Illustrative scenario: a Winnipeg family firm digitizing before succession
A second-generation Winnipeg firm faces a transfer problem before a technology problem: 35 years of client history sits in filing cabinets and in one person's memory. Manitoba's 0% provincial small-business rate on the first $500,000 of active business income keeps many of those clients incorporated, and incorporated clients carry decades of records.
The firm in this scenario
An archetype, not a client. The figures below describe the shape of the practice being modelled — they are inputs to the scenario, never results.
| Attribute | Detail |
|---|---|
| Archetype | Second-generation family firm preparing for succession |
| Location | Winnipeg, Manitoba |
| Firm size | Five staff |
| Client profile | Long-tenured owner-managed clients, many held for decades |
- Client CRM
- Google Workspace integration
- Engagement letters
- Audit log
The problem
The retiring founder knows which client changed year-ends in 2009 and why. None of that is written down, and the successor cannot run what she cannot see.
Paper compounds it. A file that exists only in a cabinet is invisible to everyone who is not standing in front of the cabinet, which during a transition is everyone.
The workflow, step by step
- 1
Rebuild the client records first
Contacts, fiscal year-ends, officers and program accounts are entered before any document is scanned. The structural facts matter more than the paper.
Client CRM
- 2
Send documents to the firm's own Drive
The Google Workspace integration keeps documents in the firm's storage, connected to the client record rather than duplicated into it.
Per-tenant Google Workspace integration
- 3
Go digital-first on new work only
New engagements are digital from day one; the backlog is scanned when a legacy file becomes active again, not in one heroic purge.
Task Master projects
- 4
E-sign the letters
Engagement letters move off the printer, which removes the last routine reason for paper to enter the office.
Engagement letters
- 5
Keep an append-only trail
Actions on a client record are logged, so the successor can reconstruct what happened without asking the person who left.
Audit log
What this changes
Firms digitizing ahead of succession typically find the transfer stops depending on one person's memory. The system holds what the founder used to hold, which is the difference between a handover and an excavation.
About this scenario
Related reading
Where this applies
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