Numbers your board can trust.
A fractional Head of Data for growing European companies that have no data leader.
We take over the metrics your leadership decides with: one definition per metric, a business owner and a technical owner, and the silent errors found before they reach the board. Part-time, for a monthly fee. Not by the hour.
If two different figures for the same metric turn up in your board meeting, this is for you.
Growing companies don't fail for lack of data. They fail because nobody is accountable for whether it's right.
Data ends up with the CTO, who already answers for everything else. And the usual ways out have a catch: hiring takes months and costs what it costs, the fashionable platform bills by consumption on data nobody queries, and the vendor's proof of concept is designed to succeed, not to tell the truth.
All three share the same mistake: they start by building.
01
Hire a Head of Data
£85,000–140,000 a year in the UK, months of recruiting, and one person for everything
02
Buy the platform
Sold on the promise, billed on consumption
03
The vendor's PoC
Designed to succeed. Not to tell you whether it's worth it
X-ray before surgery.
If your knee hurts, nobody operates before taking an X-ray. Not because surgery is bad, but because until you see what's inside, any operation is a bet. Data works the same way, and almost everyone walks straight into the operating theatre.
The 3-D rule: Data, Definition, Decision-maker.
Every data or AI initiative is tested against three questions: does the data exist? is there a single definition? does anyone have authority over it? An initiative missing any of the three is an orphan and is dropped before a euro is spent. Dropping it early doesn't save hours: it saves months.
The Viability Traffic Light.
Every initiative lands in one of three boxes, with the technical reason for each. The ones that need foundations become a budget line justified with your own data, not with our word.
Three boxes, and the why of each.
Go today
The data exists, there's a single definition and someone has authority over it. It goes into the first ninety days' roadmap.
Needs foundations
One of the three Ds is missing. We say which, in what order it gets fixed and what fixing it costs.
Drop it
An orphan initiative. Dropped before a euro is spent, with the technical reason in writing.
You come in through an audit. You stay if you see the value.
Entry · 2 weeks
Metrics audit
Together with leadership we pick the ten metrics you actually decide with, audit each one — order of magnitude, the same formula cross-checked between systems, data types and the integrity of every join — and leave it with one definition, a business owner and a technical owner. And you get a new view: something about your business you can't see today.
Guarantee: you end with your ten metrics under one definition, two owners and reconciling, or we keep working at no cost until they do.
What's includedMonthly fee
Fractional CDO
What an in-house data leader would do, part-time: a data committee with leadership, metrics under watch, the 3-D filter before every initiative, vendor proposals and the cloud bill reviewed, data policy kept current and a quarterly roadmap. And every month, at least one new finding for the business.
Not billed by the hour: you pay for having your data in order, whether it takes one hour or fifteen. When the time comes, we help you hire your in-house successor.
What's includedBefore, if needed
Data literacy for leadership
So the board knows what to ask a number before trusting it. Standalone or as part of the fee.
Learn moreWhen something has to be built
Supervised delivery
Your team, a partner or our engineers build it: who, you decide. The fee makes sure what gets built is what was decided.
Learn moreNo AI without the audit first. If the data can't carry it, neither can the project: the audit is the pre-op.
The goal is to stop being needed. The last job of a fractional CDO is helping you hire the one who stays.
The fee is explained on the call, with your numbers in front of us: what an in-house data leader would cost you, how much senior time goes every month into reconciling reports that don't reconcile, and what you pay for cloud today.
AI ActGDPRData Act
GDPR, the Data Act and the AI Act aren't a section of the proposal. They're a design constraint.
If AI touches your corporate customers' data, the problem stops being technical and becomes contractual. We work with read-only access, under NDA and, where needed, a DPA. Anonymisation and access control are designed in layers before any model sees a record, and the documentation is audit-ready. It's the part of the job most fractional data leaders outside Europe have never had to do.
What changed.
Four projects, four outcomes.
Travel tech
18 min → 3.5 s
Load time of the same leadership dashboard, end to end, after redesigning the dashboard and the data layer behind it. The full funnel: 19 flows and 10 filters.
Metabase footer
Travel tech
−93%
On the database bill: from $7,805 to $560 a month, by moving the real-time replica to daily loads. The business didn't need more.
AWS Cost Explorer
Industrial group
5 → 11,568
People matched after rebuilding the identity bridge between systems. Without a single new record: with what they already had.
The system's own count, before and after
Payments
32.8%
Of transactions were failing on channels that were already integrated. It wasn't development: it was credentials. It changed the whole engineering sprint.
Integration audit
Travel tech, payment cards and digital identity, insurance, B2B SaaS and EU-funded research. And an ongoing relationship with an industrial group since 2022.
What people we've worked with say.
“In a stressful time during a large scale global project where the stakes are high and the path is uphill, you want someone like this on your team.”
“From day one he managed to take ownership of his projects, showing great autonomy and problem-solving skills.”
“I can't imagine what we would do without you.”
Professional recommendations collected between 2022 and 2026, quoted in the original, by role and sector.
Senior from the first query to the board meeting.
DataSenda is a small, specialist data and AI practice. It isn't a generalist consultancy and it doesn't work in layers: the same person who audits the database writes the queries and defends the findings in front of leadership.
That's what makes a two-week audit fit in two weeks. No internal handover, no account layer translating what the technician said, and no junior learning on your invoice.
This is for you if any of this sounds familiar.
Your company is growing and nobody owns the data: it lands on the CTO, who already answers for everything else.
You've seen the same metric with two different values and nobody knew which one was right.
Someone on your board asked about AI and the honest answer was “depends on which data”.
You pay every month for data tools and cloud and it isn't clear which decisions come out of it.
We work with a few companies at a time. The person who signs the work is the person who does it, so there's no speeding it up by adding people. If there's no slot, you get the next one.
What we get asked before the first call.
- What is a fractional CDO?
- A data leader who works for your company part-time, for a monthly fee, instead of on payroll. They make sure the metrics leadership decides with are reliable, prioritise data and AI initiatives, and supervise whoever delivers them. Also called a fractional Head of Data or CDO as a service.
- When does a company need a data leader?
- When leadership decides with figures that don't reconcile between departments, when the CTO carries data on top of everything else, or when the company wants to bring in AI and doesn't know whether its data can carry it. It usually happens between 20 and 250 employees, before there's an in-house data team.
- How much does a fractional CDO cost compared with hiring one?
- A Head of Data in the UK costs £85,000–140,000 a year in base salary, plus employer costs and months of recruiting; in London the median is higher still. A fractional CDO costs a fraction of that, is working from the first month and can be ended with one month's notice.
- How is this different from a data consultancy?
- A consultancy sells projects and hours. We charge a monthly fee for recurring outcomes — metrics kept in order, decisions better informed, vendors reviewed — the way your accountant charges for keeping the books in order, whether it takes one hour or fifteen.
- Do you work outside Spain?
- Yes. We're based in Spain and work remotely with companies across Europe, in English or Spanish. Everything is designed to comply with GDPR, the Data Act and the AI Act, which matters whether you're in Madrid, Munich or Manchester.
- What if our metrics are already fine?
- Then the audit confirms it in writing, which is worth having, and you still get the new view of your business. The guarantee is on the outcome: you end with your ten metrics defined, owned and reconciling.
Twenty minutes to find out whether your numbers are telling the truth.
A working call, not a sales pitch: you tell us how you decide with data and we tell you what we'd look at first. If we don't see a fit, we'll say so.
Prefer to write? hola@datasenda.com