In my quest to start running my business like a business, one of the steps to define your processes and document them. I originally thought this would be easy. But after a couple of hours, I quickly realized that the volume of processes my small business has is much larger than I originally guessed. Now, the exercise was supposed to start at the high level. I just starting documenting all of the things I do on a weekly, monthly or yearly basis. Even capturing the steps at a high level, quickly caught me off guard.
So, why is it so important to document your steps? There are actually quite a few reasons. The first and most important is that if things are documented, everyone is following the same process. This becomes the gold standard for your business because with documented processes, you can quickly find what step was missed or done incorrectly whenever an issue comes up. Then to make it better, you can analyze your steps to find the best way to avoid the issue from coming up again. The next major thing you get is a repeatable process. This is exactly what someone else is looking for when you would like to sell your business. If you can hand over processes that are documented, and followed, that means someone else might be willing to pay you big for you business.
Last, but certainly not least, is that you get to start taking yourself out of the business. Now maybe you love being the go-to person, having all the answers, and being able to get things done fast. But wouldn’t you rather let someone else be that person, and give yourself time to handle the big issues your company is facing? I know I would. So regardless of your size, document your processes. You can’t lose by doing this.
thanks for reading,
As always, thanks for reading and don't forget to check out our SAP Service Management Products at my other company JaveLLin Solutions,Mike