Introduction
Nearly every daily task employees complete has associated documentation. Whether filing a ticket or answering a customer’s email, workers typically refer to some business guideline in a digital document or shared knowledge base. That’s why document process management is so crucial. It outlines a strategy to create and maintain these documents so they’re useful, updated and relevant.
What’s Document Process Management?
Document process management is a methodology for creating and processing documentation employees and leaders need to do their work. These documents might include standard operating procedures (SOPs), onboarding plans and report templates.
Every business has their own approach to document process management, but there are some best practices and proven strategies for optimizing a documentation process flow to maximize clarity and efficiency.
For example, onboarding new hires requires several documents, such as training manuals, SOPs and step-by-step instructions. A sound documentation process would have you look for opportunities to streamline these documents and add visual aids like diagrams and flowcharts that could improve a new employee’s onboarding experience.
The Importance of Document Process Management
Refining your approach to creating business process documents and workflows helps you deliver clearer, more effective resources. When you optimize your process documentation, employees can work at peak efficiency and avoid common pitfalls that might slow productivity.
Here are the ways a proper process documentation strategy supports your organization.
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Efficient Workflows
Managing work process documents involves rigorous testing to ensure documentation accurately outlines the best methods to approach a workflow or task. It also entails establishing a system for gathering and responding to feedback from employees who use your documentation to complete their work. That way, as software changes and improvement opportunities emerge, you can update documents so they always provide relevant direction for the most efficient way to approach a workflow.
Less Redundancy
A highly organized document library avoids redundant materials that might confuse employees looking for guidance. For every process, you’ll combine or delete outdated or duplicate instructions to ensure there’s only one set for that purpose. Without this organizational system, employees might find unfinished drafts or forgotten duplicates and treat them as a source of truth.
Enhanced Collaboration
When veteran employees and new hires alike follow consistent step-by-step instructions, they can better anticipate each other’s needs. This means they’ll spend less time explaining those needs when it comes time to collaborate on a task.
For example, an SOP for creating marketing ads might require marketers to meet with the legal team to approve messaging. If the legal team has access to the instructions the marketers are following, everyone can quickly understand where in the process they are and how to provide feedback efficiently.
Improved Compliance
Your documents provide a valuable source of truth that prescribes the policies and procedures employees must follow. With a sound documentation process, you can communicate changes directly to team members simply by updating the associated resources. As long as you remind people to check these documents regularly, you can avoid writing lengthy emails or holding time-consuming meetings to articulate updates.
Types of Documents
Organizations rely on a wide variety of materials to outline things like business process documentation and compliance regulations. Here are the most common types of documents you’ll likely encounter.
Operations Documents
Operations documents, like this SOP template, comprise the bulk of your library. There are many examples of process documents, but they all do essentially the same thing: outline how employees should approach and complete the tasks they perform daily. These guides will likely require the most maintenance, as they’ll need refreshing with every operational or software change.
Marketing Documents
Marketing documents outline the strategies, platforms and tactics marketing teams will use to advertise a company’s products. This marketing communication plan template is an excellent example. It includes headings for all the inputs you’ll typically need in a marketing document, such as a SWOT analysis, KPIs and a timeline.
Policy Documents
Policy documents outline company-specific guidance for how a team ought to operate. Typically, these are infrequently changed as they require input from numerous stakeholders before anyone can make modifications. Everyone in an organization should have access to crucial documents like attendance policies so employees are aware of the company’s expectations and rules.
Contracts and Agreements
Contracts and agreements describe the business processes, expectations and goals between clients or departments so everyone is aligned. This operational level agreement template, for instance, uses an example of how different departments in a hospital must work together to ensure timely and accurate patient care. It provides space for listing stakeholders, outlining business processes and setting efficiency expectations, all crucial elements of a contract or agreement.
Environment Documents
Environment documents describe all the infrastructure, hardware and software teams use to complete their work. They provide crucial information like login credentials and licenses for easy employee onboarding.
This environment documentation template is an excellent starting point, since it includes all the headings a typical team might need, such as app licensing, server settings and tools.
How To Get Started With Document Process Management
Here’s a five-step process for creating documentation and establishing an effective management system.
1. Determine the Scope
First, determine how broad your goals are. Depending on your role, you might need to manage documents for a small team or the entire company. List out the types of documents you need.
Pro tip: Use a template like this process improvement plan template and fill it out with high-level information.
2. Gather Documents
Create a centralized repository like a shared Google Drive folder or an online knowledge base, and import all relevant documents. Then, group items into intuitive categories, like SOPs, policies and contracts. List every document in your process improvement plan to create an organized catalog.
Scribe makes creating a centralized knowledge base easier by automating the documentation process, allowing users to quickly capture and share detailed visual instructions without extensive technical knowledge.
Pro tip: Carefully configure access settings so users are less likely to accidentally delete or alter documents.
3. Create a Style Guide
Read through the documents to identify consistent word choices, formatting and styles that will shape your guidelines for future materials. Create a comprehensive style guide and place it at the top of your documentation repository so it’s available to everyone.
Pro tip: For helpful examples, check out popular style guides from industry leaders, such as Google’s developer documentation and Apple’s style guide.
4. Establish a Documentation Process
Devise a process for adding new documents to the repository or updating existing resources. Create clear, step-by-step instructions for anyone who will be creating new materials. Where possible, use automation tools like Scribe to generate instructions with helpful screenshots.
Pro tips: Use a process mapping tool like Lucidchart to add visual representations, like flowcharts and diagrams, of the documentation process.
5. Audit Your Documents
Now that you have a style guide and a process for updating documents, review all your materials and align them with the new standards. Break down this audit into milestones and list them in your process improvement plan. For example, you could aim to review all the policy documents by the end of the quarter and all procedure documents by the end of the year.
Pro tip: Distribute this work evenly among employees so everyone can gain experience and can provide input on improving the audit process.
Streamline Document Process Management With Scribe
When you optimize your documentation process, you boost productivity and deliver the best resources to help employees do their work. Streamlining those materials and their maintenance lets you significantly improve workflows, onboarding and compliance.
The best way to enhance your documentation process is by offloading repetitive, time-consuming tasks to an automation tool like Scribe. Simply turn on our browser extension or desktop app and execute a task as usual. Our AI-powered tool will generate a descriptive guide with annotated screenshots that you can seamlessly embed into your documentation, and Scribe Pages makes it easy to organize your documents into a centralized repository.
Check out our AI Document Generator tool for free today.
