Technology clarity,
on subscription.
CIO Advisra is the operating layer for technology leadership. Whether you don't have a CIO, you're new in the role, or your organization is in the middle of a technology challenge — Advisra brings clarity to where you stand and what to do next.
A 5-minute snapshot across the six dimensions of technology leadership. Subscribers receive the in-depth quarterly assessment with multi-respondent input, advisor interpretation, and sector-tailored insight.
See how Advisra works →6 pillars
The same way a senior CIO organizes their thinking — governance, security, operations, infrastructure, data, and people.
Same day
Strategic-tier response time on every question. 24-hour memo on Core. The technology question you'd take to a senior CIO, answered by one.
On a cadence
Quarterly Health Score Reports, monthly Intelligence Briefings, and always-on Q&A advisory. Not a one-time assessment — an operating rhythm.
What Advisra delivers
Clarity across the six things every business should see clearly
about its technology.
Most organizations don't lack technology. They lack a clear, current view of where they stand and what's worth doing about it. Advisra organizes that view across six pillars — the same way a senior CIO organizes their own thinking.
Governance and Strategy
Clarity on whether your technology decisions support where the business is going.
Technology decisions made without business alignment turn into expensive rework. This is about who owns technology decisions in your organization, how those decisions are made, how they're tied to business priorities, and how leadership stays informed. When this is strong, technology investment moves the business forward. When it's weak, technology becomes something that happens to the business rather than for it.
Security and Risk
Clarity on whether your organization is actually protected.
This covers how your organization protects its technology environment, data, and people — and how it identifies, tracks, and manages technology-related compliance obligations and operational risk. Most organizations conflate compliance with security; the two are related but not the same. This pillar measures both: whether you're protected in practice, and whether you can demonstrate it when regulators, customers, or insurers ask.
Operations
Clarity on whether your technology consistently delivers what the business needs.
Day to day, does technology work for the people who depend on it? This covers service delivery, system reliability, support responsiveness, and the operational discipline that keeps the technology environment running. It also covers business continuity — your organization's ability to maintain operations and recover when something goes wrong. When operations is strong, technology fades into the background. When it's weak, it dominates leadership attention.
Infrastructure
Clarity on whether your technology environment is current, reliable, and ready for what's next.
This is the actual technology environment — networks, cloud, endpoints, applications, integrations. The currency, reliability, and scalability of what you have, and the maturity of how it's managed. Strong infrastructure is invisible to the business; weak infrastructure shows up as cost overruns, downtime, security gaps, and projects that take longer than they should.
Data and Information
Clarity on how your organization manages, protects, and uses its information.
Data is increasingly the most valuable asset most organizations have, and the most poorly managed. This covers how your organization collects, organizes, protects, and uses information to inform decisions. It includes data governance, data quality, analytics maturity, and your readiness to evaluate and adopt AI tools effectively. Most organizations have far more data than they're using, and far less control over it than they think.
People and Capability
Clarity on whether you have the right team and skills for what you're building.
Technology runs on people. This covers the skills, capacity, and retention of the people responsible for your technology environment — whether internal staff, external partners, or both. Strong technology programs are built on stable, capable teams. Weak ones depend on heroics from individuals or constant scrambling for outside help. The gap between the two is one of the most common reasons technology investments don't deliver expected results.
How it works
Clarity on a cadence.
Advisra isn't a one-time assessment. It's an operating rhythm.
Quarterly Health Score Report
A current, multi-perspective view of where your organization stands across all six pillars. Scored from data your team provides, interpreted by senior advisors, delivered as a board-ready report your leadership can actually use.
Monthly Intelligence Briefings
Curated insight on what's changing in your industry, your regulatory environment, and the technology landscape — focused on what matters for your specific organization.
Always-On Q&A Advisory
The technology question you'd take to a senior CIO, answered by one. Asked when you need it, answered with the context of your organization in mind.
Who Advisra is for
Built for every stage of the technology journey, even when technology isn't your mission.
Most leaders we work with are running organizations that depend on technology without being technology organizations. Advisra is built for that reality.
Non-technologist leaders
When technology is something you carry, not something you specialize in
You're responsible for technology outcomes, but your background is somewhere else — operations, finance, healthcare, the mission you actually came to lead. Advisra gives you the senior perspective, structured visibility, and clear next steps that let you make confident decisions without becoming a technology expert.
Technology leaders
When you're the technology leader and want a sharper outside lens
You're the CIO, IT director, or technology lead. Advisra is the outside perspective that supports your work — clarifying where the organization actually stands, surfacing what's worth focusing on, and giving you a senior peer to think with. The result is sharper insight for your leadership and fewer cycles spent defending what you already know is true.
