# ScaleAround > Technology consultancy for growing businesses. Independent reviews, fractional CTO and CIO leadership, and directed implementation, delivered by senior practitioners who have done the job, not just advised on it. ScaleAround is a Cardiff-based technology consultancy founded in 2023 by Oliver Smith FBCS. The firm works with growing businesses at the point where the technology, the operations, and the product direction need to be connected. Every engagement is led by a named senior practitioner from a vetted network, each with at least fifteen years of relevant experience at CTO, CIO, or equivalent level. No junior analysts, no rotating associates, no anonymous bench. ScaleAround is vendor-agnostic and does not sell tools or platforms. The firm is a member of FinTech Wales and operates under the BCS Code of Conduct. - Registered in England and Wales, company number 14707254 - ICO registration ZB564182 - VAT number 441 8585 76 - Registered office: 1 Ty Celyn Mews, Cardiff, CF14 7EY --- ## Technology Review See what is really going on inside your technology function. A structured, independent assessment of technology health across four domains: the technology itself, how you deliver software, how the team operates, and whether the product direction and market are aligned. ### Four domains - Technology: Architecture, infrastructure, security posture (Cyber Essentials readiness), technical debt, scalability. Are the foundations solid enough for where the business is going? - Delivery: Software development life cycle, deployment practices, QA strategy, defect management, release cadence. Is the team shipping reliably and safely? - Operations: Team structure, roles, capacity metrics, ways of working. Is the team set up to succeed, or are they fighting the structure? - Product alignment: Requirements quality, roadmap coherence, product-engineering interface. Is the technology being built actually connected to what the business needs? ### Process 1. Scoping: A conversation (no charge) to understand the situation and what triggered the review. 2. Discovery: Remote interviews with CEO, CTO, engineering leads, and key stakeholders. Review of codebase (read-only), pipelines, project tools, and documentation. 3. Analysis: Findings synthesised across all four domains, looking for patterns and root causes, not just symptoms. 4. Report and handover: Written report in a format that works for the client: slide deck for board presentations, detailed spreadsheet of findings with severity, priority and recommended actions, and/or full written document. Handover meeting to walk through everything and discuss next steps. ### Deliverables A board-ready findings report (typically 20 to 35 slides) covering all four domains. A detailed findings spreadsheet with specific observations, evidence, and recommended actions. A sixty to ninety minute handover meeting. An optional follow-up call to review progress. Total client time commitment is typically eight to twelve hours of stakeholder availability. ### Options - Standard Review: For standalone CEO/COO-initiated reviews. Fixed fee based on complexity. Covers all four domains with a prioritised action plan. - Enhanced Review: For PE/VC-linked reviews or pre-transaction contexts. Includes deeper analysis, more stakeholder engagement, deal-specific output format, and an executive briefing to the investor or acquirer. Both are fixed fee. No day rate, no scope creep, no surprise invoices. ### What makes this different Every review is delivered by a practitioner whose background matches the sector and the question. Because the team operates across multiple concurrent CTO and CIO engagements, ScaleAround carries cross-engagement pattern recognition into every review. Patterns that a single-client reviewer would miss surface immediately. The report is written for non-technical stakeholders. If it cannot be presented to the board without translation, it is not done. ### Consider a technology review if - You have been told the technology is fine, but you have no way to verify that independently. - You are about to raise investment and investors will ask about technology risk. - You have acquired or are acquiring a technology business and need to understand what you are buying. - Your development team is busy but nothing seems to ship. - You suspect the architecture will not scale but you are not technical enough to assess it yourself. --- ## AI Opportunity Review Work out where AI genuinely fits in the business before spending money finding out the hard way. Starting from how the business actually operates, where it creates value, and where it loses value. The result is a prioritised map of opportunities grounded in operational reality. ### Two options - Workshop: A facilitated session with the leadership team structured around three questions: where does the business create value, where does it lose value, and where could AI change the equation? Output is a prioritised opportunity map and a follow-up call. If the full review is subsequently commissioned, the workshop streamlines future work. - Full Review: A deeper engagement that maps operations, identifies AI/ML/automation opportunities, assesses feasibility and data readiness, and prioritises by impact versus complexity. Includes EU AI Act classification for identified opportunities. Can be bundled with a Technology