Out of the business vocabulary comes a term, widely used by management – “business process documentation”. It sounds so good and professional that many use it just for impressing others or simply, for indulging themselves in the illusion that they really know what they are talking about. And this is a trap. Not doing it, as well as doing it for the sake of being done is a mistake.
There are a few objectives in implementing this procedure and depending on the objective selected the procedure may be shaped accordingly. In an organization which aims towards a good communication, everyone has to know what this objective is. The Board of Directors may be the one requiring the business process documentation in order to closer review the effectiveness of the processes within the organization, to verify if they still conduct to the fulfillment of the goals. Second, they might be needed especially for training the staff or third, they might be evaluated in order to boast sales, to improve sales performance.
The document will be written and a set of necessary tools will be decided, all depending on the objective chosen. If, for example, the major objective is to spot the most important processes in the value chain so that they could be examined by the management, the way to do it may be representing all these processes in a diagram, using a simple text editor, and adding the degree of detail needed.
If, on the contrary, the main objective is to increase the organization’s performance level by identifying and eliminating inconsistencies and inefficiencies, the proper way of doing that may be getting the input from the very persons involved in these processes, the employees, rather than from the organization’s management team. This input may be comprised of any relevant information such as: the duties, tasks, responsibilities of each person involved in that process, the specific objectives and the degree they are met. Then, each task will be attentively evaluated.
A well conducted business process documentation may be the right trigger to improve sales performance and thus, the reason why the organization is profitable (or not). Yet, the condition is for it to be conducted based on a specific objective, being a well-thought out act not just something done for the sake of doing it. If the objective is clear and the necessary tools are available, the resulting document may be utilized thoroughly within the organization, for its best interest.