A fractional CTO for omnichannel retailers
Ecommerce, POS, ERP strategy for $20M to $200M omnichannel retailers. Imohub 120k-catalog CTO experience applied. $4,500/mo Advisory, $8,500/mo full.
Who this is for
Ops or digital director at a $20M to $200M omnichannel retailer where ecommerce, stores, and ERP tech is fragmented and no one owns the full digital strategy.
The pain today
- Ecommerce, stores, and ERP run on different systems with broken sync
- No one owns the full digital strategy
- Holiday peaks create customer-facing failures
- Vendor stack grew organically, costs climbing
- Full-time CIO premature at current scale
The outcome you get
- Fractional retail CTO at $4,500 to $8,500/mo
- Omnichannel platform strategy
- POS, ERP, and ecommerce integration plan
- Data and reporting infrastructure
- Vendor consolidation and hiring plan
Retail CTO topics
Four topics. Ecommerce platform — Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, or custom. POS — Shopify POS, Lightspeed, NCR Aloha, or specialty retail POS. ERP — NetSuite, Oracle Retail, Microsoft Dynamics. Data — unified view of customers, inventory, sales across channels. Fractional CTO at $4,500 to $8,500/mo covers all four for retailers $20M to $200M where strategic platform decisions materially affect growth.
Vendor consolidation and platform strategy
Typical mid-market retailer runs on 30 to 60 apps and platforms. Stack audit reveals redundancy. Consolidation around integrated platforms (Shopify Plus, NetSuite, Lightspeed Retail) where they fit or best-of-breed with clear integration plan where custom integration matters. For retailers with aging ERP, replatform is multi-year commitment that CTO leads. At Imohub (CTO role) I managed similar scale platform decisions.
Data and reporting
Unified customer view across ecommerce and store purchases. Inventory visibility across channels. Sales reporting with channel attribution. For retailers with serious data needs, data warehouse (Snowflake, BigQuery) plus BI layer (Looker, Tableau). For simpler retailers, platform-native reporting plus spreadsheet exports. Data strategy sequences investments based on strategic priorities.
Pricing tiers
CTO Advisory $4,500/mo. Fractional CTO $8,500/mo. 14-day money-back guarantee. Cancel anytime. US LLC invoicing. Typically 12 to 24 months for retail operators through platform transitions or major digital initiatives.
Case: Imohub — scale-ready catalog and search
Imohub: 120,000+ property portal, sub-500ms queries, 70 percent infra savings, top three Google rankings. CTO role at Imohub covered architecture, team building, vendor decisions, cost optimisation. Same pattern applies to retail CTO work at similar scale — large catalog, fast browse, smart search, efficient hosting. Patterns directly transferable.
When a VP of Digital is right
For retailers at $200M+ revenue with large ecommerce and digital-marketing teams, VP of Digital handles day-to-day while CTO focuses on platform and infrastructure. Below that, fractional CTO covers both. I help structure the transition.
Recent proof
A comparable engagement, delivered and documented.
Rebuilt a real estate portal at a fraction of the cost
Rebuilt Imóveis SC's real estate portal as ImoHub — a faster, more scalable successor — handling 120k+ properties with sub-second search and drastically reduced AWS costs.
Frequently asked questions
The questions prospects ask before they book.
- Shopify Plus or BigCommerce?
- Shopify Plus for most DTC and multi-brand retailers under $100M. BigCommerce for B2B and wholesale-heavy operators with custom pricing needs. Magento (Adobe Commerce) for large enterprise with complex B2B. Custom only when platform limits block strategic growth. For most $20M to $100M retailers, Shopify Plus is right.
- How do you handle POS?
- Shopify POS for Shopify-first retailers. Lightspeed Retail for operators preferring specialist retail POS. Square for smaller operations. NCR Aloha for very large. POS integrates with ecommerce and ERP; integration quality matters as much as POS features.
- What about ERP?
- NetSuite common for retailers at $20M+. Microsoft Dynamics 365 for retailers in Microsoft ecosystem. Oracle Retail for very large enterprise. For smaller retailers, QuickBooks Enterprise or similar may still cover needs. ERP decisions multi-year commitments with significant risk.
- How do you handle holiday peak scaling?
- Pre-scale hosting 2 to 4 weeks before Black Friday. Load test expected peak. CDN aggressive caching. Database read-replicas. Queue-based order processing. Post-peak scale down. For retailers with viral-moment exposure, infrastructure prepared for 5x to 10x normal traffic.
- Can you lead ERP replatform?
- I manage the implementation relationship with ERP consultancy. I do not lead day-to-day ERP implementation — specialist ERP consultants do that. My role: protect retailer's interests, manage scope, review decisions, coordinate across teams.
Ready to start?
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