Do you need a Head of IT, or just a better IT supplier?

Short answer. IT support and IT leadership are two different jobs, and most firms of 10 to 150 people have bought the first and assumed it included the second. The supplier fixes what breaks. Nobody owns the plan, the budget, the insurance questionnaire or the supplier contract. If IT decisions keep landing on the managing director’s desk, the gap is not a better supplier, it is a Head of IT. For firms that cannot justify one full-time, the fractional version does the role for a set number of days a month, from £650 to £1,950 a month depending on size, against roughly £85,000 a year to employ one.

I run both sides of this for clients, so this is not a pitch against IT support. It is the distinction I wish more firms made before they switched supplier for the third time.

Two jobs, one word

“IT” covers two things that need different people, or at least different hats.

Support is operational. Laptops, accounts, Microsoft 365 administration, the printer, the network, security tooling, backups running. It is reactive by design and it is most of what an IT company sells. Done well it is invaluable. Done badly it is a ticket queue.

Leadership is accountable. What should the IT be doing for the business next year? What will it cost? Which supplier, on what terms, held to what? Are we insurable, and can we prove it? What do we say when a client asks how we handle their data? Who signs the Cyber Essentials declaration? Who tells the partners, in plain English, what is at risk?

In a firm with a Head of IT, the second list has a name against it. In most firms of 10 to 150 people, it has the managing director’s name against it by default, alongside everything else on their desk.

Seven signs the gap is leadership, not support

1. Every IT decision lands on the MD. New starter laptops, a licence renewal, a supplier’s upsell, a phishing scare. If the person running the business is also the person deciding all of these, they are the accidental IT director.
2. Nobody can answer the cyber insurance questionnaire with confidence. The questions are about MFA, backups, patching, admin accounts and policies. The supplier can answer some; nobody owns the whole picture.
3. Licences drift. People leave, the licence stays. Premium features are paid for and never switched on. Nobody has looked at the Microsoft invoice line by line in a year. The waste is usually 10 to 20 percent.
4. Renewals surprise you. The broadband, the phones, the support contract, the accounts package. Each rolls over on its own date, on its own terms, and the first you know is the invoice.
5. The roadmap lives in someone’s head. Ask what the IT will look like in 18 months and the answer is a shrug, or a supplier’s proposal for something they happen to sell.
6. A client, auditor or regulator has asked how you handle data. And the answer took a week, three people and some guesswork. Law firms, accountants and anyone handling client money get this question more every year.
7. You are about to change something big. An office move, a merger, a new practice management system, a switch to Microsoft 365. Big changes without an owner cost twice as much and finish late.

Two or more of these, and a better supplier will not fix it. The same problems will follow you to the next one.

What a Head of IT actually does each month

Strip the title away and the job is a rhythm:

• Monthly: a leadership session, decisions taken and written down, the budget checked against plan, anything urgent between sessions answered the same day.
• Quarterly: the roadmap reviewed and dated, a one-page report for the partners or board, a look at every renewal in the next 90 days.
• Annually: the IT budget set, supplier contracts read before they roll, the security baseline re-tested, Cyber Essentials renewed.
• Continuously: joiners and leavers handled properly, the supplier held to the agreement, the documentation kept current in a place the firm owns.

None of that needs someone in the building five days a week. It needs someone senior, for a predictable number of days a month, who is accountable for it.

What it costs, honestly

Employing a Head of IT in the UK: the median salary is about £72,500 (ITJobsWatch and Robert Half, September 2026). Add employer National Insurance and pension and it is roughly £85,000 a year, before recruitment fees, kit and cover. For a 40-person firm that is a large fixed cost for a role that needs about a day a month of judgement.

Buying it fractionally: published UK prices for firms under about 100 staff cluster between £1,000 and £2,500 a month for one to two days, with regional day rates of £750 to £1,100. Most providers do not publish at all, and most aim at firms of 50 to 300 people. My own Fractional Head of IT tiers are £650, £1,100 and £1,950 a month for half a day, one day and two days, with a 90-day initial period and then monthly.

The comparison a partner should make is not fractional versus full-time. It is fractional versus nobody, which is what most firms have now.

Keep the supplier, add the owner

The part that surprises people: you often do not need to change your IT company. If they answer the phone and do the work well, the missing piece is someone to set the plan and hold them to it. A good supplier welcomes a client who knows what they want and reviews the contract before it renews. A poor one does not, and that tells you something too.

Where the same person can do both, as I do for a number of clients, the leadership line is priced and contracted separately from the support, the licences and hardware are itemised at their own price, and the plan and the documentation belong to the firm. That is the answer to the fair question of whether advice and delivery from one supplier is a conflict.

Where to start

A fixed-fee audit is the sensible first step whichever way you go: two weeks, from £1,500, credited against your first Head of IT month, an independent look at Microsoft 365, security, backups, licences and suppliers, a partner-ready report and a 12-month roadmap. It answers the seven signs above with evidence, and it works whether you then hire a Head of IT, appoint a fractional one, brief your current supplier, or change nothing. The IT & Security Audit page has the detail, and a 30-minute call is the fastest way to find out whether you need it at all.