Blue Raven

CTO/CIO Fractional Consulting

Our fractional consultants serve as embedded members of your team or lead specific initiatives. Each has years of experience and can turn to a wide bench of specialists to respond best to your technology needs.

CTOs generally are focused on technology product development, CIOs help organizations use technology effectively, and CISOs specialize in security and data privacy.

We work either via a monthly retainer or on specific initiatives under fixed budgets.

Learn more about our unique consulting model.

Each of our team has decades of experience and don't require hand-holding. We can serve as part of your extended team or lead specific initiatives. Get the right help to drive performance, reduce costs and failures, and run successful projects.

Learn more about our unique consulting model.

Make AI Adoption a Success

We have a unique take on AI. We take a holistic approach on top-down strategy, implementation initiatives, and — most importantly — educating leaders and teams. Without all three, AI can often be costly or fail altogether.

AI Labs focuses on individuals climbing their own AI learning curves. We leverage peer groups (either within an industry or internally within your organization) to foster shared best practices, accountability, and innovation. Learn more…

Our Services

Team Building

One of Blue Raven’s core missions is to grow your technology team’s capabilities. It starts with recruiting, but extends into team organization, role definition, mentoring and support. We’re not a recruiting firm, but every technology leader hires and builds teams. We have decades of experience in this area.

Technical Chief of Staff

Often CTOs and CIOs get drawn into the day to day work of their teams, and spend quite a bit of time managing immediate priorities. Use this unique approach to lean on us as a right-hand person to reduce cognitive load, allow you to go home at 5:00pm, and to focus on the strategic mission of your business.

Practical AI Strategy

We help clients put useful automation and AI-driven systems in place that improve efficiency and leverage new technologies. We look for immediately impactive solutions, we help ensure data privacy is maintained, and we do our best to cut through the hype.

IT Budgeting & Planning

We advocate good discipline in managing budgets, working with your CFO to understand how IT investments fit into the big picture, and encouraging fluency in financial information. We have team members versed in accounting and believe you’ve got to understand the financials of a business in order to understand the business itself.

Process Definition & Automation

Before software and systems can be built, a team needs to know its processes. Who does your work? What are the steps? What roles and functions are there? We help clarify how work gets done and then take the next step of finding ways technology can help.

GAP Analysis

We can help assess the delta between your current state and your desired future state. What’s blocking this evolution, what plan can we create, and how can you manage resources to get there? Blue Raven has a unique systems approach to assessing the state of technology solutions.

Team Enablement

We’ll help identify opportunities for growth in your existing team and work on customized plans to develop their capabilities to support your business.

Project Management

We can bring specialists in to help lead projects, or we can support your in-house team refine their best practices. We often can select methodologies, tools, and practices to avoid having your team reinvent the wheel with each new initiative.

Change Management

Technology often isn’t the only, or even the biggest, challenge organizations face. We’re versed in the discipline of introducing change to an organization and helping turn resistance or confusion into buy-in.

Digitalization & Cloud Migration

Turn spreadsheets into systems. Rescue information out of email. Don’t depend on a single person running a critical function. We help clients operationalize manual processes into digital systems, break down data silos, and enable scalability.

AI Prompt & Machine Learning

AI and large language model engines are transforming how work is done today. We bring specialists in to implement AI strategies and look for innovative ways to hand work off. We coach your team in using tools and we keep abreast of new technologies in this space.

KPI Performance & Implementation

Dashboards, OKR systems, and Key Performance Indicators can often help drive visibility and better data-driven decision making. We help executive teams see what data is impactive and bring it to the forefront. If your organization doesn’t have OKRs or KPIs, we can help implement a system with you.

Project Recovery & Risk Assessment

IT projects face many risks, and at times those risks do manifest. Our team can assess the state of a given initiative and either help turn it around or mitigate its chances for failure.

Security & Privacy

A central role of IT is managing security risks and data privacy. We have security professionals who can both assess and help implement current best practices, as well as having relationships with dedicated service agencies.

Vendor Search & Selection

Bring our technology expertise to bear when choosing a vendor and then monitoring their performance. We can recommend organizations with which we’ve worked and in some cases have years of experience.