Ten Solar Pitfalls to Avoid

This is part of a series of articles about “lessons learned” as a CFO/COO of a national solar developer. The “lessons learned” are built into  the Industry Specific Solar ERP software my company recently launched. www.devholderp.com.

1. Not going all in on Land Acquisition – The most valuable asset a Solar developer has is LAND! Most solar developers believe their primary role is to develop the land…it’s not, nothing happens without the land.
2. Non-Standardization of Documents – Documents with different naming conventions by different employees might work if your company is only developing a couple of sites. A company with tens or hundreds of sites requires a strict naming convention used by all.
3. Documents Everywhere - If you finance a site or sell a site, documentation is critical! The Easter Egg hunt of trying to find documents in Google Drives, Drop Boxes or even on an employee's C Drive needs to end…get your documents standardized and organized.
4. An Ad Hoc Communication System – Communicating with each other and with Outside Partners via Email, Texts or Slack is very chaotic and almost impossible to get right. Organized communication protocols through the company Enterprise System allows all stakeholders to see the same thing at the same time.
5. Siloed Departments – The larger the company, the more specialized the departments will be. Without a solid Enterprise System to tie them together, they will become siloed. Instead of collaborating smoothly, they will end up blaming each other for missed deadlines. Keep your departments connected and communicating.
6. Over-Hiring – Without a well-developed Enterprise System and fully organized processes, your company will need to over hire. Leaving each of your employees and departments to invent their own processes will lead  to siloed processes and cause over-hiring to “Fill the Gaps” between silos.
7. Undocumented Processes - Developing SOPs is boring, but necessary!  Unless your procedures and processes are developed and documented, every employee and department will develop their own. Collaborative work or onboarding new employees will be close to impossible.
8. Keeping the legal Team out of the Loop – Legal teams are great problem solvers, but process is rarely a strong suit! Have the project managers guide the legal team and keep them on track. We lost four months on four projects because neither the project manager or the legal team were monitoring the progress of the title requirements!
9. Long Term Planning in a Vacuum – Long term planning in a company developing projects that take 2 years to fully develop and then stick around for 30 to 40 years is necessary for long term survival. To have your financial team working on it in a vacuum, (which they tend to do), will result in decision making that will lead you in the wrong direction.
10. Short Term Planning in a Vacuum – For developers this is even more critical than Long Term Planning. In a siloed company, pulling together all the necessary data is a Herculean effort every week. It is very difficult and time consuming, often leading to shortages of cash and disappointing your funding sources.