An independent, CIO-led firm. For the mid-market, your outsourced CIO — end-to-end transformation and managed IT at challenger price. For the enterprise CIO, the senior, vendor-neutral capacity that de-risks your biggest programs. We sell judgment, never a product.
Integrators sell licenses and implementations. Software houses sell platforms. The Big 4 sell six-figure engagements with junior teams. None of them sit on your side of the table — so the buyer of every major IT program is left without independent senior judgment.
Local integrators and MSPs monetise the very thing they recommend. Objectivity is structurally impossible.
Too small for the Big 4's pricing, too important to leave to chance — yet no one serves you with senior IT leadership.
ERP and transformation projects over-run because no one independent is governing the vendor on your behalf.
Whether you have no CIO or a CIO under pressure, we plug in exactly where you need senior, independent capacity.
A single accountable partner who owns your whole IT agenda and runs it as a fractional CIO plus managed services — at a fraction of a full-time executive's cost.
We don't replace your CIO — we make them win. Independent, senior capacity for the highest-risk parts of the agenda.
Every service is entered through a paid, fixed-fee diagnostic whose roadmap becomes the plan for what follows. You start small and expand on evidence.
A fractional CIO embedded as your accountable IT leader.
Independent leadership and recovery of major change programs.
Current-to-target roadmaps tied to business outcomes.
Independent health checks and IV&V that govern your SIs.
Vendor-neutral readiness, RFP and migration oversight.
Data quality and governance that unblock ERP and AI.
Posture, vCISO leadership, risk and audit-readiness.
Readiness, governance and ROI-ranked use cases.
End-to-end or tower-by-tower IT under outcome SLAs.
"Strategy is worthless until you act on it. We bring CIO-grade judgment — and we stay in the room to make sure it gets delivered."
ACTON is led by Faizan Mahmood, an experienced enterprise CIO who has spent his career leading large-scale IT and digital transformation — from strategy and ERP modernisation to building and running high-performing technology organisations. He founded ACTON to give mid-market companies and enterprise boards something the market does not offer: a senior, vendor-neutral CIO on their side of the table.
The independence isn't a slogan — it's the business model. We take no vendor commissions and carry no implementation revenue on any deal we advise.
Paid only by you. We earn nothing from selling software, so our only incentive is your outcome.
A real CIO and senior operators — not a bench of trainees behind a partner's name.
Branded diagnostics delivered in weeks, with a roadmap you can act on immediately.
We measure ourselves on cost saved, risk reduced and milestones delivered — in writing.
A low-risk first engagement that proves value before anything bigger — the roadmap is the proposal.
A fixed-fee, two-to-four-week assessment of where your IT — or a specific program — really stands, with a prioritised 90-day roadmap.
We take ownership: a fractional CIO for the mid-market, or an assurance and advisory retainer for the enterprise CIO.
We deliver the roadmap and run managed IT to SLAs, scaling capacity against signed work — never overhead ahead of value.
See exactly where your IT — or your highest-risk program — stands, and what the next 90 days should look like. Fixed fee, no commitment beyond it.
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