A proper IT Director, on the days you need one.
I’ve spent 24 years building and running the IT function of a £65m UK business. I now do the same for other SMEs — as an interim during a vacancy, on a fractional retainer one or two days a week, or on a defined project.
Start a conversationYou know IT matters. You can’t justify £100k+ on a permanent hire.
Most UK SMEs between roughly £10m and £150m turnover sit in an awkward gap. Too big for whoever’s been running IT on the side to keep doing it. Too small to justify a full-time IT Director on £100k–£150k plus package.
What you actually need is senior, accountable IT leadership for one or two days a week, or full-time cover for a fixed stretch. Someone who can sit in front of your board, hold your suppliers to account, and make decisions without needing a committee.
That’s what I do.
I’m not an IT support shop. I’m not a generalist consultant who’ll produce a slide deck and disappear. I’ve run a real IT function at board level for 24 years. Same job, fewer days a week.
24 years
Running IT at board level for one £65m UK SME
Six-figure savings
Annual spend stripped out through vendor consolidation and automation
Cyber Essentials Plus
Achieved and maintained year-on-year across a multi-site operation
Statutory director
Experience sitting on the board with legal and fiduciary responsibility
Four main ways to work together
Different problems need different engagements. Pick the one that fits, or tell me what you’re dealing with and I’ll suggest which makes sense.
Interim IT Director
Full-time cover when whoever runs IT for you has moved on, you’re going through change, or something’s gone wrong. Typically three to six months. Clear exit and hand-back plan from day one.
Read more →Fractional IT Director
One or two days a week on retainer. Strategy, governance, supplier management, and the awkward technical decisions your MSP or internal team shouldn’t be making for you. Board-level input without the full-time cost.
Read more →IT Due Diligence
Pre- or post-deal technical review for acquisitions. Kit, licensing, contracts, security posture, people, hidden debt, upcoming spend. A proper look from someone who’s lived with the consequences of bad ones.
Read more →Cyber Security Review
Framework-agnostic review of where you actually stand. NCSC 10 Steps, CE, CE+, IASME, ISO 27001 — I’ll tell you honestly which applies and what you should do next.
Read more →Cyber Essentials Plus
Gap analysis, remediation, and readiness. I’ve taken a multi-site UK business through CE+ every year. I know what trips SMEs up on the day of assessment.
Read more →Supplier consolidation
Most SMEs are paying for overlapping tools, lapsed contracts, and service levels nobody measures. I’ll map what you’ve got, strip out the duplication, and hold the rest to account.
Get in touch →Built the IT function. Ran the IT function. Sat on the board.
I’m Jason Westwood. Twenty-four years ago I joined a UK SME as a junior and ended up running IT for the business as it grew to £65m turnover and multiple sites. Everything from replacing a 20-year-old legacy platform, through Active Directory, virtualisation, M365, SharePoint, MDM and custom portals — I’ve built it, broken it, fixed it, and paid for it out of a real P&L.
I’ve also been a statutory company director, which means I know what IT looks like from the other side of the board table — commercial pressure, governance responsibility, shareholder questions, insurance renewal awkwardness.
I set up Westwood Digital because most SME owners I talk to need exactly this kind of person on the books for one or two days a week — and nobody’s offering it at a price that makes sense.
How I work
- First person, peer to peer — not corporate speak
- Clear scope, day rate, and exit criteria up front
- I don’t sell kit or take vendor commissions
- Board reporting in language non-IT directors can act on
- Hand-back plan so you’re never dependent on me
Pick what fits the problem
Day rate or retainer. Week or six months. Scoped project or open-ended oversight. I’d rather do what actually suits you than sell you a package.
Interim cover
Full-time or close to it, for a fixed stretch. Useful during a vacancy, an integration, a security incident, or a project that’s slipped sideways.
Typical: 3 to 6 monthsFractional retainer
One or two days a week, ongoing. Board-level IT oversight without the permanent hire. Rolling agreement, exit whenever you like.
Typical: 1 to 2 days / weekDefined project
A specific job with a start, a middle, and an end. M&A due diligence, Cyber Essentials Plus, M365 rollout, supplier review, roadmap.
Fixed scope, milestone-basedHalf-day diagnostic
You don’t know if you’ve got a problem. Spend a morning with me and I’ll tell you what I see, what I’d do first, and whether you need me or not.
Fixed fee, no commitmentReal projects, real outcomes
Not case studies written by a marketing agency. Things I’ve actually built or fixed, in the words I’d use to explain them to another director.
Replaced a 20-year-old legacy business platform
Two decades of business logic sitting on an unsupported database nobody else understood. Migrated it to a modern equivalent without a day of downtime for the business. Removed a single point of failure the board had worried about for a decade.
Six-figure annual saving from vendor consolidation
Mapped every IT contract the business had. Killed the duplicates, renegotiated the rest, and automated the manual bits in between. Paid for itself in the first quarter.
Cyber Essentials Plus every year
Rolled out MFA, EDR, and a proper patching regime across a multi-site operation. Passed CE+ on first attempt and every year since. Cyber insurance premium came down as a direct result.
Power BI dashboards the board actually uses
Built executive KPI dashboards with site-level drill-down. Replaced the monthly PDF pack nobody read. Directors now self-serve on the numbers that matter to them.
Consolidated customer portal
Three legacy customer-facing systems, three different logins. Merged into one portal with single sign-on. Inbound service enquiries dropped by 25 per cent as a result.
IT due diligence on live deals
Currently working on IT due diligence for acquisitions. Kit, contracts, licensing, security, and the uncomfortable conversations about what needs to happen post-deal.