Making documents which outline the hundreds of processes companies have seems like an unnecessary waste of time. Everyone knows what to do, don’t they? Often, processes go undocumented, or whatever documentation exists is horribly out of date. Keeping everything up to date is also challenging, as change is another constant in business. There’s a score of reasons why you may be behind on your process documentation, and not care about it too much. But here’s why you should care.

Optimizing a process means knowing it first

The biggest reason processes need change, is because they’re not as effective as they could be. When deciding to make a change, there are several stakeholders involved, and not everyone can tell you the exact outline of the process off the top of their heads. You can’t change a process if you don’t know what it currently entails, which is how you remain stuck with inefficient ways to perform tasks. Having a complete document for a certain process will give you everything you need when it’s time to re-evaluate. The need to revisit those documents to keep them up to date also encourages discussion: questioning things is how you improve them and avoid crippling complacency.

Don’t waste time with discussions

Incidents or doubts can happen, and when they do you need to get to the bottom. Going over the process with the everyone involved, document in hand can give you immediate clues as to what might have gone wrong. A reference guide for employees and managers avoids many risks and time-consuming arguments. Do two employees disagree on how to perform a certain step? No worries, the documentation is right there to provide clarification!

Easily transfer knowledge

New employees receive all the information they need from the person training them, but that doesn’t mean they always know the processes the first time they learn about them. Providing them with checklists and detailed documentation means they can look up certain steps themselves, refresh their memories so that they don’t have to go and ask questions to colleagues whose time is better spent on other tasks. Clear documentation encourages faster learning and will help avoid mistakes. Knowledge is easily transferable, which also makes outsourcing a lot easier. And when experienced employees leave the company, you don’t risk losing their valuable knowledge if everything is well-documented.

How to document

Don’t waste time with poor quality process documentation, as that serves no one. Pay attention to the following key tips:

• Include all key information (but leave out the unnecessary details).
• Explain the purpose of the task.
• Make sure everyone involved in process documentation understands the process fully.

Use technology to reduce overhead

Process documentation is a roadmap for your organization — it helps identify the current state of a process, which in turn helps you know how you can improve it. This is an essential element for efficient and effective production and quality assurance process. Still, making the right documentation available for all the employees is a big challenge for a company. People should be able to find all the necessary documentation instantly and unambiguously.

A software solution can be your answer to controlling this process and dramatically reduce overhead and increase efficiency.  TenForce allows you to easily implement your own document management process, or to integrate with your existing documents repository. Learn more.