Review at a combined fee. ### Deliverables - Workshop output: Prioritised opportunity map (shared document) plus a follow-up call. - Full review output: AI opportunity report with opportunity map, feasibility assessment, prioritisation matrix, and recommended sequencing. One-page detail sheets per opportunity covering data requirements, complexity, impact, and compliance considerations. Full handover meeting. ### Assessment dimensions The full review is structured around eight dimensions: strategy and business case, data readiness, technology and architecture, talent and capability, governance risk and ethics, security and privacy, value creation and measurement, and investment and operating model. Every opportunity is assessed for bias, explainability, human-in-the-loop considerations, and EU AI Act risk classification. The governance, risk, and ethics register sits alongside the opportunity map, not as an afterthought. ### From review to rollout Where a review identifies AI opportunities worth pursuing, the AI Governance and Enablement engagement puts the governance framework, guardrails, and practical enablement assets in place to make it operational. It includes an AI Champions programme and hands-on coaching so people can sustain and extend the work independently. Where the honest answer is that simpler automation or process redesign would work better than AI, ScaleAround will say that. ### Consider an AI Opportunity Review if - The workshop is right if the board keeps asking "what is our AI strategy?" and there is no credible answer yet. It is a low-risk way to find out whether AI is genuinely relevant to the business. - The full review is right if AI matters but you need to understand where to start, what data you need, and how to sequence the investment. --- ## AI Governance and Enablement Get AI governed before getting AI everywhere. Most businesses adopt AI tools before they define the rules. This engagement puts governance, guardrails, and usage discipline in place first, then builds the enablement assets and internal capability so people can run it without external support. ### Two options - Governance Workshop: For businesses where AI tools are already in use or about to be rolled out and governance has not kept pace. Structured around three questions: what AI tools are in use today and how? What are the governance, compliance, and data risks? What guardrails and ownership structures need to exist before usage scales further? Output is a governance gap assessment, risk and compliance summary, and prioritised action plan. Workshop fee credited against a full engagement. - Full Engagement: A multi-month engagement that builds the governance framework, establishes usage discipline, delivers practical agent enablement, and coaches people to sustain and extend the work independently. ### Five streams, deliberately sequenced A. Discovery and priorities: Review of existing AI usage, artefacts, and information stores. Confirmation of priority use cases. Identification of AI Champions who will own AI governance and enablement after the engagement ends. B. Governance and content readiness: Minimum governance standards for AI tools to operate safely. Approved content locations, ownership principles, guardrails for prompts, agents, and usage. AI tools grounded in approved, high-quality content only, with excluded content explicitly defined. Leadership coaching session on AI risk appetite and decision-making. C. Usage standards and prompt discipline: Firm-wide standard for safe and consistent AI usage. Prompt catalogue with curated examples, compliance-aware usage guidance, and clear boundaries. Practical sessions where teams work through real scenarios. Usage discipline established before agent enablement begins. D. Agent design and enablement: Identify, configure, and enable the most valuable native AI capabilities. Guided co-creation session where AI Champions learn to configure and extend agents within the governance framework. Working exemplar custom agent with reusable design pattern. E. AI Champions programme: Targeted coaching on governance decision-making, prompt engineering, agent configuration, and evaluating new use cases. Named individuals who can run AI governance, train new users, and identify opportunities without external support. ### Deliverables - Governance framework with guardrails, usage policies, and clear ownership. Not a theoretical policy document; a practical set of rules that people actually follow. - Prompt catalogue with curated prompts, good versus risky examples, and compliance-aware language guidance. - AI-ready content set with approved content for AI grounding and excluded content explicitly defined. - Working AI agents with configuration documentation and reusable design patterns. - Trained AI Champions who can sustain the framework, train new users, configure agents, and identify new use cases. - Leadership coaching with risk appetite defined and decision-making framework in place. ### Timeline - Month one: Governance foundations. Discovery, use case prioritisation, Champions identification, governance framework, content readiness, usage standards, prompt catalogue, leadership coaching. - Month two: Usage discipline and agent enablement. Practical sessions, out-of-the-box agent enablement, guided co-creation, Champions coaching, governance refinement. - Month