where technology projects actually fail

Change rarely fails in the planning, it fails in the handover. I've run provider transitions, platform migrations and domain changes for organisations that couldn't afford downtime, including full takeovers from outgoing IT providers.

04 / INFRASTRUCTURE

The layer underneath the strategy

Through Nxt Gen IT I run managed IT for SMEs. Through Quinset I fix email deliverability for recruitment agencies, where roughly one in four emails never reaches the inbox. As a vCIO, I help clients make confident decisions about their investment in technology, and empower leaders to drive the business forward.

Sheet 05 / RecordAs built
1 in 4recruitment emails never reach the inbox
7brands launched in 12 years
400+businesses supported
4+sectors: recruitment, professional services, membership & regulatory bodies
Sheet 06 / Speaking & podcastsIssued for discussion

Topics I speak on

TopicStatus
  • 01Why email deliverability is a business risk, not an IT problem
  • 02Building governance into a growth plan before you're forced to
  • 03The virtual CIO model: strategic technology leadership without a full-time hire
  • 04The power and security of effective change management
  • 05What "serious about growing" should mean for a company's technology stack
Get in touch

Available for podcasts, panels and speaking slots.

The fastest way to reach me is LinkedIn. Send a message and I'll reply from there.