When something has gone wrong
When something has gone wrong and you need outside clarity
A breach, a failed project, a leadership transition, a vendor problem. Advisra brings structure and senior perspective when internal clarity has broken down. And once the immediate situation is resolved, Advisra stays — because the conditions that produced the problem usually need ongoing attention, not just a one-time fix.
How Advisra fits with deeper support
Advisra is the foundation.
Bigger needs build on top of it.
When the situation calls for more than insight — hands-on work, specialist expertise, full fractional leadership — Advisra helps you identify not just what you need, but who: whether the right answer is internal capacity, a trusted partner, or a CIO Advisra engagement built for the work.
The clarity to know what's needed, and the network to deliver it.
No cost. No commitment.
Your technology environment
has a score.
Find out what it is — free.
The Technology Clarity Snapshot evaluates your organization across all six pillars: Governance and Strategy, Security and Risk, Operations, Infrastructure, Data and Information, and People and Capability.
Answer 24 questions in 5 minutes. Receive your clarity report immediately — a branded PDF showing your overall clarity score, your score on each pillar, where your organization is strong, where it's at risk, and what's worth doing first.
No discovery call required. No sales follow-up if you don't want one. Just a clear picture of where your technology environment stands — and what to look at first.
Overall Clarity Score
Color-rated: Green / Yellow / Orange / Red
Score on each of the six pillars
Governance, Security, Operations, Infrastructure, Data, and People
Where you're strong, where you're at risk
A pillar-by-pillar read on what's working and what isn't
What's worth doing first
Prioritized next steps you can take to leadership without becoming a technology expert
Full CIO Advisra subscribers are scored on the same six pillars every quarter — with weighting configured to their organization's priorities, trend tracking from prior quarters, and a full Action Checklist their team can execute.
5 minutes, 24 questions. Your report arrives in your inbox immediately upon completion.
Differentiation
This isn't a newsletter.
It isn't a retainer.
It's a category that didn't exist.
Gartner tells you what the market is doing.
CIO Advisra™ tells you what your organization should do about it.
| Feature | Free Newsletters | Gartner / Forrester | CIO Advisra™ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Personalized to your org | Not included | Not included | Included |
| Answers your specific questions | Not included | Not included | Included |
| Written by a practitioner CIO | Not included | Not included | Included |
| Quarterly scored health reporting (six pillars) | Not included | Not included | Included |
| Action checklists & tracker | Not included | Not included | Included |
| Starting price | Free | $30,000+/year | $1,250/month |
The Action System
What turns insights into results
Most advisory services tell you what's wrong.
CIO Advisra™ tells you what to do about it — and tracks whether you did.
Monthly Action
Every monthly briefing ends with This Month's Action — one concrete step, 15 minutes or less.
Quarterly Checklist
Every quarterly Health Score Report includes a one-page Action Checklist — prioritized actions across all six pillars, ready to hand to your team.
Portal Tracker
Your portal Action Tracker mirrors the checklist digitally. Mark items complete as your team works through them. The next quarter's report opens with a progress summary.
After one year, you have four scored quarters, a measurable trend line, and a visible completion record.
That's evidence you can take to a board.
It's also what makes renewal feel like forward momentum, not a recurring expense.
Subscription plans
Same product at every tier.
More advisor access
as you go up.
Every tier includes the full Quarterly Health Score Report, the full Monthly Intelligence Briefing, the risk register and action tracker, and the advisory record. Higher tiers add advisor partnership — longer readout calls, mid-quarter check-ins, on-demand consultations, annual strategy reviews, and board-level support.
Not sure which tier fits? Start with the free Technology Clarity Snapshot — your results will tell you.
Tier 1 — Core
The full Advisra practice with focused advisor access.
- Full Quarterly Health Score Report (six pillars, board-ready PDF + Action Checklist)
- Full Monthly Intelligence Briefing (email + portal + PDF)
- Risk register, action tracker, and advisory record — full
- 60-minute quarterly readout call with your assigned advisor
- 4 strategic Q&A questions/month — 24-hour advisory memo
- Up to 15 assessment respondents
- Executive + 3 named portal users
- Sector packs and content library — full
Billed by invoice. Pay by card or ACH.
Tier 2 — Signature
More advisor partnership across the quarter.