three: Custom agents, coaching, and handover. Exemplar agent design and configuration, Champions readiness assessment, documentation, reusable design patterns, self-sufficient internal team. ### What makes this different Governance, enablement, and coaching are delivered together, in a deliberate sequence that ensures the rules exist before the tools go live and the people are competent before the consultants leave. Vendor-agnostic. Works with Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, OpenAI, or others. --- ## Fractional CTO / CIO Senior technology leadership without the full-time commitment. Joining the leadership team on a part-time basis and taking operational responsibility for the technology direction. Not consulting. In the room, making decisions, and accountable for outcomes. ### Process 1. Onboarding: Higher intensity first month to understand the business, team, technology estate, board dynamics, and immediate priorities. Produces technology strategy and 90-day plan. Faster if preceded by a Technology Review. 2. Steady state: Regular cadence with the leadership team. Time used flexibly across leadership meetings, 1:1s with technical staff, vendor oversight, strategic planning, and ad-hoc problem solving. Weekly touchpoint plus deeper sessions as needed. 3. Duration: Minimum three months. Most engagements renew and run for twelve months or longer. The longest-running fractional relationship has been continuous since 2023. ### Three tiers - Fractional CTO / CIO: For businesses that need someone to hold the full technology leadership function on a part-time basis. - Intensive / Interim: For businesses in transition, post-acquisition, or running significant technology change programmes. Higher time commitment, broader scope. - Executive Advisory: For businesses that have a CTO or technical lead but need senior oversight, coaching, or a sounding board. All engagement shapes are retainer-based. ### What changes The board gets answers to technology questions in language they understand. Vendor conversations have someone technical on the client side. Hiring decisions are shaped by someone who has built and led teams at scale. Architecture choices are connected to business outcomes, not just engineering preference. The existing technical team gets a senior leader invested in their development, not a consultant passing through. ### How we deliver Each engagement is matched to the practitioner whose background fits the context. The right person for a fintech re-platform is not the right person for a care technology review. Always named, always senior, always accountable. Because practitioners operate across multiple businesses simultaneously, insights from one context sharpen judgment in the next. ### For PE/VC firms and non-executive directors ScaleAround works with investors and board members who need independent technology oversight of portfolio companies. Board Observer role providing strategic advice to founding teams with regular reporting to the investor. Currently held for a Development Bank of Wales portfolio company. ### Consider fractional leadership if - Your leadership team needs a senior technology voice but cannot justify or fill a full-time hire. - You need someone who can translate between your technical team and your board. - You have a strong technical lead who is brilliant at delivery but needs someone to hold the strategic picture. - You are between CTOs and need experienced leadership while you recruit. - You have been through a difficult technology hire or project and want experienced oversight before committing again. --- ## Directed Delivery (Implementation) Directed technology delivery. Strategic oversight, coordinated specialist execution, quality management, and outcomes connected to business objectives. A single commercial relationship, not a body shop. ### Process 1. Scope and plan: Define the implementation against review findings or the client brief. Break into milestones with clear acceptance criteria. Select delivery partners from the vetted network, or work with the existing team. 2. Directed delivery: Set priorities, review output, manage the interface between technical delivery and business stakeholders, unblock problems, and adjust course. Weekly steering meetings, monthly scope reviews. 3. Handover and embed: Documentation, knowledge transfer, operational handover. If the engagement transitions to Fractional Leadership, the same person continues. ### Commercial model ScaleAround provides strategic direction and oversight. Delivery resources sourced from the vetted network at all-in day rates. Team shape depends on the work. Single invoice from ScaleAround. No separate management overhead charges. ### Single accountable leader Every engagement is led by a named senior practitioner with at least fifteen years of relevant experience. The person who diagnoses the work directs the work and, where the engagement continues, stays for the fractional leadership phase. No handover between teams. ### AI enablement track For businesses rolling AI tools into live workflows, a productised three-month track: governance and guardrails first, practical enablement second, exemplar agents and adoption third. Platform-agnostic, designed for regulated and advisory environments. - Month one (Foundations): Prioritised use cases, minimum viable governance and