CZAR Technology Group

Outcome-Focused IT Leadership and Advisory Services tailored to your business

Fractional CIO services for growth stage organizations that need executive technology leadership without the full-time cost. Proven strategic guidance and hands-on execution, from someone who's actually done the job.

CZAR: Seven core services. Real business impact.

Fractional CIO / CTO & Technology Leadership

Executive guidance without the full-time cost

Digital Transformation & Modernization

Modern platforms and processes that scale

Data, Analytics & AI Enablement

Practical use cases built on a strong data foundation

IT Governance, Risk & Compliance

Decision rights, controls, and security maturity

Operational Excellence & Cost Optimization

Simplify, optimize spend, improve service performance

Vendor Selection & Contract Negotiation

Better partners, better terms, less risk

Infrastructure & Operations for Growth

Reliable, scalable IT operations as you grow

While our engagements are fit-for-purpose to your needs, here are a few examples of how We work:

Fractional leadership (retainer)

Ongoing executive IT leadership integrated into your team. We attend your leadership meetings, make real-time decisions, manage vendor relationships, and own your IT outcomes. You get a proven CIO with a track record of delivering over $7M in revenue growth and over $2.5M in cost savings, without the $250K+ salary and overhead.

Strategic Advisory (Assessment + Executable Roadmap)

Deep-dive assessment of your IT landscape, political dynamics, and hidden constraints, followed by a prioritized roadmap built for your specific reality, not a generic template. Based on 30+ years of pattern recognition across enterprise IT, acquisitions, digital transformation, and rapid scaling.

Delivery (milestone-based execution)

Hands-on execution of specific IT initiatives. We manage the project, the vendors, the politics, and the risk, delivering working solutions with clear accountability. Think of it as having a an experienced CIO execute your most critical projects without adding headcount.

Fractional CIO / CTO & Technology Leadership

Executive-level strategic guidance and accountability without the $250K+ cost of a permanent hire. We integrate into your leadership team, attend key meetings, make real-time decisions, and align technology investments to business priorities, acting as your CIO without the full time overhead.

What this looks like in practice:

Joining weekly leadership meetings to ensure technology supports (not hinders) business initiatives
Making critical platform and vendor decisions with you, not for you, bringing pattern recognition from dozens of similar situations
Establishing governance structures that balance control with speed, no bureaucracy, just clarity on who decides what
Prioritizing AI and emerging technology investments based on ROI potential, not hype
Building credibility with your board or investors by translating technical complexity into business language
Creating delivery rhythm and accountability so technology projects actually get finished

This is right for you if: You need someone who can speak both boardroom and server room, make tough calls when priorities conflict, and own the outcome when implementations get messy.

Typical engagement: 2–4 days per month retainer, scalable based on your growth stage and complexity.

Digital Transformation & Modernization

Turn “digital transformation” from a buzzword into a concrete plan with measurable milestones. We assess your current technology and operational maturity, identify what’s holding you back, and modernize core platforms in a sequenced approach that minimizes disruption while maximizing impact.

What this looks like in practice:

Conducting honest assessments of where your systems, processes, and team capabilities actually are (not where you wish they were)
Building business cases that show leadership the cost of not modernizing, quantifying revenue leakage, manual work, and competitive risk
Selecting and implementing modern ERP, CRM, and collaboration platforms that fit your size and budget (not enterprise overkill)
Redesigning processes before implementing new systems, technology alone never fixes broken processes
Managing organizational change so your team actually adopts new tools instead of reverting to spreadsheets and workarounds
Establishing cloud strategy that balances cost, security, and flexibility

This is right for you if: Your current systems are held together with duct tape and spreadsheets, you’re losing competitive ground to more modern competitors, or you’re preparing for rapid growth or acquisition and need systems that can scale.

What we don’t do: We don’t implement “transformation” for transformation’s sake. If your current systems work well enough, we’ll tell you to wait and invest elsewhere.

Data, Analytics & AI Enablement

Move beyond reporting what happened last quarter to predicting what will happen next quarter. We build data foundations that are good enough to be useful without requiring a three year data warehouse project, then identify practical AI and analytics use cases that deliver measurable business value within 90 days.

What this looks like in practice:

Creating a pragmatic data strategy focused on your top 3–5 business questions that need better answers
Unifying fragmented data across sales, operations, and finance so leadership can make decisions from a single source of truth
Implementing governance that ensures data quality without creating bureaucracy, clear ownership and accountability
Building executive dashboards that answer the questions your leadership actually asks (not the 47 metrics IT thinks are important)
Identifying AI use cases with ROI potential, pricing optimization, demand forecasting, customer churn prediction, not AI for AI’s sake
Establishing KPI and OKR frameworks that connect technology investments to business outcomes

This is right for you if: Your leadership team makes decisions based on gut feel because getting accurate data takes too long, you have data scattered across multiple systems with no unified view, or you’re curious about AI but don’t know where to start without wasting money.

Reality check: AI requires clean data. If your data is a mess, we’ll tell you that foundation work comes first, even though it’s less exciting than “AI strategy.”

IT Governance, Risk & Compliance

Mature your IT operating model to support growth without slowing down decision making. We establish clear decision rights, change management processes, and security controls that satisfy auditors and investors while keeping your team agile, governance as an enabler, not a blocker.

