Using Proper Process Documentation To Protect Your Business

All businesses have particular rules and ways of doing things. It's extremely important that these processes are properly documented. Often, especially in smaller companies, only one person will truly understand certain key processes. If that person abruptly leaves the company you will be scrambling to re-learn that process. In the meantime your bottom line is impacted. Customers can be left waiting and possible lost. Contracts can be delayed along with their payment. By simply investing a small amount of time at the outset to document these important processes can save a lot in the long term.

Virtually all commercial software uses some kind of registration key method to thwart piracy. When software is purchased by someone at a company, the registration information should be placed in a documented place. In practice what usually happens is the registration information is simply used and then discarded or it is stored as an archived email that is difficult to retrieve later. When the person leaves the company or has a computer crash new registration information must be obtained. If the software company is still in business there may be a support charge or license fee to pay. All this time and expense could be avoided by simply having rules in place for storing registration information properly.

By the simple act of fully documenting all important company procedures and information companies can not only save time and thus money, they can also limit the stress incurred when things go wrong.