- Everything in Core
- 6 strategic Q&A questions/month — same-business-day acknowledgment, 24-hour memo
- 90-minute quarterly readout call
- Mid-quarter check-in call (30 min)
- 1 on-demand advisor consultation per quarter (30 min)
- Annual strategy review (90 min, in-person or virtual)
- Unlimited assessment respondents
- Executive + 5 named portal users
Billed by invoice. Pay by card or ACH.
Tier 3 — Strategic
Deepest advisor partnership, including board-level support.
- Everything in Signature
- 10 strategic Q&A questions/month — same-business-day acknowledgment and memo
- 60-minute mid-quarter check-in call
- 2 on-demand advisor consultations per quarter (60 min each)
- Half-day annual strategy review (4 hours, in-person preferred)
- Annual board memo or briefing prep
- Executive + 10 named portal users
Billed by invoice. Pay by card or ACH.
Add to any engagement
Strategy is the foundation.
Add visibility and execution as you need them.
Advisra Portfolio Platform
+$500/monthContinuous, real-time visibility into every active project in your portfolio. You and your team keep it current; your advisor uses what it surfaces to inform briefings, reports, and guidance. Flat rate across all Advisra tiers.
- Real-time alerts on schedule, scope, and budget changes
- Custom-branded portal for you and your team
- Integration with your existing project tools
- Shared visibility between you and your advisor
Offered at launch pricing through the initial rollout period and may be repriced as the engagement matures.
Add the platform to my engagementPMO Command
RetainerHands-on execution support. When a briefing or report surfaces something that needs response — a slipping vendor, a drifting project, a risk to contain — PMO Command handles it. Your advisor identifies what needs to happen; PMO Command makes it happen.
Hourly rates, billed against your retainer
- Project Administrator
- $50/hr
- Project Manager
- $150/hr
- Senior Project Manager
- $200/hr
- Senior Partner
- $350/hr
Minimum retainer $3,000/month; $5,000/month recommended to start. Weekly status reports show hours used by role. Unused hours roll forward up to three months.
Talk to us about PMO CommandAlready a subscriber? You can add either at any time — just choose them at signup or ask your advisor.
Launch pricing applies to the first 25 paying subscribers across all tiers. As long as you stay continuously subscribed, your launch rate stays. A 2-year or 3-year commitment locks your rate at signup regardless of subsequent pricing changes.
All subscriptions require a 3-month minimum commitment. Annual prepay saves 10%. After 3 months, cancel anytime.
We accept ACH bank transfer, credit card, and wire transfer. ACH is our preferred method — secure, fast, and no processing fees passed to you.
Questions about which tier fits?
No pitch. Just a conversation about your organization.
Need something more hands-on? CIO Advisra offers fractional CIO engagements →
Founder & Advisory CIO
Dr. Jerri Bland
About
Led by someone who has actually been in the room.
Dr. Jerri Bland founded CIO Advisra™ because she kept seeing the same problem: organizations making consequential technology decisions without anyone qualified at the table.
She spent 25 years as an enterprise IT executive — Deputy CIO at Columbia University, where she managed a technology organization of 140+ staff; Assistant Vice Chancellor for Information Technology at UNC Chapel Hill; and senior technology leader across healthcare, higher education, and government sectors.
She holds a Doctorate in Higher Education Administration, PMP certification, Certified Scrum Master, and Six Sigma credentials.
CIO Advisra is delivered by a bench of senior IT practitioners — each a career practitioner with enterprise leadership experience, not an analyst, not a generalist, not a junior associate.
CIO Advisra™ is woman and minority owned, and serves organizations in the United States, Canada, and internationally.
Briefings, Q&A responses, and Health Score Reports are produced by senior practitioner advisors — reviewed and signed by the advisor assigned to your account, with Dr. Bland overseeing the practice. Not outsourced. Not summarized by a junior analyst.
Every client gets the same senior practitioner expertise, regardless of tier.
FAQ
Common Questions
Every component is built around your specific context — your industry, your technology environment, your vendors, your strategic priorities, and the questions you tell us you’re trying to answer. The briefings are filtered through your client profile. The Health Score is scored against your actual data. The Q&A responses are written for your specific situation. There is no generic version of CIO Advisra™.
Gartner and Forrester produce broad market research written by analysts who have never run an IT organization. It tells you what the market is doing — not what your organization should do about it. CIO Advisra™ delivers personalized advisory from senior practitioners with enterprise IT leadership backgrounds, filtered through your specific environment, vendors, and strategic questions. At $30,000+ annually for a Gartner research seat versus $1,250/month for CIO Advisra™ Core, you’re getting more relevant intelligence at a fraction of the cost.
