Operations run properly.
Not another slide deck.
RLP Advisory puts a 25-year operator into your business part-time: fractional COO support, board advisory and hands-on delivery for SMEs and PE-backed companies that need the operation to perform, not another report about why it doesn't.
Start a conversation How it worksMost SMEs can't justify a full-time COO. Most of them still need one.
The gap shows up the same way every time: the owner pulled into daily firefighting, growth stalling at the point where informal management stops working, a board reviewing numbers nobody quite owns.
A fractional COO closes that gap at a fraction of the cost, with none of the recruitment risk.
Three ways to bring in the grip.
Fractional COO
Senior operations leadership on a part-time cadence: agreed days per month, clear deliverables, board-level reporting.
Fractional COO →Board Advisory & NED
An operator's voice in the boardroom: governance with a grip on the floor, for boards that want their numbers challenged by someone who has owned them.
Board Advisory →Programme Delivery
Ownership of the initiatives that stall without senior grip: site launches, warehouse system changes, network redesign, turnaround stabilisation.
Discuss a programme →I spent twenty-five years inside large operations: seventeen at Next, then running a 4,500-person operation with a major P&L. What I saw everywhere is that businesses don't usually fail on strategy. They fail on the Tuesday-morning version of the plan. The shift that wasn't covered. The number nobody owned. The decision that waited three weeks for a meeting.
RLP is built on one idea: SMEs deserve the same operational grip large companies pay a full-time executive for, in the days per month they actually need. No junior consultants. No 80-slide decks. The person you meet is the person who does the work.
Run your own numbers first.
Calculators built on current verified UK figures: fractional vs full-time cost, day rates and more. No email required to use them.
Open the toolsGuides written for operators.
Practical guides with every statistic verified to a named primary source. Download what's useful.
Browse the libraryStraight answers.
What is a fractional COO?
A fractional COO is a senior operations leader who works inside your business part-time on an agreed monthly cadence, typically two to eight days per month, carrying real accountability for operational performance without the cost of a full-time executive.
What does RLP Advisory do?
RLP Advisory provides fractional COO support, board advisory and NED services, and hands-on programme delivery for SMEs and PE-backed businesses, led by Rob Pegg, an operator with 25+ years of logistics and operations leadership including large P&L and 4,500-person teams.
How is a fractional COO different from a consultant?
A consultant analyses and recommends; a fractional COO leads and delivers. RLP engagements involve owning priorities, leading teams, unblocking decisions and reporting to the board, with exit criteria agreed from day one.
What size of business does RLP work with?
Typically owner-managed and PE-backed businesses between roughly two and fifty million pounds turnover: large enough to need senior operational grip, not yet at the point where a full-time COO makes financial sense.
How does an engagement start?
With a short diagnostic: two to three days inside the operation looking at the numbers, the floor, the team and the customers, followed by a written view of what to fix first and a proposed 30-60-90 plan.
Twenty minutes. Honest answers.
A first conversation tells you whether fractional support fits, what it costs, and what it would target first. If it's not the right answer for your business, I'll say so.
Book a call