C‑Level ADVISING Scott Gordon
Fractional COO · AI
← ALL WORK
CASE 01 / FRACTIONAL COO Regional MSP · ~$24M revenue

From scaling chaos to operating control.

Revenue had nearly doubled in three years, but profit was flat and execution was unraveling. Everything routed through the founder. We stepped in as fractional COO to build the operating system the business had outgrown.

Role
Fractional COO / President
Sector
Managed IT services
Engagement
14 months, embedded
Focus
Margin · accountability
THE SITUATION

Busy everywhere, in control nowhere.

On paper the company was thriving. Underneath, every meaningful decision still ran through the founder, the P&L was a single blended number, and no one could say which clients or service lines actually made money.

⚠ Profit flat while revenue nearly doubled
⚠ Founder was the bottleneck for every call
⚠ Reporting ran six weeks behind reality
⚠ No owner, no cadence, no scorecard

The shift, in numbers

OUTCOME
+0 pts
Operating margin recovered
0%
Fewer decisions routed to the founder
6wk → live
Reporting lag eliminated

Where it landed: one blended, stale P&L became live line-of-sight by service line — with an owner on every number. Drag the divider.

LIVE · MARGIN BY SERVICE LINE
Managed IT42%
Projects31%
Hardware9%
Support38%
→ Owner assigned to each line · reviewed weekly
BLENDED · 6 WEEKS STALE
Total margin (everything)
~18%?
no breakdown · no owner · last closed Q2
⚠ which lines lose money? unknown
⚠ pricing set by gut feel
‹›
◄ BEFORE
AFTER ►

What we did

01

Rebuilt the P&L

Re-cut the chart of accounts and cost allocations so margin could be read by service line, client, and team — accurately.

02

Installed the operating cadence

A weekly scorecard, clear owners, and a meeting rhythm that surfaced problems early instead of at quarter close.

03

Got the founder out of the loop

Pushed decisions to accountable owners with the guardrails to make them — freeing the founder to lead, not firefight.

04

Made the data live

Replaced the six-week reporting lag with dashboards leadership could act on the same day — the foundation for AI later.

"
For the first time, we could see exactly where we made money — and we stopped being the bottleneck.
FOUNDER & CEO · REGIONAL MSP
Shared with permission

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