ERP selection, MES strategy, and digital-transformation roadmap for $10M to $100M manufacturers. $5,499/mo Advisory. Cancel anytime.
- Audit
- Architect
- Scale
monthly retainer
Who this is for
Owner or COO of a $10M to $100M manufacturer facing an ERP decision, a board-level digital-transformation mandate, or an IT team that is good at keeping the lights on but has no strategic capacity. You need senior technology judgment — not a $300/hour consulting firm with a team you'll never meet.
The pain today
- ERP upgrade decision worth millions with no internal advisor to guide it
- Board or customers demanding digital transformation with no roadmap
- IT team consumed by daily support, nothing left for strategy
- MES, QMS, and shop-floor integrations nobody owns end-to-end
- Competitors automating faster while your stack stays fragmented
The outcome you get
- Manufacturing fractional CTO at $5,499/mo Advisory or $9,499/mo full engagement
- ERP evaluation and vendor selection with your interests protected
- MES and ERP integration strategy, including shop-floor data flows
- Digital-transformation priorities ranked by margin and competitive impact
- IT leadership structure — who to hire, what to build, what to buy
Why mid-market manufacturers hire a fractional CTO
Three situations keep coming up. The first is an ERP decision — NetSuite, SAP, Infor, Epicor, Dynamics 365 — worth millions of dollars with a 7 to 10-year impact on operations. Manufacturers get pitched hard by vendors and implementation partners, and almost nobody in-house has done this before. The second is a digital-transformation mandate: a board pushing for Industry 4.0, a large customer requiring EDI or portal integration, or a competitor pulling ahead on automation. The third is a leadership gap — a capable IT manager handling helpdesk and servers with no capacity or mandate for strategic work.
A fractional CTO for manufacturing fills all three without the cost of a full-time VP of Technology ($250k+ base, plus benefits and equity) or a management consultancy billing at $300/hour with rotating junior staff. At $5,499 to $9,499/mo, I work directly with the owner or COO. No account managers, no hand-offs. I've led technology teams since 2009 — 17 years, 250+ projects — and the most relevant piece here is that I was CTO at Imóveis SC, rebuilding a product from the ground up under operational pressure. That is exactly what mid-market manufacturers need: someone who has owned technology decisions, not just advised on them.
Manufacturing fractional CTO at $5,499/mo Advisory or $9,499/mo full engagement
ERP selection and transition strategy
The ERP decision is the highest-stakes technology call most manufacturers will make this decade. Get it wrong and you spend the next five years working around a system that doesn't fit your operations.
My approach starts before the vendor demos. Requirements are gathered with ops, production, finance, and sales — the people who will live in the system — not just IT. From there I build a long-list of candidates sized to the business: for $10M to $30M manufacturers, NetSuite or Dynamics 365 Business Central are usually the right range. For $30M to $100M with manufacturing depth, Infor CloudSuite Industrial, Epicor Kinetic, or Plex are worth evaluating. Manufacturers already on SAP usually stay on SAP — the switching cost is real, and modernizing within SAP is often the right call.
Short-list evaluation covers demo scripting, reference calls with manufacturers of similar size and complexity, total cost of ownership over five years, and implementation risk. I don't run the implementation — that work belongs to specialist ERP consultants who know the system deeply. What I do is manage the relationship, control scope creep, and make sure the operation's interests stay protected through go-live. A typical ERP selection runs three to six months.
45%: Bounce rate reduction after launch.
MES, shop-floor integration, and the IT/OT gap
ERP handles the business layer. MES (Manufacturing Execution System) handles the shop floor — production orders, work-in-progress, quality, and labor tracking in real time. The integration between them is where most digital transformation projects stall.
For manufacturers evaluating MES, the main options layer differently depending on the ERP. Plex has deep ERP-native MES. Epicor Kinetic has its own MES module. For manufacturers on NetSuite or Dynamics, Aegis FactoryLogix or a middleware integration layer is often the path. Real-time shop-floor data feeding ERP for production visibility and cost tracking is achievable — it just requires deliberate integration architecture rather than point-to-point custom code that breaks on every update.
OT/IT convergence — connecting ERP and MES to PLCs, SCADA, and physical equipment — is a specialist territory on the device side. My role is the integration strategy layer: what data needs to flow, what the architecture looks like, and which OT engineering partners to bring in for the controls work. At bolttech I built 40+ third-party integrations across a $1B+ unicorn's payment platform. Integration complexity at scale is familiar territory.
Digital-transformation roadmap for manufacturers
Digital transformation in manufacturing is not one initiative — it's a portfolio of decisions that compete for budget and attention. The manufacturers who execute well sequence ruthlessly.
The roadmap starts with a current-state audit: what systems exist, where data breaks, what the team can actually absorb. Then I map initiatives to two levers — margin improvement and revenue protection. Customer-facing work (e-commerce, customer portals, EDI integration) goes first if sales velocity or customer retention is the constraint. Ops-efficiency work (production analytics, automation, quality systems) goes first if margin is the issue. Most manufacturers need both, but doing both simultaneously is how projects stall.
I structure roadmaps in 18-month increments with quarterly milestones and a clear review gate at six months. The goal is visible progress within 90 days — not a three-year vision on a slide deck. Change management is built in: technology projects in manufacturing fail less from bad software choices and more from the organization not adopting the change. I've seen this at the CTO level, not just in advisory decks.
