Fractional vs frictional – leadership expertise, without the overhead

Rowan De Klerk | CEO | The CFO Centre South Africa | mail me |

One of the single scariest challenges for a growth business is when they must make the calls to “level-up” on their talent within their organisation.

The standard monthly cost for an experienced Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is between R2m and R5m per annum. Gulp. For a growth business this represents a very significant investment. Not only are you bringing in an expensive resource, but this is also a person who will interrogate your business in a way that your current bookkeeper or accountant never has.

For many entrepreneurs this is a big step and one that they struggle to take. They are used to making decisions on their own and controlling the finance function. What’s more is, if they have a board – they often want to control the narrative.

In over two decades that I have spent working with businesses in South Africa and beyond, all the way from entrepreneurial ventures to established corporates, I have observed a pattern – fractional resources are the way of the future.

If we just look at some of the industry stats, the number of fractional professionals grew from 60,000 in 2022 to 120,000 in 2024. This means it doubled in just 2 years with the global fractional executive market topping $5.7 billion in revenue and growing at 14% annually.

The trick is working out how you can use fractional resources to unblock friction within your organisation.

On friction

In physics, friction is a force that resists motion.

The same can be said of friction in a business. Friction is not necessarily major setbacks or catastrophes – it can be anything that causes operations to slow down or result in negative customer experiences.

Frictional resources are…

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