Fractional head of data & AI
Data and AI leadership, one day a week.
For SMEs and mid-sized companies that have data, AI ideas and sometimes vendors, but nobody to arbitrate, drive and measure. Without hiring a full-time executive.
The three situations where this format helps
AI tools with no measured result
Licences bought, trials launched, and nobody can say what they deliver. Someone needs to decide what stays and what stops.
Scattered data
CRM, sales management, accounting, spreadsheets: every project starts from scratch because nobody owns the reference data.
A hire that gives you pause
Hiring a full-time head of data is a heavy bet when you do not yet know how much work there will be. Three months of fractional work tells you.
A typical month
- Every week
- One day on site or remote: running the projects, reviewing what teams and vendors deliver, making decisions.
- Every month
- A review with leadership: progress, measured gains, trade-offs and next month’s budget.
- Every quarter
- The data and AI roadmap updated, and the question asked plainly: continue, accelerate or bring it in-house?
What I bring
- Two three-year Chief Data Officer mandates, embedded in the teams (Payback Group, MyQM), including leading a team of four.
- Generative AI systems put into production, not just recommended: 100% of a contact centre’s calls analysed, technical support agents, document extraction.
- Eleven years of applied-AI consulting for large accounts and SMEs: I know what a project costs, and when it is not worth it.
Fee and commitment
from €4,500 excl. VAT / month
1 day a week · three-month initial commitment
- The data and AI roadmap, kept current and presented to leadership
- Choosing tools and vendors, and checking what they deliver
- Running the projects, from prioritisation to production
- Upskilling your teams, so that you become self-sufficient
Two days a week or a more occasional engagement: on request. The first 30-minute conversation is there to check the format suits you.
Worth knowing
Common questions
How is this different from a consultancy?
A consultancy delivers an engagement and leaves. Here the same person holds the roadmap over time, decides with you and answers for results month after month. I sell no licences and no staffing, and take no commission on the tools I recommend.
We already have an IT department. Is this redundant?
No. IT runs infrastructure and security; this role owns how the business uses data and AI, and measures what it delivers. The work is done with IT, not around it.
On site or remote?
Both. On site in northern France, remote elsewhere, with occasional travel for leadership reviews.
And after three months?
We decide together: carry on at the same pace, scale down, or hire in-house. In that case I help define the role and recruit the person who takes over.
Next step
Where would you start?
Start with the self-assessment: five minutes, free, and you leave with your top three levers. The ten-day engagement described alongside comes next, if you decide to go for it. If AI is not the right answer, I will tell you so.
5 minutes, free, no sign-up
Diagnostic
Paid engagement8 days
€10,000 excl. VAT · fixed fee, one area of the business
- A map of where the time actually goes in the area audited
- Each lever costed in hours freed, ranked by effort and by gain
- The data note: what leaves your systems, and where it is processed
- A three-month plan, naming the first system to build