Are Your P&Ps GOOD or Bad? Here’s the Definitive Test

Many companies have heated internal debates on this question: “Are our written policies and procedures (P&Ps) good or bad? “ How do you know?

Some people measure quality based on whether P&Ps exist and are physically accessible to staff, whether they are grammatically correct, or how they look. Criticisms range from “Our P&Ps are too long” “We don’t have enough pictures” “We need different fonts.” “Playscript format is best” “No, a flowchart is the answer.” “We don’t need details.” “We need much more detail.” and on and on.

When it comes judging to the quality of your policy and procedures manuals, it’s all a matter of opinion, right? Wrong! In this post, we show you how to tell OBJECTIVELY if your corporate policies and procedures are “good” or not.

The definitive test is how you answer this questions: Are we getting the PERFORMANCE results we want?

The term “Performance results” is a little broad, so we’ve broken it down into 7 specific areas relating to operations and training. If you answer YES to just one question, your standard operating procedures are either missing in action or need fixing and you are not getting the return you should for the time, money, and effort you’re spending on writing policies and procedures.

Diagnosis Checklist

1. Training Difficulties
   Does it take too long to get new employees productive? Do supervisors spend too much time answering the same questions? Is training inconsistent? (How are you training your people?)


2. Inefficiencies, Slowness
   Does it take too long to: Perform routine tasks? Open new locations? Take a business concept and “franchise” it? Implement major changes? Roll-out new systems? Launch new products?


3. Errors, Waste (Quality Control)
   Are people making too many errors? Do you have difficulty controlling the quality of service, products without a lot of labor and oversight.


4. Knowledge Retention
   Are there areas where you would be at significant risk or project failure if your STAR performer or consultant left today? Are best practices in peoples’ heads? Are your “experts” overwhelmed by people constantly asking them for help?


5. Inconsistency / One-offs
   Are work processes inconsistent? Is there a significant variance in how one person performs a job vs. another person? Do people often re-invent the wheel?


6. Fire-fighting
   Are managers spending too much time fighting fires, dealing with mundane issues, instead of mentoring employees and focusing on innovation?


7. Regulatory Compliance / Liability Risk
   Are there areas of exposure? High risks? Are Board Members signing off on policies they aren’t reading and don’t fully understand?

Anyone of these issues by itself is serious. The financial impact could be costing you tens of thousands of dollars (or could possibly even you out of business).

A “good” P&P system is the most efficient and least costly way to alleviate these problems, so if you still have them, whatever you’re doing (or not doing) isn’t working. Here’s the bottom line.

If people are USING your corporate Policy and Procedure manuals and achieving the expected results with minimal supervision, then you get an A+. If you have operations, quality, and training costs under control and down to a science, then whatever you are doing is working. If you have a systematic and sustainable way to transfer the best practices of your star performers then BRAVO.

That’s the true test of whether P&Ps are GOOD or not. Nothing else really matters.

Through our Operations Mapping approach and Zavanta software, COMPROSE helps our clients design their policy and procedure systems that meet this test. 

Source: https://www.comprose.com/are-your-pps-good-or-bad-heres-the-definitive-test/

How to Implement an Effective Knowledge Management Program?

A successful knowledge management system in an organization helps employees utilize the knowledge to increase productivity, improve work quality, and ensure consistency in deliverables. Many companies are capitalizing on knowledge management software for data mining, document management, community forums, and blogging. However, they don’t consider defining their objectives and the ways to manage their knowledge assets for achieving long-term goals.

To develop an effective knowledge management program, an organization must consider certain essential elements like people, technology, structure, processes, and culture. An organization must determine the ways to boost the efficiency of staff, to create best practices for recognizing, regulating and dispersing accurate knowledge, to select tools for automating knowledge management, to transform business structure for promoting awareness, and to establish a knowledge-based culture.

Here is a step-by-step process of building an effective knowledge management system in your company.

1. Identifying Knowledge Management Needs
   The first step is to identify what type of knowledge you need to document for developing and executing a successful business strategy. You can establish both long-term and short-term program objectives to facilitate the business drivers.


2. Determine the Knowledge Assets
   The management must identify and plan to get maximum returns out of competitors, government agencies, technology, suppliers, processes, products and other knowledge assets of their organization.


3. Analyze the Type of Content
   You may conduct cross-functional research to gather qualitative insights on problems that customers are facing. This will help you decide what type of content needs to be included in the knowledge management program.


4. Define the Process and Structure
   Knowing how knowledge is gathered, categorized, managed, and disseminated will help organizations utilize the full potential of their knowledge management system. A high-end knowledge management process will help in an effective management of your company’s knowledge assets.


5. Implementing a Knowledge Management Program
   The program can be established through knowledge assets and by making situations that need the emergence of a learning organization. Converting a raw information into knowledge can be highly useful to achieve business goals. Moreover, emergent conditions make individuals’ knowledge available for business purpose.


6. Storage, Utilization & Distribution of Knowledge 
   A well-defined knowledge management system includes knowledge repositories to preserve and acquire knowledge, to utilize knowledge for making business decisions, and a collective knowledge access to all the members of the organization.


