These words are some people’s worst nightmares and others’ favourite! It probably depends on whether you’re a creative type of a type-A personality like me. Personally, I thrive on the clarity that systems, processes, and SOPs provide but I’ve had clients tell me they think they’re pointless.
What are they though? In essence, they’re about organisation, efficiency, and effectiveness. They’re the backbone that holds businesses up and keeps everything running and in place.
Whether you have a big or a small business it’s important to get these settled in your business. Once they are settled make sure you keep them updated every time something changes.
But what’s the difference between Systems, Processes, and SOPs? Well…
Systems are the big overarching operations such as managing clients, sales and marketing, finance, etc.
Processes are the individual workflows within each of those systems. Such as onboarding and offboarding clients or creating marketing content.
Then the SOPs are the specific steps of each of the processes. These are an instruction manual on how to do each of these tasks and should include every resource, link, form, etc.
Now, I’ve said they’re important but I’ve not told you why.
The benefits to having these set in your business are:
Firstly you’ll have a guide to be able to hand over to anyone coming to work with you so you will have an effective and efficient handover of tasks.
And second, you’ll ensure that every time you do these tasks they’re done to the highest level with no mistakes or anything left out as you’re following an exact guide.
Getting these in place will take some time, especially if you’re a more established business. I would recommend starting one systems and identifying all the processes and then writing out each of the SOPs.
Google documents are the best option for this as they’re easily sharable with everyone in the business.
Do you have your systems, processes, and SOPs in place?
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