Engagements
Ownership, priced as ownership.
Engagements are fractional and flat monthly. Your company gets a technology leader, and nobody new on the payroll. The ladder below is not three sizes of the same service. It is three degrees of ownership, and a company moves up or down with thirty days' notice.
The retainer model
An hourly consultant gets paid for arriving after something has gone wrong. That arrangement quietly rewards the problem staying unsolved. A flat fee buys accountability for an outcome instead of a block of time to spend down, and it holds steady whether the month is busy or quiet.
Work outside the scope of a retainer is scoped and quoted as a fixed fee, agreed in writing first. No surprise invoices, and no hourly estimates.
These engagements suit companies that want someone accountable for the outcome rather than a pair of hands on a defined task. We own business systems, data, and vendor strategy. Your IT partner owns infrastructure, devices, and uptime, and we work alongside one at most clients.
Engagement levels
Owns the upkeep
Platform Care
For a team whose system works and nobody owns it.
- We handle administration and configuration changes as the business shifts.
- We make enhancements and fixes without waiting to be asked twice.
- We build in a sandbox and release to production deliberately.
- We keep the data clean and run regular system health checks.
Owns one platform
Salesforce Platform Manager
For a company whose CRM has become the operating system of the business with nobody accountable for it.
Everything in Care, plus
- We own a platform roadmap and keep it current.
- We meet every department that uses the system, on a schedule.
- We build the automation, from Flows through Apex and integrations.
- We design clear, reliable reporting that leadership opens and trusts.
- We train your people and drive adoption.
Salesforce is the deepest skill set here. The same ownership applies to HubSpot, Dynamics, and the rest.
Owns the whole function
Fractional Technology Director
The full seat, for a company that needs a technology leader and is not ready to hire one at that salary.
Everything above, plus
- We hold accountability for the whole stack rather than a single platform.
- We own vendor and contract strategy, including what gets cancelled.
- We own the budget and a roadmap tied to where the business is going.
- We manage and develop whoever does the technical work, in house or contract.
- We take a seat in leadership meetings, where the decisions actually get made.
Owns the AI decision
AI Advisor
With AI now built into most business software, growing companies are ready to put it to work. AI Advisory covers discovery, tool recommendations, security review, solution design, and engineer coordination, so the company picks the right problems to solve rather than building before a use case exists.
- We identify where AI pays off in your business, and where it does not.
- We handle tool selection and take a clear position on what data goes where.
- We scope one pilot, run it, and assess it honestly.
- We train the people expected to use it.
Offered at a reduced rate alongside a platform or Fractional Technology Director retainer.
Getting started
Every engagement opens with a conversation, about thirty minutes, mostly you describing how the business runs and where technology gets in the way. Where it looks like a fit, we go deeper on the full stack, every system and what it is actually used for, and come back with where the impact sits.
Most engagements then begin with an assessment. A Technology Assessment reviews systems, data, integrations, risk, and spend across the business. An AI Readiness Assessment covers where AI fits, what to do first, and what it will cost. Both carry a fixed fee, the document is yours whether or not we continue, and the fee credits toward a retainer or a build.
Fees are flat, monthly, and confirmed in writing before any work begins. I will give you the figure in our first conversation. Which engagement fits depends on your environment, and quoting a number before we understand it would not serve either of us.
This is a deliberately small practice built on long relationships rather than volume. We have room for one or two more engagements, and the goal is a handful we can genuinely own.
Hiring versus retaining
The familiar answer to unowned technology is to hire someone. Sometimes that is right. The risk is hiring before the company knows what it is buying, because the wrong hire takes two years to unwind.
The U.S. Department of Labor puts the cost of replacing a bad hire at 30% of first year salary. SHRM puts the real figure for a mid-level role between 100% and 150%.
U.S. Department of Labor; SHRM
Hire full time
- Real cost
- A technology director runs roughly $250K a year fully loaded. A Salesforce administrator at $75K to $95K lands near $95K to $120K.
- Experience at the lower band
- Two to five years, often stepping into a first role owning a system rather than taking tickets in one. You train them.
- Time to productive
- Sixty to ninety days to contribute, and longer to work independently.
- What the forty hours holds
- At this company size, ten to twenty hours of genuine platform work. The remainder fills with adjacent tasks.
- The wrong hire
- Announces itself in month nine. Three to six months lost, a reopened search, and the replacement cost above.
Retain Kelley Systems Group
- Real cost
- One flat monthly fee, a fraction of the loaded cost of the hire. No payroll taxes, benefits, time off, equipment, or recruiting fee.
- Experience you get
- A leader who has already owned all of technology through the growth stage you are entering. Twelve years in Salesforce, six of them owning a business-critical org.
- Time to productive
- Week one, with no ramp and no supervision.
- What you are buying
- Ownership and outcomes rather than seat time, priced on the work instead of a timesheet.
- If it stops fitting
- Thirty days' notice. No severance, no unemployment claim, and your systems documented rather than held in one person's head.
Salary and replacement-cost figures are general market ranges offered for comparison, not a quote on your specific role. We are glad to run the numbers against your actual posting and budget.