Service · Fractional
Fractional CDO: a data leader for your company, a few days a month
A fractional CDO (Chief Data Officer) is a senior data leader who works for your company part-time, typically a few days a month, instead of a full-time hire. At Data Solutions Agency, the same team that sets your data strategy also designs the architecture, handles data protection and builds the tools. You pay for business results, not for a slide deck.
Who it is for
You run an SME or a mid-market company and recognise at least two of these situations:
- Your figures live in five to ten tools (CRM, ERP, accounting, spreadsheets, shared drives) and no dashboard brings them together.
- Your monthly report takes days of copy-paste.
- Key processes live in a few people’s heads: one departure or sick leave and the business slows down.
- You want to use AI, but you don’t know where it would actually pay off.
- You are preparing a fundraising round or a sale and need clean, reliable numbers.
- You know you need “someone for data”, but not which profile: CDO, data architect, developer, DPO?
That last question is the one we hear most often. It is why this offer exists.
Human as a Service: one subscription, the right expert each month
Like a SaaS, you subscribe to a fixed volume of days per month. Unlike a single freelance CDO, you can change how those days are used as your needs evolve:
| Role | What it covers | When it matters most |
|---|---|---|
| Fractional CDO / CDAO | Data and AI strategy, roadmap, priorities, steering committee, KPIs | At the start, then every quarter |
| Fractional data architect | Target architecture, tool choices, connecting your data sources | Before building the platform |
| Tech lead / fractional CTO | Steering developers and vendors, technical decisions, code quality | During the build, especially for mid-market companies |
| DPO (data protection officer) | GDPR and PDPA register, access rights, data breach and crisis procedure | Throughout, mandatory for some companies |
| Delivery | Data platform, dashboards, automations, custom applications, AI | Once priorities are set |
Month one can be mostly diagnosis; month four mostly build. The volume of days stays fixed and agreed in advance: no open-ended billing, no surprise invoice.
How we work: five steps, measured against ROI
- Understand the business. What does the company want in the next 12 to 24 months: save time, steer by the numbers, secure its know-how, prepare a sale? Every data decision is tied back to that goal.
- Map and diagnose. We inventory your tools, data flows and processes, and assess your data maturity. What works, what doesn’t, what can be improved.
- Centralise. We connect your scattered sources (CRM, ERP, accounting, files) into one reliable base, without replacing the tools that already work.
- Clean and govern. We remove duplicates, agree on one definition for each key figure, name an owner for each data domain and set access rights.
- Deliver, measure, iterate. We work in short cycles of a few weeks. Each cycle has an expected business result set upfront and checked afterwards. We keep what pays off and stop what doesn’t.
Aligned with your goal, whatever it is
| Your goal | What your fractional CDO focuses on |
|---|---|
| Save time | Automating re-keying and manual reporting |
| Steer the business | One set of cross-functional dashboards: sales, margin, workload, cash |
| Increase company value before a sale | Clean, documented data and tools that run without the founder |
| Secure know-how | Mapping and writing down business processes (BPMN) so they survive staff turnover |
| Be ready for a crisis | Backups, access rights and a data breach procedure tested with your teams |
| Use AI where it pays | Two or three use cases with measurable gains, then building them |
Fractional CDO compared with the alternatives
| Full-time CDO | Consulting firm | Fractional CDO (DSA) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Commitment | Permanent hire | Per project | Monthly, adjustable |
| Time to start | Months of recruitment | A few weeks | A few days |
| Roles covered | One profile | Mostly strategy | Strategy, architecture, DPO, delivery |
| Cost | Full salary and charges | High day rates | Fixed monthly volume |
| Hands-on delivery | Needs a team around them | Often subcontracted | Same team, end to end |
Proof
- Danone, EMEA: architecture of the Snowflake / Informatica to Databricks migration, business unit by business unit, with data governance led by Global Business Data Owners. Trajectory built to cut data platform OPEX by 20%.
- Distribution network of 29 branches: cloud data platform and discount dashboards, +3 margin points observed in one year.
- Influencer marketing agency: six tools reconciled into one database, gross margin by business unit in real time, one full-time employee freed from admin work.
- Engineering SME: buyers’ pricing know-how turned into a search engine across 100,000 technical drawings, results in under a second.
Who you work with
- Alice Millot, co-founder: 20 years of data and AI consulting for Danone, Kingfisher, Air Liquide, Total and Oney. Data architect, business process analyst (BPMN) and trained DPO.
- Tony Fouache, co-founder: 12 years of data engineering, 11 of them at Auchan, and full-stack developer.
Bilingual English and French, working across Europe, North Africa and Asia.
FAQ
What is a fractional CDO? A senior data leader who works part-time for several companies. You get the experience of a Chief Data Officer without the cost of a full-time executive hire.
What is the difference between a CDO and a CDAO? A CDAO (Chief Data and Analytics Officer, sometimes Chief Data and AI Officer) adds responsibility for analytics and AI. Our offer covers both.
Can you work remotely? Yes. Most of the work is remote; we come on site for key workshops and steering committees.
We don’t know where to start. Is that a problem? No, that is the usual starting point. The first weeks are used to understand your business and decide which profile you actually need.
Not sure which profile you need? That is the first thing we work out together.
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