You Have a 2027 Growth Plan. Do You Have an Operations Plan?
More producers. More submissions. More business. If those are part of your 2027 growth plan, there’s another question to answer: Will your back office be ready?
For distributors and BGAs, growth planning needs to account for more than the business you want to attract. It also needs to address the work required to support it, from getting agents contracted to moving cases forward and handling policy service requests.
The question is capacity: What work will increase, who will handle it, and when does that support need to be in place?
Before you finalize your growth plan, put an operations plan alongside it.
Translate growth targets into work
“Grow the business” is a direction. It isn’t a staffing or workflow plan.
Make your targets specific enough to assess their operational demands. If you expect more producers, what will that mean for contracting? If you expect more submissions, who will manage the additional casework? If you’re launching an initiative, which employees will need to step away from their daily responsibilities?
Start with three questions:
- What additional work will our growth plans create?
- Where can our current team absorb that work, and where can’t it?
- How far ahead do we need to arrange support?
Then examine the areas most likely to need attention.
New Business and Case Management: Who will keep cases moving?
Your new business plan should include the work behind each submission: reviewing documentation, following up on outstanding requirements, tracking status, and keeping producers informed.
Assess more than the number of cases your team can take in. Consider the attention required to move those cases through the process.
Ask your team:
- Can we support projected submissions alongside our existing pending cases?
- Where does follow-up depend on one person’s availability?
- What would need to change if volume exceeded our forecast?
Identify the gap before additional business arrives…not after your team is trying to catch up.
Agent Contracting: Are you ready to support the producers you recruit?
If recruiting is part of your growth strategy, contracting belongs in your operations plan.
Map the work required to support new agents, including paperwork review, submission, status tracking, and issue resolution. Then establish who will own each step.
Ask your team:
- Have we aligned contracting capacity with our recruiting goals?
- Who will follow up on incomplete paperwork and outstanding items?
- How will we cover a concentrated wave of new-agent activity?
The recruiting target and the contracting plan should tell the same story.
Policy Services: What happens after the new business is placed?
An operations plan also needs to account for your existing book of business.
As you pursue new production, determine how policy service requests will be handled—and whether the people responsible for them will also be taking on additional new business work.
Ask your team:
- What service workload do we expect in 2027?
- Are our turnaround goals realistic given available capacity?
- Who will maintain coverage when other priorities compete for attention?
Be explicit about how you’ll support existing business while pursuing new growth.
Special Projects: Have you counted the same people twice?
A technology rollout, process change, or book-of-business cleanup may have a project owner and a deadline. But does it have dedicated capacity?
Check whether your project plan assumes that employees can take on new responsibilities without reducing their daily workload.
Ask your team:
- Which initiatives will require back-office participation?
- How much time will those responsibilities take?
- Who will cover daily operations while that work gets done?
“Everyone will pitch in” is not a resource plan. Assign the work—and account for what those assignments displace.
Complete Back Office: Do you need task support or broader coverage?
Some plans call for help in one area. Others call for a broader look at how the back office will support the business.
Before deciding what to add, distinguish between a specific workload gap and a need for ongoing support across functions.
Ask your team:
- Do we need help with a defined queue, project, or recurring workload?
- Are several functions competing for the same limited resources?
- Which responsibilities should stay with our internal team, and which could be supported externally?
That distinction can help frame a more useful conversation than simply asking whether you need another person.
Make the operations decisions before the growth arrives
For each part of your plan, document the expected workload, available capacity, accountable owner, and date additional support needs to be ready.
If those details are still unresolved, they belong on the planning agenda now, not on a list to revisit once business picks up.
Employee Pooling supports distributors and BGAs with New Business/Case Management, Agent Contracting, Policy Services, Special Projects, and Complete Back Office services.
If you plan to grow in 2027, now is the time to identify what your back office will need to support that growth. Schedule a consultation with us to help you solve the flexibility and efficiency you’ll need in the next year