guardrails, approved content locations, targeted content set. - Month two (Practical enablement): Prompt catalogue and best-practice guidance, out-of-the-box agent or assistant configuration, scenario-led usage notes. - Month three (Exemplar and handover): Working exemplar agent or workflow, clear usage boundaries and escalation points, early adoption support. - Ongoing (Expand and embed): Roll out to additional teams and use cases, build new workflows against the governance framework, monitor adoption, refine prompts and agents, adjust guardrails as the organisation matures. Capacity-constrained by design. Led by a named senior practitioner. Delivered against explicit prioritisation. ### Track record Directed implementation across care technology (pre-launch to monthly profitability in four months), professional membership organisations (supplier transitions, operating model restructuring, CIO scorecard delivery), financial services (platform replatforming, team restructuring), and global engineering functions (85-person restructure, 250 per cent improvement in delivery to production). --- ## About ScaleAround ### How we work Honest answers. If something is not working, ScaleAround says so. If they are not the right fit, they say that too. Every engagement is designed to leave the team more capable than they found them. Knowledge transfer is how ScaleAround works, not an optional extra. ### Origin Founded in 2023 to close a pattern seen across two decades of technology leadership. Talented technical teams building good technology that was not quite connected to where the business was going. ScaleAround exists to stand in the middle between the technical function and the business. ### Delivery model Every engagement is resourced from a vetted network of senior practitioners with at least fifteen years of delivery experience at CTO, CIO, VP Engineering, or equivalent level. Matching is deliberate based on sector, technology context, business stage, and the specific question on the table. Oliver leads the firm, sits in every client relationship, holds the quality bar, and stays close enough to the work to step in if something needs recalibrating. ScaleAround is a small firm that stays close, with the depth of a senior network behind it. ### Firm facts - Founded: 2023, Cardiff, UK - Led by: Oliver Smith FBCS, Founder and CEO - Delivery: Vetted senior network, 15+ years each - Sectors: Fintech, SaaS, CareTech, Professional Membership, Electric Vehicle and Charging, Food Tech, Retail - Coverage: UK-wide - Membership: FinTech Wales ### Ethical charter Four commitments based on the BCS Code of Conduct: public interest first, professional competence and integrity, duty to the client, duty to the profession. ScaleAround does not work with oil and gas or fossil fuel companies, weapons or defence contractors, gambling businesses, or any organisation whose core business causes environmental destruction. --- ## Founder: Oliver Smith FBCS Oliver leads ScaleAround. He founded the firm in 2023 after twenty years in technology leadership, in VP Engineering and CTO roles running global engineering functions of eighty-five people across multiple countries. As CTO of a UK fintech he grew the technology team from six to twenty-four and led a full re-platform of the core system. He stays hands-on, sits in every client relationship, and holds the quality bar. - Experience: 20+ years in technology leadership across CTO, CIO, and VP Engineering roles - Fellowship: Fellow of the British Computer Society (FBCS) - Education: BSc (Hons) Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, University of Sussex - Industry: Three-time judge, European Software Testing Awards; Previously CARE Panel member, Computational Foundry, Swansea University --- ## Key statistics - 15+ minimum years of industry service for engagement leaders - 50% technology cost reduction achieved - 250% delivery throughput gains - 10 countries worked in --- ## Why ScaleAround - Senior people do the work: Every engagement is led by someone who has done the job, not just advised on it. Fifteen years minimum. Named, accountable, and matched to the shape of the problem. - Breadth, not just depth: Technology, operations, product, and market perspective simultaneously. - Independent advice: Small number of delivery partners, disclosed up front. Recommendations based on what is right for the client, not what is convenient. - Flexible engagement models: Fractional days, fixed-scope reviews, or hands-on delivery leadership. Commercial model shaped around the problem. - Built to hand back: Clear decisions, documented, with the client team running the work before ScaleAround steps away. --- ## Clients Syncurio, SkylightIPV, PLUG Charging, Papertrail, Lumin Solutions, FleetEV, Serene, Everything Financial, ClearPixel VR. --- ## Contact - Email: hello@scalearound.com - Phone: +44 (0)29 2105 6804 - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliversmith-scalearound - Location: Cardiff, Wales - Coverage: UK-wide A scoping call takes 30 minutes. No pitch deck, no pressure, no charge. Whoever picks up the conversation is the senior practitioner most likely to lead the work. No account manager relay. If ScaleAround is not the right fit, they will say so and where possible point towards someone better placed to help. No follow-up emails, no drip sequences, no chasing.