A proper IT Director, on the days you need one.
I’ve spent 24 years building and running IT within a £65m UK business. I now help other SMEs get senior IT leadership, independent challenge and practical delivery, whether that’s fractional support, interim cover or a defined review or transformation project.
Start a conversation How the Discovery Review worksYou know IT matters. You don’t need another full-time executive to get it right.
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 to £150k plus package.
What you actually need is access to senior, accountable IT leadership, whether that’s one or two days a week, a fixed review, or interim cover during a period of change. 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 spent 24 years working inside and ultimately leading a real IT function, including the last seven years as IT Director and a statutory Board member. I now bring that experience into other businesses without the cost of a full-time hire.
24 years
Building and leading IT within a £65m UK business
Six-figure savings
Annual spend stripped out through vendor consolidation and automation
CIO 100 UK 2026
Named among the UK’s top 100 technology leaders
Statutory director
Experience sitting on the board with legal and fiduciary responsibility
Start small and prove the value
Most clients start with a short, fixed-fee IT Discovery Review. If there’s value in carrying on, we agree what comes next. If there isn’t, you still leave with an independent view and clear priorities.
UnderstandReviewFixStay involved
1. IT Discovery Review
A short, fixed-fee review of how IT is currently organised, what you’re spending, where the main risks sit and what deserves attention first. Clear findings, clear priorities and no commitment beyond the initial review.
Typical: 3 to 4 days, fixed fee2. A defined project
If the review finds a specific job worth doing, we scope it with a start, a middle and an end. IT strategy review, supplier review, M&A due diligence, Cyber Essentials Plus.
Fixed scope, milestone-based3. Fractional 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 / weekOr, if it’s urgent: interim cover
Three to four days a week, for a fixed stretch. Useful during a vacancy, an integration, a security incident, or a project that’s slipped sideways.
Typical: 3 to 6 monthsWays 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
Keep the business moving through a leadership gap, major change or IT disruption. Senior cover three to four days a week, typically for three to six months, with a clear hand-back plan from day one.
Read more →Fractional CIO / IT Director
Board-level IT leadership without the cost of a full-time executive. One or two days a week on retainer: strategy, governance, suppliers, and the decisions your MSP or internal team shouldn’t be making for you.
Read more →IT Due Diligence
Know what you’re buying before you inherit the cost, risk and technical debt. A pre- or post-deal review of kit, licensing, contracts, security, people and upcoming spend, from someone who’s lived with the consequences of bad ones.
Read more →Cyber Security Review
Understand your real cyber risk, what insurers and customers expect, and what to fix first. An independent review against whichever standard actually applies to you: NCSC 10 Steps, Cyber Essentials, IASME or ISO 27001.
Read more →IT Strategy, Transformation & AI
A clear plan for what technology and AI should do for the business, and what to tackle first. A focused review of systems, operating model, suppliers, governance, risk and roadmap, including where AI will pay its way and where it won’t. I’ve put AI into a live operation with measurable, six-figure results, so this is practical adoption, not a slide deck.
Get in touch →Supplier consolidation
Know what you’re paying for, whether you’re getting value, and what you can stop paying for. I’ll map your contracts, strip out duplication and lapsed services, 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. I’ve spent 24 years building and leading IT within a UK SME, progressing from Network Manager to Head of IT and, since 2019, IT Director and statutory Board member.
Over that time, I’ve helped the business modernise, reduce cost, improve resilience, support growth and make better use of technology across the operation. I’ve led major system changes, challenged suppliers, built teams, managed budgets and made the calls when the business needed a decision rather than another meeting.
A big part of that has been changing the way technology is viewed by the business: not simply as a cost to control, but as something that should create value, improve efficiency, support customers and help the business grow.
I’ve also been a statutory company director, which means I understand technology from the other side of the board table: commercial pressure, risk, governance, shareholder expectations and the need to spend money where it actually makes a difference.
That’s the experience I now bring to my clients through Westwood Digital, helping owners and boards get a clearer grip on technology, challenge where money is being spent, understand the risks, and make sure IT is genuinely supporting the wider business.
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
Real 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 acquisitions
The estate, contracts, licensing and security questions that come up in a deal, and the uncomfortable conversations about what needs to happen afterwards.