The Technology Clarity Snapshot covers all six pillars of your technology environment — Governance and Strategy, Security and Risk, Operations, Infrastructure, Data and Information, and People and Capability — and delivers a scored, color-rated clarity report immediately upon completion. It identifies where your organization is strong, where it’s at risk, and what’s worth doing first. It takes 5 minutes, 24 questions, and requires no commitment of any kind.
Full CIO Advisra subscribers are scored on the same six pillars every quarter, with weighting configured to their organization’s priorities and vertical, trend tracking from prior quarters, a full Action Checklist, monthly Intelligence Briefings, and on-demand advisory access. The snapshot is a diagnostic. The subscription is the ongoing strategic relationship built on top of it.
Launch pricing is in effect for the first 25 paying subscribers across all tiers combined. Once the launch cohort fills, prevailing pricing applies to all new subscribers. If you join under launch pricing, your rate stays for as long as you remain continuously subscribed — cancellation forfeits the launch rate. A 2-year or 3-year commitment at signup locks your rate for the contract term regardless of subsequent pricing changes.
You submit your question through your private client portal. A senior advisor responds with a structured advisory memo — typically 300–600 words — covering CIO perspective, key considerations, and a recommended next step. Turnaround is tier-set: Core delivers a memo within 24 hours; Signature acknowledges within the same business day and delivers a memo within 24 hours; Strategic acknowledges and delivers the memo within the same business day. All Q&A threads are archived in your portal for the life of your subscription.
Every quarterly Health Score Report generates prioritized recommended actions across all six pillars. Those actions are automatically pre-populated in your portal as a digital checklist. Your team marks items complete as you work through them. When the next quarter’s report is produced, it opens with a progress summary before scoring begins. Over time, this creates a measurable performance record — valuable for board reporting and budget justification.
CIO Advisra™ isn’t a replacement for your IT team — it’s the strategic layer above them. Most IT teams are excellent at execution and operations. CIO-level thinking — vendor strategy, security posture, IT-to-business alignment, technology roadmapping — is a different discipline. CIO Advisra™ provides that layer without requiring your IT team to work outside their wheelhouse.
CIO Advisra is designed for organizations that need strategic IT leadership delivered asynchronously — without the commitment of an ongoing engagement. If your situation calls for something more hands-on — a fractional CIO actively leading your technology function, managing vendors, or steering a major initiative — that is a different kind of relationship.
CIO Advisra offers fractional CIO engagements for exactly that need. Reach out and we’ll help you figure out which model fits where you are right now.
The quarterly Health Score is the highest-value deliverable in the subscription — and it requires one full data collection cycle to produce. The 3-month minimum ensures you receive at least one complete Health Score and Action Checklist before evaluating the service. After 3 months, cancel anytime.
Your advisor uses the platform to inform Monthly Intelligence Briefings, Quarterly Health Score Reports, and strategic recommendations. They review what the platform surfaces about your portfolio and incorporate relevant insights into your action plan.
Day-to-day platform management — updating project data, triaging alerts, driving follow-up actions — is your team’s responsibility. If you’d like hands-on response and remediation support beyond what your advisor provides, see PMO Command.
PMO Command is a senior fractional PMO team available on retainer. The team triages portfolio alerts, writes recommendations, runs light remediation, briefs your executive sponsor, and handles the day-to-day project response work — at whatever level of engagement you specify.
You set the retainer; we deliver to it. Work is billed transparently at role rates, and you receive a weekly status report showing exactly what was done and which role delivered each hour.
PMO Command operates as a professional services retainer. You commit to a monthly retainer amount. Work is billed by the hour against your retainer at the role rate (Project Administrator $50, Project Manager $150, Senior PM $200, Senior Partner $350). Each week you receive a status report showing hours used by role and work completed. Unused hours roll forward up to three months.
Yes. Both can be added at any point during your Advisra subscription. We’ll scope your starting retainer or platform configuration during a brief setup conversation.
Additional work beyond your monthly retainer is billed at the same role rates. You receive a notification when your retainer balance approaches zero, and you decide whether to authorize additional work, slow the engagement, or increase your retainer for the next month.
Get clarity on where you stand.
The free Technology Clarity Snapshot is a 5-minute assessment across all six pillars. You'll receive a clarity report identifying where your organization is strong, where it's at risk, and what's worth doing first. No commitment required.
Advisra subscribers receive the full quarterly assessment — substantially deeper questioning, multi-respondent input from executive and technology team members, advisor-interpreted scoring tailored to your sector, and a board-ready report with prioritized actions.
Ready to talk? Reach out however works best for you.