3 Suggestions to Creating a Procedures Manual
Procedures are important in your business; it helps to limit human error. Having a manual for someone to refer to increases efficiency and productivity.
I will give you some ideas on how to streamline your business.
Large businesses operate on processes and procedures to be successful. Take a leaf out of their book and start looking at ways to streamline the processes in your business.
1. Onboarding New Clients
Review your process on how you would generally market to your prospective clients? If you want your business to continue in your absence, detail how you market to these clients.
A checklist may help others to identify what they should do in certain circumstances. It could also help to ensure that each step in the procedure has an action against it.
Through your onboarding customer process, record your best procedure. Do you use a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system? This is an ideal platform to use for collating all the correspondence with your client in one area. It reduces the time to gather all the relevant details, so producing efficiency.
Ensure that your staff knows what the procedure is for uploading information to the CRM. Will they carry this out themselves or provide information to the data entry clerk? Will the clerk have the authority to carry out deletions? Creating a written procedure will ensure there is a system to follow. Clarifying who performs particular actions will create efficiency where everyone knows their roles.
When completing a set of procedures, you may include how you have found your new client or how they have found you. Was it, for instance, part of networking, advertising, website or word of mouth? This information will be invaluable to recognise a trend occurring to converting clients. You could then work on these successful methods to gain new clients.
2. Client Orientation
Once you have your client onboard, others may need more information about them. Write a procedure how you will capture useful information to relay to your staff.
Educate your staff by advising the scope of work for your new client. Who are the key client contacts and segment the responsibilities to the rest of the team.
How do you welcome your clients to your business? Will you send out certain letters, ask them to complete a form, or provide a Welcome Pack? As this may seem obvious to you your staff may not know which documents and in what order to send out. So provide a procedure specifying who will send the documents and where they can find them.
3. Teams
Teams are one of your most important assets in your business and they should be singing off the same 'hymn sheet'.
If using contractors make them part of your team. They will also benefit knowing your client's requirements to work with you with efficiently.
Don't forget to hold initial start up briefings identifying the team members' roles. Discuss the scope of work, who will be the point of contact for your client. See if the procedure can more or less be the same for each client so you don't miss certain procedures.
How will you keep the team updated on client progress? Perhaps consider using a cloud based system to keep everyone informed. There are plenty of online systems but one could be Microsoft Office 365. Their SharePoint/OneDrive programmes are an excellent way for collaborating with teams. The system also provides team/calendars/work flows for various project/client work.
As your business grows these suggestions could form part of your quality procedure.
What would it mean fpr your business to have a Standard Operating Procedure Manual or a CRM system? Let's talk about how we can help you pull together the information to create such a manual.
Contact Kathryn on 07918 667509 or email kathryn@kbadminsolutions.co.uk
Take care
