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Standard Operating Procedures – A Component of The Bigger Picture

January 27, 2022

Since we are a business operations consulting firm, we help our clients solve their problems, including reducing costs, increasing productivity, and improving their customer experience. We help them grow so we can grow with them. Given our expertise, we are often asked to create standard operating procedures (SOPs) documents, which help the employees in the company understand their roles while making their roles more prominent and visible.

Consequently, they know what to accomplish and the ideal time to achieve a particular action because they have been provided with standard operating procedures. Moreover, SOPs leave no stone unturned in ensuring that employees know their place and importance. Therefore, building SOPs plays a vital role in maintaining the quality of a business’s products and services.

Here and now, it depends on the process using which the SOPs have been built for a particular organization – whether they are easily understandable or not. The creation of the traditional SOPs is time-consuming, refers to a poor way of managing documentation, and is usually typewritten by individuals from different fields who should not be writing procedures. Not only that, but traditionally created SOPs are visually boring, open to interpretation, and difficult to maintain. While our team is at it, they are experts at building SOPs using process mapping.

Thus, we create SOPs using process mapping, which creates standard operating procedures in a better and more advanced manner. Essentially, a process map alludes to a planning/management tool that visually portrays the workflow. In other words, a process map demonstrates a series of events producing an outcome. Likewise, it indicates who and what is included in a process, can be exercised in any organization, and can uncover areas where a process must be value-added.

Benefits of Process Mapping for Building SOPs

There are many benefits of process mapping for building SOPs; some of them are listed below:

Visibility in Process

Using the mapping process to build SOPs provides visibility in each step of the process. Since process mapping uses visual means, i.e., flowcharts, it is easily understandable and accessible for all the stakeholders and team members. The most crucial part is understanding of employees, which is ensured using process mapping. Furthermore, it contains flowchart symbols for specific processes, making it more visible, less tedious, and easily accessible for the employees and hence making it easier for them to shape their actions according to the SOPs of the firm.

Time to Develop

Traditional SOPs consume much time to develop: 40+ hours for a business process. However, for a similar detail and comprehension, process maps for SOPs can be built in a couple of hours.

Consistency

Because different people from different backgrounds often compose traditional SOPs, there are no consistent standards readily accepted. But process maps have predictable and consistent standards and an acknowledged format leading to consistent work process documentation.

Alignment to Work Process

Typically, SOPs are created from the bottom-up, are often confusing and confounding, and present a troublesome way of following work processes. In contrast, SOPs built through process mapping are top-down and hierarchical, starting with business systems, processes, tasks, and knowledge. Apart from that, workflow gets designed straightforwardly into the documentation.

Ease of Maintenance

Customarily, SOPs remain typed instructions and are difficult to maintain, requiring a broad measure of time to rework. Alternatively, if SOPs are developed via process mapping, they represent visual diagrams and outlines effectively modified using symbols, icons, and stencils.

Summary

Keeping in mind the facts and points mentioned above, we make sure that we choose the best method for building the base, i.e., process mapping for SOPs. We use our highly skilled and trained team of experts to provide you with the best of our services for ideal processes and give our best to ensure your business effectiveness by streamlining all the steps and tasks through process mapping. In addition, we help the clients reduce costs by cutting out their outgrown technology, phasing out legacy systems, and stacking multiple technology systems into one system. Lastly, we help them grow by fixing their customer experience using process mapping, design thinking, and user experience while ensuring customers are getting what they are asking for.