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. I 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 I 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, I could see exactly where we made money — and I stopped being the bottleneck.
FOUNDER & CEO · REGIONAL MSP
Illustrative — anonymized composite of real engagements

More work

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