The scale and diversity of operations of any organization require all its processes, tasks, and knowledge documents to be streamlined and aligned across verticals and departments. An ill-structured, inconsistent, and inaccurate process document causes unnecessary confusion among employees, creating delays in the workflow and reducing efficiency.

What is Process Documentation

Information within an organization is dynamic; any vertical might require it at any time. It is imperative to ensure that everyone within the organization is on the same page. This warrants city and completeness across documents so that the staff knows the task without external guidance. An expanding business will have a growing amount of information distributed among the employees.

To achieve this, companies must undertake what is known as process documentation. Process documentation is an ongoing activity that simplifies complicated operations by making the process accountable, transparent, and tangible. It is a step-by-step document explaining the exact structure of how tasks need to be performed.

Why do We Need Process Documentation

Process documentation explains to the user how to carry out a process that’s part of your organization’s work. It’s not merely an explanatory document but a holistic guide explaining a process that caters to employees across domains and skill sets.

Eliminating Uncertainty in Operations

Process documentation helps businesses remove ambiguity from their work. Understanding that any stakeholder might mentally store all the FAQs related to a process is essential, but they can still be lucidly explained during a crunch situation.

Efficient process documentation eliminates the need to assume certain aspects of a process. Many junior-level employees might be averse to quizzing their seniors about the following step in the application, thereby nullifying the purpose of information sharing.

This is where a well-structured process document steps in. All the information can be accessed from anywhere by anyone at any time. Also, if the person possessing all the process information leaves the organization, there is no risk of the data being lost forever.

Ensuring Organizational Conformity

Certain work ethics and practices in every company bind employees. These ethics must reflect in the manner in which an operator completes tasks and achieves the desired goals. The procedures and policies within an organization and the operational tasks must be unanimously followed. A process document enlists the various steps that an employee must follow to minimize errors and save time.

The stricter application of process documentation is during real-time operations. A supervisor might verbally explain the entire process to an operator perfectly. Still, there are high chances of the latter messing up this information as it might often be a lot to remember, process, and implement simultaneously. A centralized document containing the entire workflow and problem-solving tips will help reduce mistakes and improve efficiency.

Maintaining Information Consistency

Consistency is a critical factor in a business that helps maintain harmony in internal operations and projects homogeneity in the eyes of customers and external stakeholders, thereby creating positive brand value. Every organization wants things belonging to the same group to appear and feel the same. If this does not happen, a natural lack of cohesion becomes inevitable, leading to disoriented implementations and erratic output.

An interesting fact here is that the lack of consistency does not arise due to inherent human errors but owing to our natural intent to modify and mold processes as per our observation or comprehension. An individual might be inclined to complete a particular task in a specific manner, while his colleague might have other thoughts.

In the future, both might explain the process in their versions to others in the value chain. This might cause information distortion in the long run and create unfathomable challenges for businesses.

An approved, centralized, and standardized document spelling out the various aspects of a process and how it must be adhered to will go a long way in sticking to the basics. Employees will no longer have to apply their judgment in a process and can instead focus on other essential tasks.

Removing Redundancy

There is often a tendency among individuals to elaborate a process and jargonize it to make it appear bejeweled while being able to highlight their contributions in the process. Such enthusiasm is highly commendable but might lead to redundancy in an otherwise simple process.

Stoic process documentation directs all employees to follow a unified structure. It sticks to the basics, answers all the essential questions, and allows fellow members to be looped in as required. Being dynamic, organizations must revisit a process document periodically and carry out modifications to accommodate the latest developments and process changes.

Process Documentation: The Smart Approach

The key idea behind having a workable process documentation in place is to identify and implement a team’s collective intelligence in every process and make it profitable. Merely hastening a process or mitigating errors is not the aim of such a document. It helps businesses envision an environment where everyone works together, achieves collective goals, adapts to changes quicker, and grows professionally.

About the Author:
Yogesh Sharma is the founder of Mindivik, which is a technical content development company based out of Noida, India. Yogesh Sharma can be reached on LinkedIn and Facebook.