Single-person risk in Ag retail: Why the time for succession planning is now

If you work in Ag retail, chances are there’s someone at your organization who has seemingly every internal process stored in their brain.

You might even be this person: the one who everybody goes to for questions. The one who just knows how every spreadsheet should work and how every process should run. Maybe you’re even the one who has sole ownership over the company’s net sheets via your own Excel account.

And while a sole person holding all of that in their memory is impressive, it’s not always helpful to your business in the long run. What happens when that person leaves? Will anyone at your organization know how to organize and update the company’s net sheets? Or will you waste precious time trying to figure it out?

There’s a reason we’ve all heard of the “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” philosophy. The same is true in Ag retail: don’t put all your data and internal processes into one person’s brain.

Single-person risk in Ag retail

According to our data, up to 90% of Ag retailers carry some single-person risk. The vast majority of companies only have one to two employees who actually know how the net sheets work.

This can lead to several problems down the line:

Critical info leaking out of your organization

The person in charge of net sheets at an Ag retailer holds a sensitive role — so there’s certainly competitive risk, if that person decides to take that knowledge to another company.

What would it mean for your business if one of your most crucial employees walked away to a competitor, holding all that sensitive data? No one wants to believe that a long-time member of the team would do it. But the internal systems you have in place should ensure this can’t happen.

Stunting your ability to scale

Scaling an organization requires systems. The longer that you keep an entire business process stored in one person’s computer, the more you’re shortcutting your ability to grow long-term. There’s only so much work that person can handle.

If you want to grow your team, you’ll need efficient systems in place that they can take and run with. If that foundation isn’t in place — and new team members are stuck waiting on one person for login info or answers to their questions — that creates a massive bottleneck. Companies with those kinds of bottlenecks simply don’t scale.

Lack of business continuity

But there’s also the risk of the rest of the team being thrown into chaos if and when that that critical employee leaves. No one holds their role forever — whether they head somewhere else, or they move up to a different internal role.

If the person who holds all the proverbial keys leaves, the rest of the team is left scrambling to decode the organization’s spreadsheets. And these spreadsheets can be incredibly complex. Columns often run all the way to ZZ in Excel — and one incorrect cell can impact the whole thing.

Maybe that risk was okay when someone at your organization had been handling that spreadsheet for 30 years and knew exactly how and where to enter information. But what happens when that person leaves? Suddenly, someone new has to enter the picture — often struggling to figure out the intricacies of the spreadsheet quickly enough to be able to use it correctly.

Because in the midst of a staff transition, there are still procurement decisions that need to be made. Pricing still needs to go out. Data still has to be maintained.

The longer it takes for your team to untangle what’s going on in the spreadsheets that someone left behind, the longer it will take for your organization to get back to its business.

Luckily, the Ag retail industry can now access the technology to make succession planning much cleaner and simpler.

Better succession planning starts with digitization

Turnover is inevitable: it’s how you prepare for it as an organization that can make or break the transition. And a digital platform can aid that process significantly.

Keeping all data and documentation within one central platform ensures that your team will always know where to go for answers. A web-based, digitized hub for your net sheets and other important data also ensures you don’t have to worry about who owns what. Instead, it gives net sheet access to more than one trusted person within the company. This way, there won’t be a vacuum if someone leaves.

When the time for transition inevitably comes, this digital platform can also help push your organization forward. Your team won’t be spending as much time manually entering data or rewinding old spreadsheets to try to figure out the process by which a former employee got certain numbers.

Instead, your team can focus on interpreting the data and getting the most out of it — not just trying to wrangle it.

At Smartwyre, we offer tools that can make succession planning a much more efficient, less frustrating process. Build your digital data foundation now — rather than being forced to figure it out in the middle of a turbulent transition. If you’re interested in learning more about the tools Smartwyre offers for succession planning, contact our team today.