7. Measuring Knowledge Management System
   How will you check the effectiveness of investment in Knowledge Management Software and the significance of knowledge management program? You need to measure the impact of a program on organizational performance and forge techniques for improving the system. 

5 Ways to Finally Get Your Procedure Manuals Done

We’re amazed at the number of people who really want to develop better standard operating procedures for their organization, who clearly understand the benefits of standardized procedures and who even have management mandates and funded projects to develop or update their policies and procedure manuals. But–despite all that–never manage to actually do anything about it. They have good intentions. They hold meetings. They discuss requirements. Sometimes, they even open up the word processor. But that’s as far as they get. Momentum grinds to a halt. Years can go by with no usable results.

If this sounds familiar, maybe you need some better strategies to get back on track.

Here is a list of 5 Simple Strategies that work to break the logjam and finally get your procedure manuals to project off the drawing board and across the finish line.

1. Start Small
   Don’t try to do everything at once–you’ll get overwhelmed. Instead, pick just one key task or operating process. Develop just that content and then publish it and start getting feedback. You’ll get a quick win. Then go on to the next area, and the next, piece by piece in bite-size chunks.
   
   
2. Divide and Conquer
   Many hands make light work. To cover a lot of ground rapidly, involve a large pool of subject experts to contribute first drafts. Then edit their work. Each person has only a small part to do, but the combined effort gives fast results.
   
   
3. Set Goals
   There’s nothing like a deadline to provoke action. If your CEO demands that the Operations Manual be done by October, you’ll figure out a way to get it done. So, if you’re stalled because there is no external deadline, set one and stick to it.
   
   
4. Learn from the Experts
   Sometimes projects bog down because the task is new and your team lacks experience and confidence. Consulting a third-party expert can often jumpstart your momentum. Consider a staff training or enrolling your team in some educational webinars.
   
   
5. Get the Right Tools
   If your project is stalled, the problem might be that you lack the right system. Traditional word processors and general-purpose software have proven cumbersome, ineffective and costly for creating and updating effective corporate Policy and Procedure manuals. Investigate if there are better tools for your needs. COMPROSE invented Zavanta software to provide a faster, better way to get high-quality results.

Source: https://www.comprose.com/5-ways-to-finally-get-your-procedure-manuals-done/

4 Critical Features of Knowledge Management System

Over the past decade, the internet has witnessed a substantial growth by empowering itself with various social innovations. These innovations encourage people to collaborate in novel ways, enable them to deal with problems, and empower them to be more competitive. This eases our access to advanced research and improves our ability to create a compelling and meaningful content. As a result, organizations tend to believe the fact that the best knowledge transfer and retention systems are both online and collaborative. 

Knowledge management is a process of gathering, obtaining, creating, and using knowledge by the organizations to gain a competitive edge for growth and prosperity in a globalized economy. However, choosing an effective knowledge management system is both a critical and difficult task. With a countless knowledge management software and systems persisting in the market, each one has its unique features. 

Nevertheless, we will unveil some key features that ideal knowledge management software must possess. 

1. Easy Accessibility 
   One of the major problems faced by companies in the past was that their knowledge management systems have simple features and were optimized for limited web browsers which causes a challenging working environment. Your knowledge management software must be well-optimized for users working on different platforms like mobile phones, desktop computers, tablets, etc.
   
   
2. Integration with Other Applications
   The knowledge management system must have an interface with other applications including Enterprise Resource Management (ERM), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and Enterprise Content Management (ECM). This will allow businesses to integrate the required information without looking across multiple software applications.
   
   
3. Personalized Approach 
   A tailored knowledge system in an organization enables the staff to customize and configure user-interface based on their individual preferences. With a personalized feature in knowledge management software, the information can be accessed on any hardware platform such as desktop, smartphone, laptop, or tablet, as well as on both the private and public networks.
   
   
4. Facilitate Interactive Communication 
   A smooth communication among employees is a must-have feature of the knowledge management system that supports both internal and external communication. Features like discussion forums, workgroups, instant messaging, blogs, chat rooms as well as hosting and recording online business meetings are highly effective in sharing information, growing their networks and connecting with the knowledge experts. 

These team-based features accelerate project-team activities including document management, decision-making, process tracking, and meeting schedules.

Whether you want a functional level or an enterprise level Knowledge Management Software for your business, evaluate these knowledge management features to leverage the maximum benefits of each feature differently. 

SOPs for Process Improvement? Absolutely!

Recently an Executive coach we’ve been working with commented about how our Operations Mapping method – linking processes to detailed standard operating procedures, work instructions, and policies — is a perfect fit for improving organizational performance, process improvement and re-engineering applications. We agree. Our clients do too.

Yet, some people resist this idea.
The resistance may be linked to the misconception that standardized procedures are useless paperwork or at best are expensive door stops (if I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that… ) (“Bad” SOPs do make good doorstops—especially if they are in white binders!) Thinking about SOPs only in terms of “documenting” and record keeping instead of looking at SOP development as an exercise in examining and understanding how your business works is old-fashioned thinking.

