FOR GROWING BUSINESSES
Past startup. Into scale. Where most businesses get stuck.
PluggedIn partners with growing businesses — typically $5M to $100M in revenue — that have outgrown their first systems, their first team, and their first set of answers. We bring senior finance, technology, and strategy expertise embedded alongside your team. Fractional, project-based, or full engagement. Sized to what you actually need.
SOUND FAMILIAR?
One of these is probably true.
Every growing business we work with is in one of a few specific positions. If you recognize yours below, you're in the right place.
Your finance function hit its ceiling.
The bookkeeper who got you from $2M to $10M can't get you to $25M. Your CFO is overstretched, your reporting is late, and your forecasts no longer hold up under scrutiny. You need senior finance leadership before the next investor conversation, audit, or acquisition opportunity arrives.
Your technology stack is duct tape.
Spreadsheets where you need systems. Manual processes where you need automation. An ERP decision you've been deferring for three years. The ad-hoc tooling that worked at $5M is slowing you down at $20M, and replacing it without breaking the business is harder than it looks.
You're preparing for a transaction.
A sale, a recap, a strategic acquisition, a private equity conversation. The numbers need to be clean, the systems need to be defensible, and the diligence team is going to find every weakness you haven't fixed. You need senior help to get ready — and the timeline is shorter than you'd like.
You took on outside capital and the expectations shifted.
A growth equity investor came in. A PE sponsor took a stake. A strategic partner took a seat on the board. The reporting cadence changed. The KPI conversations got harder. The expectation of professional finance and operations is now real, and your team isn't quite there yet.
You can't justify a full C-suite, but you've outgrown not having one.
A full-time CFO is a major commitment of capital and headcount. So is a full-time CIO. A full-time CISO if you need one is more. You don't need any of them at full time — but you do need senior expertise in the room, on the cadence the business requires.
Compliance, security, or AI is becoming a real conversation.
Customers asking for SOC 2. Insurance asking for a security baseline. Board asking about your AI strategy. Industry regulators asking questions that need real answers. The work that used to feel like overhead is now blocking growth — and it needs senior judgment to navigate.
WHAT WE BRING
The senior expertise you need, sized to your stage.
Growing businesses sit in a particular gap. You're too sophisticated for generalist consultants and bookkeepers. You're not yet large enough — or rich enough — for Big Four engagements and full-time C-suite hires. The advisors you can afford often aren't senior enough; the ones who are senior enough often won't engage at your scale.
We're built for that gap. Senior practitioners delivering finance, technology, and strategy work — embedded alongside your team at the level the business actually needs. Fractional when ongoing presence is the right shape. Project-based when the work is bounded. Full engagement when the work demands it.
ENGAGEMENT MODELS
Three engagement shapes for growing businesses.
Fractional Leadership
Monthly retainer. Senior practitioner embedded part-time.
Senior expertise — CFO, CIO, controller, CISO, or a custom mix — embedded into your leadership cadence. They join your weekly meetings, sit in your board prep, weigh in on hires, and own the parts of the function that need senior judgment. Hours scale with the business. Same practitioner over time.
Best for: Businesses that need senior expertise on an ongoing cadence but don't yet justify full-time hires.
Discuss this model →Project Engagements
Defined scope. Defined timeline. Defined outcome.
Specific work scoped at the start, delivered to a clear endpoint. Common projects: ERP selection and implementation, financial systems migration, month-end close optimization, FP&A function build-out, cybersecurity baseline and SOC 2 readiness, cloud infrastructure migration, AI adoption pilot, pre-transaction readiness.
Best for: Discrete pieces of work where the deliverable is clear and the timeline is bounded.
Discuss this model →Full Engagement
Operational ownership. SLA-backed. Clear handback plan.
When you need PluggedIn to own a function operationally — running the close, managing the IT operation, leading a transformation — we step in with a defined scope, a service-level commitment, and a written handback plan for when you're ready to bring it back in-house.
Best for: Situations where the business needs full operational coverage, often temporarily, and the alternative is a hire that isn't right for the moment.
Discuss this model →WHY MID-MARKET LEADERS PICK US
What we hear most often.