What this looks like in practice:

Defining RACI (who’s Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) so technology decisions don’t stall waiting for consensus
Establishing change, release, and incident management processes that prevent “cowboy” changes without creating approval bottlenecks
Building cybersecurity roadmaps that close your biggest risks first, not everything at once, pragmatic prioritization based on actual threat landscape
Preparing for SOX, SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, or other compliance requirements, creating documentation that auditors accept
Implementing third-party risk management for vendors who have access to your data or systems
Creating disaster recovery and business continuity plans that could actually be executed (not 100 page documents that gather dust)

This is right for you if: You’re preparing for a funding round or acquisition and need to prove mature IT controls, you’ve had security incidents or near misses that exposed gaps, or your leadership team doesn’t have clear visibility into IT risk and decision making.

What makes us different: Most governance consultants create process for process’s sake. We design governance that matches your risk tolerance and stage of growth, early-stage startups need different controls than PE-backed firms preparing for exit.

Operational Excellence & Cost Optimization

Simplify your technology landscape and optimize spend without compromising capability. We identify redundant systems, consolidate vendors, renegotiate contracts, and improve service delivery, typically finding 15–30% cost savings while actually improving performance.

What this looks like in practice:

Conducting comprehensive IT spend analysis, where every dollar goes and whether you’re getting value
Identifying redundant tools (the 4 different collaboration platforms, 3 CRMs, 2 project management tools nobody standardized on)
Rationalizing your vendor portfolio, consolidating where it makes sense, eliminating shelfware you’re paying for but not using
Renegotiating contracts with leverage, knowing market rates, competitive alternatives, and where vendors have pricing flexibility
Right sizing SaaS licenses based on actual usage, not sales projections (you’re probably overpaying by 20%+)
Establishing service management practices and SLAs that clarify expectations between IT and business stakeholders
Implementing automation for routine tasks, password resets, provisioning, reporting, freeing your team for strategic work

This is right for you if: IT costs keep climbing but you’re not sure what you’re getting for it, you’ve accumulated technology debt through acquisitions or rapid growth, or your CFO is asking hard questions about IT ROI and you don’t have good answers.

Typical outcomes: Most clients find $150K–$500K in annual savings within 90 days, with larger savings for organizations with $2M+ IT budgets. We often pay for ourselves in the first quarter.

Vendor Selection & Contract Negotiation

Independent, vendor-agnostic support to evaluate technology vendors, negotiate contracts, and protect your interests through implementation. We’ve managed hundreds of vendor relationships and implementations, we know where vendors overpromise, where contracts have hidden gotchas, and how to structure deals that protect you when reality diverges from sales demos.

What this looks like in practice:

Creating objective evaluation criteria based on your actual requirements, not vendor feature checklists
Conducting reference checks that go beyond the vendor’s suggested “happy customers”, finding companies similar to yours and asking hard questions
Identifying capability gaps between what vendors demonstrate and what they can actually deliver in your environment
Negotiating contract terms that protect you, realistic implementation timelines, performance guarantees, exit clauses, data portability
Structuring payments tied to milestones and acceptance criteria, not vendor invoicing schedules
Staying engaged through implementation to hold vendors accountable and manage scope creep
Knowing market rates and competitive alternatives to create negotiating leverage

This is right for you if: You’re evaluating ERP, CRM, or other major platform decisions and the stakes are too high to get wrong, vendor sales teams are pressuring you with “end of quarter” discounts, or you’ve been burned before by implementations that went sideways.

What we bring: Vendor salespeople negotiate contracts every day. You do it every few years. We level the playing field with pattern recognition from hundreds of deals, and we have no vendor partnerships or kickbacks that cloud our judgment.

Reality check: We’ll tell you when you’re buying more capability than you need or when you should wait 6–12 months before making a major platform decision.

Infrastructure & Operations for Growth

Right sized infrastructure, security, and operations designed to scale 2×–5× without over engineering. We design IT architecture that supports your growth trajectory without enterprise complexity or cost, balancing today’s budget constraints with tomorrow’s scalability needs.

What this looks like in practice:

Designing cloud infrastructure that scales elastically as you grow, avoiding both under provisioning (performance issues) and over provisioning (wasted spend)
Implementing security controls appropriate for your risk profile and compliance requirements, not enterprise overkill for a 50 person company
Establishing monitoring and incident response processes so you know about problems before your customers do
Building disaster recovery capabilities that match your actual business continuity requirements (not gold plated “99.999%” when you don’t need it)
Creating infrastructure as code and automation to reduce manual work and human error
Designing network architecture for hybrid/remote teams, secure access from anywhere without VPN complexity
Planning for 2×–5× growth in users, transactions, and data, identifying what will break first and when to upgrade

This is right for you if: You’re growing rapidly and current infrastructure is showing strain, you’re migrating from on-premise to cloud and need a thoughtful transition plan, or you’re concerned about security and reliability but don’t want to spend like an enterprise.

What makes us different: Most infrastructure consultants default to enterprise-grade solutions for every problem. We design for your actual growth trajectory and budget, you can always add complexity later when you need it (and can afford it).

Typical approach: 2–4 week assessment of current state, growth trajectory, and pain points, followed by phased implementation roadmap with clear milestones and investment requirements for each growth stage.