For LAK Embalagens, a B2B packaging manufacturer, I rebuilt the digital presence from scratch. Bounce rate dropped 45%. Search impressions tripled. Top-3 Google rankings for core terms. That project established the pattern I bring to larger manufacturing digital initiatives: clear data model, customer-first architecture, measurable outcomes from day one.
Industry 4.0 and smart factory priorities
Industry 4.0 gets oversold. Most mid-market manufacturers don't need a full smart-factory rollout — they need the two or three initiatives that pay back within 24 months.
The highest-ROI starting points I see most often: production analytics feeding real-time dashboards from existing ERP or MES data (no new sensors required, just proper data architecture), quality-inspection automation using computer vision or SPC tooling integrated with QMS, and demand-forecasting improvement connecting sales pipeline data to production scheduling. IoT sensor networks for predictive maintenance are real but expensive to implement well — they make sense after the data infrastructure is solid, not before.
AI in manufacturing is arriving fast. The practical near-term applications are narrower than the hype: anomaly detection in quality data, production scheduling optimization, and document processing for supplier and customer workflows. I help manufacturers separate what is production-ready from what is still a proof-of-concept burning budget.
Pricing and how the engagement works
CTO Advisory at $5,499/mo covers one to two days per week. Strategic guidance, ERP evaluation oversight, vendor selection, IT team direction. Right for manufacturers who have an IT manager or director in place and need senior technology judgment sitting above them.
Fractional CTO at $9,499/mo covers three days per week. Deep involvement in ERP project management, digital-transformation leadership, IT hiring and team structure. Right for manufacturers without a senior technology lead — this role becomes the function.
Both tiers include a 14-day money-back guarantee and cancel-anytime terms. Typical engagement length is 12 to 24 months, covering an ERP transition or a major digital initiative through to stable operation. I take on one customer at a time by design, so the work is focused, not spread thin.
When to hire a full-time VP of Technology instead
At $100M+ revenue with complex multi-site operations and 50+ IT users, a fractional CTO is usually not enough — the operational complexity of managing the IT function alone justifies a full-time hire. Below that threshold, fractional covers both strategy and team leadership effectively.
The clearest signal for a full-time hire: the technology function has become a daily operational dependency that needs someone on-site and accountable full-time, not a few days a week. I help manufacturers assess that inflection point honestly. If a fractional engagement is right for now, I say so. If the business has crossed the threshold where a full-time hire makes more sense, I help you scope the role, write the job description, and evaluate candidates — that transition is part of the engagement, not a surprise ending.
Recent proof
A comparable engagement, delivered and documented.
Turned a B2B manufacturer into a digital showroom
Designed and developed a high-performance institutional website to showcase packaging solutions and generate qualified leads.
Read the case studyFrequently asked questions
The questions prospects ask before they book.
The core work is technology strategy: ERP selection and oversight, MES and integration architecture, digital-transformation roadmap, IT team structure and hiring. A manufacturing fractional CTO translates business goals — reduce production cost, improve delivery reliability, capture new digital revenue — into technology decisions and keeps those decisions from being made by vendors with their own interests. Day-to-day involvement scales from one to three days per week depending on the engagement tier.
Start with requirements gathered from the people who will use the system — production, finance, ops, sales — before any vendor conversation. Size the candidate list to the business: smaller manufacturers ($10M to $30M) usually fit NetSuite or Dynamics 365 Business Central; larger operations ($30M to $100M) should look at Infor CloudSuite, Epicor, or Plex. Evaluate on total cost of ownership over five years, not just license fees. Reference calls with manufacturers of comparable size matter more than vendor demos. Selection typically takes three to six months done properly.
Manage, yes. Run day-to-day implementation, no. ERP implementation requires specialist consultants with deep system knowledge. My role is to protect the operation's interests: manage the implementation partner relationship, control scope creep, review configuration decisions against original requirements, and coordinate internal teams through go-live. Manufacturers who skip this oversight often end up with a system that works as-configured but not as-needed — a costly gap to close after launch.
ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) manages the business layer — finance, inventory, procurement, orders, and planning. MES (Manufacturing Execution System) manages the shop floor in real time — work orders, production progress, quality inspection, labor tracking, and equipment status. The two systems need to exchange data bidirectionally: ERP pushes work orders down to MES; MES feeds actual production data, quality results, and cost actuals back up to ERP. Getting this integration right is one of the most valuable things a manufacturing CTO owns.
My pricing is $5,499/mo for CTO Advisory (one to two days per week) and $9,499/mo for the full Fractional CTO engagement (three days per week). Both include a 14-day money-back guarantee and cancel-anytime terms. Full-time VP of Technology salaries at comparable experience levels run $250k+ per year, before benefits and equity. Management consulting firms for similar strategic work typically bill $300/hour or higher with rotating staff. Fractional covers the strategic function at a fraction of either cost.
Most manufacturing engagements run 12 to 24 months. The natural scope is one major initiative — an ERP selection and transition, a digital-transformation roadmap executed to first milestones, or a full IT team restructure. Some customers stay on after that for ongoing strategic advisory at the lighter tier. I'm transparent about when the engagement has accomplished what it set out to do and when a different structure makes more sense.
Yes. My service coverage spans the US, UK, EU, and Latin America. Manufacturing engagements are largely remote with periodic on-site visits for ERP workshops, vendor evaluations, and team alignment sessions. The strategic work — vendor selection, roadmap development, integration architecture — transfers well across geographies. What varies is the local ERP partner mix and compliance requirements, which I account for in the evaluation process.