One of the questions I am asked by pretty much everyone who inquires about the Business Success Programme, is “What do you do for me?”. One of the most important parts is to have procedures documented.
Why is it Important to Have Procedures Documented?
There are many reasons why it is important to have procedures documented:
- if you, as a business owner, want to (or need to) take time off, you don’t have to be there to explain how things are done;
- it makes training new staff much easier;
- there is a benchmark against which “best practice” can be judged;
- a potential buyer of the business wants to be able to see that they could walk in and start trading right away, without you needing to be there – this greatly improves the company value;
- having consistency in the way things are done by different people in the company gives a much more professional impression;
- franchising becomes a more viable option if you can effectively duplicate the processes you use elsewhere.
A Real-Life Example of What Happens When You DON’T Have Procedures Documented
Imagine you are a customer walking into, say, an IT business. You are interested in getting your website ranking on page 1 of Google, a process known as SEO. You ask “What will you do for me?”, and the salesperson rattles off a list from his head of the features of the SEO package, some of which you understand and some you don’t.
You decide to take them up on the offer, a technical person contacts you for some details, and you ask “What’s the next step?”. They tell you, but it doesn’t seem to align with what the salesman told you. Ah well, maybe it is something technical. A couple of weeks later, another technical person contacts you for more information. This doesn’t seem to align with what either of the first two people told you. Again, everything you are being told is straight out of someone’s head. You lose faith in the business being able to do what it promised, and cancel the contract.
But what if you had been given a list by the salesman of exactly what is included, along with plain-English explanations? Then the first tech followed a standard, documented procedure, that matched what the salesman had told you? And the second tech was able to say “We have completed steps 1 through 3, and now we are up to step 4, which is…”.
Wouldn’t that have given you MUCH more faith that this was a professional company, with well-documented procedures?
A Business Coach Can Help You With This (yes, even in IT)
As part of the Business Success Programme, your procedures will be documented using a format known as a Standard Operating Procedure. This documentation then becomes a powerful business tool, and a valuable part of your company’s assets.
In fact, we already have a full set of IT procedures documented, which can be tweaked to suit your business (if you happen to be in that field).
If you want to know more about the Business Success Programme, get in touch. We look forward to working with you on getting your procedures documented.