We use plain words on purpose. If a term needs a long explanation, it’s the wrong term. These are the ones we use with owners, and what each one means.
- Operational succession
- Moving what one person knows and does into a business’s people, systems and records, then proving with time away that the move worked. Formally: the transfer of the capability to run a business out of one person’s head and into its systems, its people and its documents — and the documented proof that the transfer held in that person’s absence.
- Paper succession
- Everything that decides who will own a business and what it’s worth: tax planning, pricing the business, shareholder agreements, wills, insurance and the sale itself. Necessary, but it doesn’t make the business able to run without its owner.
- The Handover Gap
- The distance between how a business runs today and how it would need to run without its owner. Corefield measures it, then closes it.
- The six handover areas
- The six places a business can depend on its owner: the work, the customers, the numbers, the decisions, the outside relationships and the licences.
- Corefield Handover Score
- A score from 0 to 100 showing how well a business runs without its owner, measured on evidence across the six handover areas. Given at the start of the work and again, certified, at the end.
- The four score ranges
- Runs on you (0 to 34), Leans on you (35 to 59), Nearly there (60 to 79) and Runs without you (80 to 100).
- The weakest area
- The handover area with the lowest score. It matters more than the average, because it’s what anyone taking over looks at first.
- Handover Date
- The earliest realistic date a business could run without its owner, worked out backwards from the slowest items. Set in the Corefield Handover Plan.
- Three-Week Test
- The owner is completely out of reach for three weeks while the business runs as normal, and every day is logged. The proof that a handover worked.
- Handover Certificate
- The document issued with a certified Corefield Handover Score after a passed Three-Week Test. It records what was measured and observed, and when.
- Corefield Handover Check
- A free check of how well a business runs without its owner: twelve questions, about ten minutes. It gives a Check score, and the report is emailed to the owner, never shown on screen.
- Check score
- The 0 to 100 result of the free Handover Check, based on the owner’s own answers. It shows where to look. The Handover Score, based on evidence, shows what to fix.
- Corefield Handover Plan
- A five-to-six-week piece of work that sets the owner’s Handover Date and the route to it.
- Corefield Handover Program
- Corefield’s main engagement: nine to eighteen months of working with the owner’s people until the business runs without the owner, ending with the Three-Week Test.
- Corefield Buyer Handover Score
- For buyers: before buying a business, what leaves when the owner leaves, with a cost and a likely date for each item.
- Corefield First-Year Handover
- For new owners: twelve to eighteen months of moving what the seller knows into the buyer’s people, proven with a Three-Week Test on the seller.
- Corefield Second Look
- For accountants, brokers and lenders: a first look, at no cost, at a client file that has stalled because the business runs through its owner.
- Owner dependency
- How much a business relies on its owner. Corefield measures it with the Handover Score.