A guide for documenting business processes

A proper way to document business processes is essential for a company in order to have clear and easy-to-understand operational systems. Without it, understanding and formalizing business value chains are harder, as well as everyday operational work will be slower and more bureaucratic. To gain a better view of the process, we collected some of the best ways to start organizing business documentation.

Here is our list for today:

1. Shift focus from business departments

If you follow the value chain that was defined by Michael Porter, you will see that each and every business department is in deep connection with one another. Therefore, separating documentation by departments can lead to a case of overlapping files, as well as incidents where some of the involved parties do not have proper authentication to access vital files from other departments. So, consider some other methods, if you run into these kinds of problems, and change your view to see if project-based documentation solutions fit your operations more properly.

2. Think in projects instead of time phases

This advice is linked closely to the previous one. Instead of categorizing files according to departments, or financial years, always consider regrouping them into projects and objective oriented piles. Business process documentation best practices tell never to deviate from the objectives and goals of the company, meaning that project-oriented organizing methods should always come first.

3. Process everything

This can help you understand the links and connections in your company between the departments, projects and value chain. Process and list your clients, their main goals in connection with you, your employees that are in connection with them, process all the necessary activities, your company’s inputs and outputs, your reviews and your employees’ roles in the whole system. This might sound like a lot of work, but in the end, you will get a proper map of all the important steps your company takes in each and every business it handles, and this helps in creating the proper documenting systems afterwards where only people that work with a certain project will have the access they need.

4. Indexing is the key

Develop and determine a common language when it comes to indexing files. This will make search processes much quicker people can access the information they need at a shorter time. Also, make sure every newcomer learns and understands the company’s method for indexing, as this common language can help settling disputes in documentation processes in the long run.

5. Use a documentation tool to help

Finally, one of the most important practices of document processes is the use of proper tools. They will strongly help documentation work, and assist in giving the right kind of accesses to company workers.

Docubank can help you with this, as this system can be accessed from everywhere safely, using end-to-end encryption. Also, each company employee can have different access rights to different kinds of documents, and with the help of its indexing methods, files are easily searchable and are always at hand if needed.

To sum up our pieces of advice for today:

Start by getting an overview of the main activities and products developed by the company, and then list the company’s products and services. This will help a lot in understanding your company’s the value chain and you will soon develop a project-oriented view that can help a lot when it comes to organizing documentation in the long run.

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