Cross-functional work, single accountable team
When an engagement requires both finance and technology leadership — ERP selections that reshape the finance function, AI adoptions that change the operating model, security investments that gate enterprise contracts — the same practitioner team holds the integration. No second vendor to onboard mid-engagement, no coordination overhead between disciplines, one accountable lead.
Direct access to the team that delivers.
The practitioner involved in scoping remains accountable through delivery, with the delivery team named before kickoff. No bait and switch. No junior team under a senior brand.
Defined scopes, transparent contracts
For the work that can be productized — close optimization, ERP selection, SOC 2 readiness, cap table cleanup — we set scope and price together at the start of the engagement, in writing. You know what you're getting before the work begins. Custom work stays custom; the rest moves at the speed of decision.
Modern delivery, with judgment in the chair.
Our delivery model lets us serve growing businesses with practitioner work at price points that fit your scale. AI handles document review, scenario modeling, and first-draft analysis — under documented data controls, with practitioners holding every meaningful decision. AI-free delivery is available on request. See our AI Principles.
GETTING STARTED
Starting with us.
Discovery call
Free, 30 minutes.
We listen, ask sharp questions, and tell you within the call which engagement shape fits and what it would look like.
Scoping conversation
1–2 weeks.
If there's a fit, we go deeper. Understand the business, meet the team, look at what's working and what isn't. Produce a written scope and a price.
Engagement kickoff
Engagement letter signed, mode selected (AI-Amplified or AI-Free), team introduced, first deliverables scheduled. Most fractional engagements ramp inside two weeks of signing.
Ongoing cadence
Weekly or biweekly check-ins, monthly business reviews, quarterly strategic alignment. We adjust the rhythm to match your business, not ours.
FREQUENTLY ASKED
What growing-business leaders ask us most.
- How is fractional different from interim?
- Fractional is ongoing — a senior practitioner embedded part-time as a permanent fixture of your leadership team. Interim is full-time but temporary — covering a specific role through a transition, search, or transformation. We do both. Some engagements start interim and shift to fractional as the business stabilizes.
- What does a fractional CFO engagement actually cost?
- Pricing is set per engagement after the discovery call. Monthly retainers are driven by revenue band, close/reporting maturity, board or lender requirements, transaction support, team oversight, and weekly cadence — not by an arbitrary time block. We don't publish ranges; we price for the actual work, in writing, before the engagement begins.
- Can we start small and expand?
- Yes. Many of our growing-business engagements start with a single project — a close optimization, an ERP selection, a SOC 2 readiness assessment — and expand into ongoing fractional partnership when the value is clear. We don't push toward expansion; we let it follow from the work.
- Will you replace our existing team?
- No. We work alongside your team, not in place of it. Fractional CFO presence often includes mentoring an existing controller. Fractional CIO presence often includes upskilling an internal IT lead. Our job is to add senior expertise where it's missing, not to displace people who are doing good work.
- What about confidentiality during a transaction?
- Sensitive transactions — sales, recaps, acquisitions — require strict confidentiality. We handle them every quarter. Engagement letters include transaction-grade NDAs by default. Internal communication about transaction work is need-to-know across our team. We'll match whatever protocols your bankers, lawyers, or sponsors require.
- Do you have industry expertise?
- Our practice spans multiple industries through senior practitioners with deep functional and sector experience. We deliberately don't lead with industry positioning — most of our growing-business work is industry-agnostic at the strategic level — but for engagements where industry context matters (regulated industries, specialized accounting, sector-specific compliance), we mobilize practitioners with that depth from our network.
- What if we need help we don't see listed here?
- Most things growing businesses need fall somewhere across finance, technology, or strategy — which is what we do. If you're not sure whether your situation fits, the discovery call answers that question quickly. We'll tell you whether we're the right partner, and if we're not, we'll often know who is.
- Can you sign a BAA or industry-specific compliance agreement?
- Yes. We sign BAAs, DPAs, and industry-specific compliance addenda when the work calls for them. Healthcare-adjacent businesses, regulated financial services, and businesses serving public-sector customers commonly require these. Standard part of engagement scoping.
Let's talk about where the business actually is.
Tell us where you are and what's stuck. We'll tell you within one conversation whether we're the right partner — and what we'd do if we are.
Or read our AI Principles to see how we handle your data and decisions.