Business development begins with operational documentation

In order for an organization to be able to develop its business, it must understand its entry-level. Development can be measured and evaluated only with awareness of present actions.

Examples of operational documenting activities are:

• process descriptions,
• operations manuals,
• visualization of different entities
• and activity measurement and reporting.

The documentation of the activity provides answers to these questions:

• How to develop activities and create conditions for business continuity?
• How to make tacit knowledge and expert knowledge available to the entire organization?
• How to make long term decisions?

Why is documentation vital? What benefits does the documentation bring to the organization?

With the help of documentation, the organization ensures that employees have the opportunity to find out what is happening in the organization and what are the organization’s consistent operating methods.

If an organization does not document its activities, implementing, verifying and measuring activities in accordance with the strategy can be challenging.

Without documentation, it is difficult to implement and develop the following entities:

• Continuity management and continuous development,
• problem solving,
• identification and management of risks and opportunities,
• activity measurement,
• quality management,
• making sustainable and long term decisions
• and

External and internal requirements impact the needs of operational documentation

Examples of external requirements are:

• ISO standards,
• laws and regulations,
• changing customer needs,
• changes in the operating environment.

Examples of internal requirements are:

• Strategy and vision,
• targets for growth and
• continuity management.

By documenting operations, an organization is able to identify the details and entities involved in its operations that are relevant to the customer, personnel, and processes or finances.

Intangible capital is a company’s competitive advantage – have you already documented it?

The skills of an organization’s employees are intangible capital, often referred to as tacit knowledge of the company. Information is often unique to a company creating value for its customers. In intangible assets, capital categories can be:

• Structural capital, ie documented information,
• human capital, that is, the tacit knowledge of an organization; the attitude, skills and educational background of the employees,
• relationship capital, ie the organization’s stakeholder relations, internal relations, brand, reputation and cooperation agreements.

Once the life cycle and flow of intangible capital in an organization has been described, the value it generates can be developed.

The competence of the organization is in employees, systems and documentation

Some of the organisation’s expertise is located in the personnel, but it is also outside the personnel, for example in systems and documentation.

Competence is transferred from individuals to the organization when it is documented or otherwise brought to the use of the entire organization.

The competence of an organization can be thought of as consisting of its capabilities

Place-independent work requires operational documentation to succeed

In location-independent work, documentation that guides operations is vital. Good documentation makes the service provided to the customer more uniform. When the defined processes are always repeated in the same way, operations become more efficient and the community can focus on its core business and core competencies.

When everyone has access to guidance and documentation relevant to their role, independent decision-making is facilitated.

In place-independent work, it is not always possible to ask for advice, opinion or guidance separately for each situation.

In order to be self-directed, self-direction requires documentation of activities so that the individual can make decisions in accordance with the organization’s goals and operating methods.

Where to start creating operational documentations?

If your enterprise have a framework or external requirements that guides your activities, it makes sense for you to describe and document your activities in accordance with the requirements of the framework.

Typically, the documentation and description of activities also includes descriptions of the organization’s processes, operating methods, systems, and information flow.

What kind of documentation should every organization have?

• Process descriptions.
• Reporting – identification and handling of anomalies, external and internal audits, etc.
• Manuals – guidelines for how an organization operates.
• Documentation – various documents related to the activities of the organization or teams.
• Metrics – Use measurement results to create a data-driven basis for action decisions. What you measure evolves.
• Documentation related to risk and opportunity management.
• Visualizing information that is difficult to understand in an easy-to-understand format. Such as the enterprise architecture is used to visualize the dependencies and impact relationships between an organization’s functions and systems to support decision-making.