CTO Services Case Study
Alatus Solutions
As Alatus continued to grow, the company strengthened engineering leadership, improved product delivery, and built a more transparent, accountable technology organization aligned with evolving business priorities.
Greg was able to come in and quickly get to the root of these issues by putting the right process and team structure into place. – Ricky Black, Alatus Dental Post Business Unit GM
Overview
Alatus operates three complementary businesses serving the dental industry nationwide: a digital marketing agency, membership software for uninsured patients, and DentalPost, the nation’s largest online job board for dental professionals. Together, these businesses help dental practices attract patients, improve access to care, and connect with qualified talent.
As the company grew, technology became increasingly central to its success. New products, customer experience improvements, and revenue initiatives all depended on the engineering organization delivering products consistently and on schedule. With multiple business units competing for technology resources and priorities, leadership saw an opportunity to improve visibility into product development, strengthen execution, and create closer alignment between business priorities and engineering efforts. Greater consistency in release schedules and product quality would also help the company improve customer experience and support continued growth.
The company needed additional technology leadership, greater organizational alignment, and a refined approach to product delivery as the business continued to evolve.
Challenges
Alatus faced several interconnected challenges:
- Product development processes needed greater transparency to give executive leadership clearer visibility into priorities, timelines, and delivery considerations.
- Engineering efforts needed closer alignment with business objectives to help the company prioritize features and revenue opportunities.
- Opportunities existed to improve product quality and release cycles to further strengthen customer satisfaction and user experience.
- Leadership responsibilities and team structure needed to evolve to support the company’s growing portfolio of products and services.
- Engineering resources were not fully leveraging modern development practices or emerging AI capabilities.
The company saw an opportunity to strengthen its technology operating model and create a closer connection between business priorities and engineering execution.
Goals
The objective was to create a technology organization that consistently delivered high-quality products, aligned engineering with business priorities, and improved organizational transparency and accountability.
To support continued growth, Alatus needed to:
- Strengthen confidence in engineering leadership and product delivery.
- Improve visibility into development priorities, progress, and execution.
- Better align technology investments with business objectives.
- Modernize engineering processes and development practices, including leveraging AI.
- Build a leadership structure capable of sustaining long-term growth.
Solutions
Alatus engaged TechCXO Partner Greg Smith as Fractional Chief Technology Officer to lead a comprehensive transformation of the company’s engineering organization and product delivery processes.
Working closely with executive leadership, Greg focused first on strengthening organizational alignment before modernizing engineering operations. The engagement built on the company’s existing capabilities by establishing clearer governance, strengthening leadership, and introducing more disciplined execution across the technology organization.
Greg’s initiatives included:
- Evaluating the engineering organization and evolving key leadership roles to strengthen accountability and execution.
- Establishing a cross-functional product committee to prioritize development work, improve transparency, and align technology investments with business priorities.
- Promoting emerging internal talent into expanded leadership responsibilities.
- Transitioning day-to-day IT responsibilities to a managed services provider, allowing engineering leadership to focus on product development and innovation.
- Improving communication, delivery processes, and release management to reduce defects and accelerate feature delivery.
- Augmenting the engagement with an experienced TechCXO Fractional Director of Engineering to strengthen day-to-day engineering leadership while maintaining continuity during organizational changes.
- Introducing AI-enabled development practices that significantly increased engineering productivity and improved software quality.
Rather than simply replacing technology leadership, the engagement combined Greg’s executive leadership with TechCXO’s broader technology bench to create a more disciplined engineering organization with the leadership, processes, and expertise needed to consistently deliver business value.
As Fractional CTO, Greg Smith aligned product strategy, engineering leadership, and software delivery to help Alatus build a more transparent, accountable, and high-performing technology organization.
Partner, Fractional CTO
Greg helps growth-stage companies strengthen technology leadership, improve engineering execution, modernize development practices, and build organizations capable of delivering technology that supports long-term business growth.
Outcome
The transformation improved engineering performance while strengthening organizational confidence in the company’s ability to execute.
Product releases became more predictable, software quality improved, and development teams delivered features with greater speed and fewer defects. Usability improvements supported stronger customer onboarding, while enhancements reached the market more quickly.
The engagement also strengthened the economics of the technology organization. Leadership restructuring and the strategic use of TechCXO’s fractional executive bench reduced annual operating costs while increasing delivery capacity and strengthening engineering leadership. Modernized development practices, including AI-assisted engineering workflows, significantly increased productivity, improved software quality, accelerated feature delivery, and strengthened the organization’s technical capabilities.
Most importantly, Alatus emerged with a technology organization that gave leadership greater visibility, stronger alignment between business and engineering, and confidence in its ability to execute strategic priorities.
Engineering performance...
Software releases became more predictable, quality improved, and engineering teams delivered business priorities with greater speed and consistency.
Organizational capability...
Stronger leadership, clearer governance, and modern development practices created a technology organization better equipped to support future growth.
We were having real challenges aligning product development output with the true needs of the business. Greg was able to come in and quickly get to the root of these issues by putting the right process and team structure into place. The result has been a significant productivity improvement, and we are now regularly delivering the capabilities that the business needs most.
- Ricky Black Alatus Dental Post Business Unit GM
