IES Blog

Why Your Processes Must Be Well Documented

Posted on June 30th, 2016 Read time: 2 minutes

As an entrepreneur, the demands on your time are endless. With limited hours in the day, it’s easy to focus on activities other than documenting your business processes. However, if one of your key employees leaves your organization and knowledge and responsibilities of the worker’s role are undocumented, you won’t have a roadmap for training the next employee. Learn what needs documentation and how to complete the process. 

  • What Needs Documentation

You need to document things such as where your customer contacts reside and what the last conversation was that your sales team had with them. Put on paper what your desired layout is for all marketing pieces and brand messaging. Write down what phone scripts or techniques you use for converting leads into sales; what you should be upselling to clients; and your policy for handling customer complaints. Document what your handoff procedure from sales to operations is. Put on paper who has access to bank accounts and accounting systems. Write down how you should be collecting unpaid AR. Document what rules should be followed when building your technology code. Determine other areas needing to be written down and proceed accordingly.

  • Benefits of Documentation

Once you begin documenting your processes, you can easily maintain and update your files. The information will serve as a helpful tool for training new workers. You’ll appear more professional and help them better understand the processes for completing their work. The faster a new employee is on-boarded, the faster you’ll see valuable results being produced for your business.

  • Storage of Documentation

Store your processes in a central location on your internal hard drives so they’re accessible to all applicable employees. You may want to segment your procedures by key department, such as sales or operations, and by level of role within your company. For example, vice presidents may have more access to the files than managers. For security reasons, you don’t want all your employees having access to all of your sensitive information, so make sure only the appropriate workers have access.

  • Importance of Documentation

Ensure your workers know they need to help document and regularly update processes for their own roles within your organization. The processes are fluid and change along with your customers’ and company’s needs. Ensure colleagues learn and follow the most current procedures so everyone works cohesively and improves overall production.

Because your processes help your business run smoothly, ensure your employees document, regularly update, and follow them. For additional assistance keeping your operations moving forward, reach out to the helpful staff at Innovative Employee Solutions today!

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