What Is a Fractional COO?

A fractional COO is a senior operational leader who works with your business part-time — typically 1-2 days per week — instead of as a full-time hire. You get the strategic thinking, process design, and leadership accountability of a £120K+ executive without the full-time salary, equity, or overhead.

For founders scaling from £500K to £15M, the fractional model closes the gap between “I’m doing everything myself” and “I can’t justify a £150K hire yet.”

What Does a Fractional COO Actually Do?

The short answer: whatever’s stopping your business from scaling cleanly.

In practice, that usually means some combination of:

• Operational strategy — identifying the 3-5 things that need to change for the business to handle its next stage of growth
• Process design — building repeatable systems for hiring, onboarding, financial close, and customer delivery
• KPIs and reporting — giving founders and boards actual data to make decisions with, not gut feel
• Commercial contracting — reviewing, structuring, and de-risking the contracts that underpin the business
• Sales operations — connecting pipeline management to delivery so revenue doesn’t outrun capacity
• Team structure — building accountability frameworks so the founder isn’t the bottleneck for every decision

The specifics depend on the business. The principle is consistent: build infrastructure that lets the founder focus on growth, not firefighting.

Fractional COO vs Full-Time COO

The difference isn’t just cost — it’s stage fit.

A full-time COO makes sense when you have 80+ people, multiple departments, and enough operational complexity to fill five days a week. Before that point, a full-time COO is often underutilised or ends up doing work that doesn’t require their seniority.

A fractional COO makes sense when you’re between 10 and 80 people, growing fast, and need senior operational thinking without the overhead. The fractional model gives you access to someone who’s seen the problems you’re facing across multiple companies — not just one.

That’s 40-60% less — and you’re getting someone who’s actively working across multiple businesses, which means broader pattern recognition and faster problem-solving.

When Does a Fractional COO Make Sense?

Not every business needs one. Here’s when the model fits:

• You’re the founder and you’re spending 40%+ of your time on operations instead of growth
• You’ve signed contracts without proper review and it’s starting to catch up with you
• Your team is growing but there’s no process behind the growth — hiring, onboarding, and delivery are ad hoc
• Revenue is up but delivery is chaos — sales and ops aren’t talking to each other
• Investors are asking for governance, reporting, or board packs you don’t have
• You know you need a COO but can’t justify a £150K+ hire at this stage

If three or more of those sound familiar, a fractional COO is probably the right next step.

How The Edwards Practice Works

TEP provides fractional COO services for UK founders on a retainer basis. We embed directly into your team — attending meetings, contributing to Slack, and staying accessible throughout the week. Not a consultant who drops a report and disappears.

The engagement follows a 90-day blueprint:

1. Days 1-30: Diagnosis and quick wins — find what’s broken, fix the obvious stuff immediately

2. Days 31-60: Build the foundation — processes, dashboards, contract frameworks, and sales ops infrastructure

3. Days 61-90: Embed and handoff — train your team, establish OKRs, transition to strategic advisory

After 90 days, most clients shift to a reduced retainer for ongoing governance and strategic support. Some graduate entirely. Both are good outcomes.

Retainers start at £4,000/month with a 3-month minimum commitment.