Technology gaps complicate regional business succession
Regional businesses of considerable scale can sit at opposite ends of the technology spectrum, creating very different challenges when their systems pass to a new owner.
Developed from a conversation between Pete Winn, Kane Leersen and Andy David
Regional Australia does not have a single level of digital maturity. Kane has friends running growing intergenerational farms with large balance sheets, major cash flow demands and debt obligations. At the same time, he knows regional SMEs turning over about $100 million a year that still use carbon-copy receipts. Significant scale can sit alongside either sophisticated technology or deeply manual administration.
The farmers Kane describes operate with remarkable technical and financial sophistication. Some pay between $10 million and $20 million for land, then have to earn the commercial return needed to service that investment. They manage stocking rates and other operating ratios through iPads, while tools such as virtual fencing and drone spraying extend what can be done with limited resources. Their businesses combine expensive physical assets with digital systems that have become integral to everyday work.
Kane contrasts today’s handover with his grandfather’s working life, when a shovel and a boundary could convey much of what the next person needed to begin. A modern successor may inherit years of operating knowledge, data and interconnected technology, or a paper-heavy process that has never been digitised. Succession now transfers not only the assets and work of a business, but the particular way that work has been organised.