Hi,I agree with Semitek s notes. It all depends on which processes you need to map. I found a few articles for free advise about how to document your operational processes but none really beat consulting time.Look at your relevant processes and buy a good book which details all their possible flows. Since no company is alike, I guess you would have to make up your own flow as you go along...Good luck!DD
Thanks DD but reading books would have taken me too long. Business Links mentioned a company called itscontrol and their manageityourself tool. I bought it out of desperation and was pleasantly surprised by its effectiveness. It helped me reach all company departments and manage process change. Report Abuse
Yes and no.Documenting procedures does take a little skill and if you have never done it before it can be daunting.As for hiring a consultant, well, follow these guidelines.First, documenting a procedure should not cost that much, make sure that the consultant is not charging you too much per hour. Anything over $50 per hour would be too much.Ask yourself, are you just documenting the procedure or are you also looking to streamline the procedure. This makes a big difference because a consult that has to document and streamline will charge you a lot more.What kind of documenting do you need? For example, are you documenting to create a company handbook for training new employees or just documenting to present to managers and to analyze what each employee is doing during their day. This makes a difference and the latter can be do more quickly and will not need all of the necessary formatting and structure that a company handbook would need. In short, it will reduce the amount of time needed to create the document.If you want to try to do it yourself you can. See if you can find a consultant that will be willing to give you guidance at an hourly rate instead of just doing it for you. This can greatly reduce the billable hours from a consultant as you can do the grunt work yourself.Finally, if you do hire a consultant make sure they clearly understand what you need and what you plan to do with the documented procedure. Also, make sure they understand your business! This helps when it comes to documenting your procedure, stay away from a consultant that thinks there is a cookie cutter way of documenting. Each company runs a little different, depending on what they do for business.***Additional Answer***Thanks for the additional details. It looks like your company is looking for some kind of CRM software such as Great Plaines or Crystal Reports. A lot of companies look for this type of software to upgrade their current software program do handle accounting, HR, sales and inventory.You have a good idea. Thinking about and documenting your processes to then hopefully fit it into a software program might work. For starters though there is no real software program that we know of that will document these types of procedures. We are recommending Microsoft Visio as a program that will help you create organizational charts for your company. The program will also help you create a process flow inside your departments. This will then help you understand what the potential software program you are shopping for can and can not do for you.Keep in mind that documenting such as you are is a good start but that also the software company may be able to custom tailor the software to fit your needs.If you don t want to spend the money on a consultant you can do this on your own. Just take is one step at a time. We always train clients that perform this duty to follow the process from start to finish and write it down as you go. For example, for departments that process orders we follow the paper trail of the order from start to finish and document it every step of the way. When done you will have a good start to having a procedure and an idea of what you are looking for when shopping for that new software program.
