FAQ

There’s no getting around the fact that yours and your employees’ time will be needed to accurately document your business processes and procedures. Our aim is to minimise your contact time with us and gather as much information as we can to create a manual that truly reflects how your business runs.

As with anything, the more invested you are in the process, the more access you provide us to your staff and systems, the more accurate your procedure manual will be.

If you already have a procedure manual or any processes already written down, these will be a great starting point.

Once completed, we will provide you with a draft manual to review and provide changes, with your final completed manual delivered as soon as possible.

In a nutshell, no. The way your business runs is unique to you and there are no rights or wrongs. We can, and will ask questions on why you do things a specific way. This helps us understand how that process fits into the big picture.

When talking through a procedure, you could find that the ‘how’ may need to change, be tweaked or be streamlined to be more time-efficient. You might even see a new way to achieve the same outcome, and these can be documented as they arise.

Similarly, you may find that in 6 months time, your process has been refined and needs a refresh, or a task may now sit within a different department. This is a natural evolution of your business and any changes can be captured during a review.

Allowing us to understand your business at a process level is taken very seriously at Process Revolution. We take confidentiality and privacy very seriously and we would not disclose how others operate to you, just we wouldn’t disclose how your business operates to another organisation.

Yes, we can!  Talking through how your business works often means that you are looking at it from a holistic viewpoint.  Taking this step back can help you see where you may have opportunity to streamline the processes within the organisation to make it more efficient.  These changes may be identified during consultation or through the life of the project and small tweaks and amendments can be incorporated at draft stage.  If there are larger or more system wide changes, the suggested process would be to document the business as it is and then come back and review how the new procedures will impact the general business, staff training etc.

Making your business attractive to a buyer when selling is paramount. An up-to-date and detailed process and procedure manual will make a potential buyer comfortable, knowing they can walk in and run the business exactly as it had been run. This will help ease them into their new business and ensure your existing customers will get the same level of service they have come to know and expect from your organisation.

We will work with you to document how your business runs and help take some of those tasks off your hands, at an already busy and stressful time.

You will find that processes will intertwine across the different segments of your business, including sales, administration, service etc. While we recommend that you do document your entire organisation and the processes that are integral to its success, we understand that time and cost can sometimes be a barrier. We can work with your time and budget to document business segments or specific processes as identified by you.

My question back to you is… what is the cost in NOT having a process and procedure manual?

Cost can be measured in a number of ways:

• your time as a business owner/ manager or staff member to write one, when you could be working on the business and not in it
• time lost when a new staff member needs to be trained as a result of yoursef or a staff member having to leave unexpectedly. That new staff member takes critical resources at a time when you can least afford it
• Lost income – if you, as a business owner, need to take unexpected leave (or even a family holiday) – will someone be able to step in and run your business for you?
• Succession planning

Definitely! A thorough procedure manual is a great tool for training new staff.  Inducting a new team member can take a lot of time, energy and resources not only from yourself but other staff.  Having a document that outlines each step can save time in questions answered and allow segments of time when your new team member can work undirected and ask questions as and where necessary.

No, we will never ask for your passwords to any of your systems. Having said that, to be able to accurately write procedures, it can be helpful to have images of the software that you use for visual references throughout the documentation. Some software programs can allow different levels of access e.g. read only, and this access can be helpful and provide a comprehensive document but is not necessary.

At the end of the project, you will receive a hard copy and soft copy of your brand new procedure manual.  These are yours to amend, copy and share as you like. We recommend that you download the soft copy onto your system as soon as you receive it and share it with appropriate staff members to use. If you require more than one hard copy, these can be provided for an additional cost.

Every business is different and the time it takes to write your process and procedure manual will be dependent on your specific needs and the level of access we have to staff members, key subject matter experts etc.

The initial consultation process should be covered within an initial hour-long meeting, where we would identify what needs to be written and determine the scope of the project. From there, you will receive a scope of works documentation with costings to sign off on.

Ideally, we would meet with you once a week (or more often if needed) to talk through the scope of the project to keep it moving. Allowing approximately 1 hour for each meeting, potentially more depending on what needs to be covered, is a good starting point. Following these project meetings, the draft will be written and handed back to you for review and amendments, before the final manual is delivered.