It may also be semantics. We recently worked with a client to develop a “process map” for automating one of their core processes. At the beginning, the client was adamant about not wanting to get into SOPs or procedural “details.” They thought they only needed to look at the “Big Picture.” However, the high-level process map ended up being very complex because the client kept adding more and more detail as they thought through the processes they needed to make automation decisions.

Surprisingly, it was the discussions about the detailed procedures the client started out not wanting to consider that revealed the fact that some managers had no clue what was really going on! And that was the biggest problem they were facing.

Standard operating procedures (SOPs) are often overlooked as a key element of Process improvement (process re-engineering). Process re-engineering typically needs to go beyond what’s on a high-level process map. And it's not always just about process automation. “People-based” operations can be improved through re-engineering too.

Mapping out your “as is” processes and SOPs is the first step in any process improvement initiative because it makes your “people operations” visible. You can’t improve what you can’t see.

To learn more about how you can build accountability into your organization and streamline operations, see operations mapping on the COMPROSE site.
Source: https://www.comprose.com/sops-for-process-improvement-absolutely/

How to Train Your Staff Using SOP Software?

Do you have an efficient staff who clearly know what is expected of them and how to perform a specific task? If not, it is important to provide them a training using SOP software. Staff education is a critical factor for standardizing and smooth functioning of a business process. Though it can be a little time consuming but the end result makes it a worthwhile task.

The purpose of Standard Operating Procedure (SOPs) is to document and streamline smooth communication and operational process of your business, from macro tasks to daily ongoing duties. Many organizations develop SOP culture to reduce your time and cost invested in a given task and to enhance quality and profits. Therefore, providing a practical training to your staff is crucial for your business growth.

These smart tips will help you educate your staff using SOP software for the smooth functioning of your business.

• Preparing Training Documents and Modules
  Whether you want to hire new employees or want to train the current ones, having these training documents prepared or accessed via SOP software really helps. This will guide the internal staff to understand and fulfill the standardized expectations of your business. These documents enable employees to work independently on their tasks without seeking any supervision from management.
  
  
  Additionally, having a written training material which can be accessed by staff for seeking information eliminates the chances of any miscommunication and confusion. Circulate a single document with all the internal employees where all the changes are made to avoid any chaos among staff and management.
  
  
• Create Checklists of Tasks for Employees
  Prepare checklists using SOP software for staff and ask them to complete on a daily basis. The checklist may describe the procedure or steps employees need to follow for a specific task or may define the tasks they need to complete as a daily target. When staff members clearly understand what is expected from them, this will promote smooth training sessions and workflow.
  
  
  Moreover, it is unrealistic to always keep a check on your staff for their tasks. This is where checklists help to improve the efficiency of your business. SOP software checklists not only encourage better communication but also help management prioritize and delegate important tasks.

These useful tips clearly indicate that Standard Operating Procedure Software allows management and staff members to be on the same page, let everyone do their job productively, and prevent any mistakes or miscommunication among them. In short, having a standard operating procedure is extremely vital for a business to run smoothly.

How to Train Your Staff Using SOP Software?

Do you have an efficient staff who clearly know what is expected of them and how to perform a specific task? If not, it is important to provide them a training using SOP software. Staff education is a critical factor for standardizing and smooth functioning of a business process. Though it can be a little time consuming but the end result makes it a worthwhile task.

The purpose of Standard Operating Procedure (SOPs) is to document and streamline smooth communication and operational process of your business, from macro tasks to daily ongoing duties. Many organizations develop SOP culture to reduce your time and cost invested in a given task and to enhance quality and profits. Therefore, providing a practical training to your staff is crucial for your business growth. 

These smart tips will help you educate your staff using SOP software for the smooth functioning of your business.

• Preparing Training Documents and Modules
  Whether you want to hire new employees or want to train the current ones, having these training documents prepared or accessed via SOP software really helps. This will guide the internal staff to understand and fulfill the standardized expectations of your business. These documents enable employees to work independently on their tasks without seeking any supervision from management.
  
  Additionally, having a written training material which can be accessed by staff for seeking information eliminates the chances of any miscommunication and confusion. Circulate a single document with all the internal employees where all the changes are made to avoid any chaos among staff and management.


• Create Checklists of Tasks for Employees
  Prepare checklists using SOP software for staff and ask them to complete on a daily basis. The checklist may describe the procedure or steps employees need to follow for a specific task or may define the tasks they need to complete as a daily target. When staff members clearly understand what is expected from them, this will promote smooth training sessions and workflow.
  
  Moreover, it is unrealistic to always keep a check on your staff for their tasks. This is where checklists help to improve the efficiency of your business. SOP software checklists not only encourage better communication but also help management prioritize and delegate important tasks.

These useful tips clearly indicate that Standard Operating Procedure Software allows management and staff members to be on the same page, let everyone do their job productively, and prevent any mistakes or miscommunication among them. In short, having a standard operating procedure is extremely vital for a business to run smoothly.