What’s one tool you would recommend for documenting internal business processes, and why is it the best solution?
These answers are provided by Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most successful young entrepreneurs. YEC members represent nearly every industry, generate billions of dollars in revenue each year and have created tens of thousands of jobs. Learn more at yec.co.
1. Asana
We rely on Asana to document workflow and processes such as sales funnels, onboarding a new employee and training. Tracking progress and deadlines from a visually appealing bird’s-eye view helps us streamline our process when vetting and onboarding new photographers to our system. Being able to visually see a structured plan go from start to finish can help any company hit their goals.
– Christopher Seshadri, PhotoSesh
2. DocuSign
We normally use several tools to document our business processes, but DocuSign is one of our favorite tools. It helps us organize, update, templatize and sign our contracts. Another benefit of DocuSign is that it integrates with the other tools that we utilize, which makes things easier.
3. Google Suite
We use Google Docs, Sheets and Slides. Everything is very intuitive (partially because it’s very similar to the Microsoft Office tools we are used to). Since everything is instantly saved and can be shared or edited live, it’s very useful and cuts out a lot of friction. Files are automatically saved to Drive, come with timestamps and, while backups are highly recommended, one can revert changes too.
– Joey Bertschler, uniworld.io
4. Harvest
Currently, my team is testing out Harvest to see how much time is spent on various internal processes during the day. Harvest gives you the option of using a timer or manually tracking your time and organizing it. I can recommend it for organizing hours. Before, we used Podio for the same purpose, as well as to contact clients with a reliable system.
5. Microsoft 365
For smaller businesses it is best to just keep it simple. Microsoft 365 or Google Docs both allow you to share your internal documents with your team, give different people different levels of access and have version histories. If you want to add a few more features, then OneNote from Microsoft is really good, as well.
– Alastair Sanderson, LFA Machines DFW LLC
6. Trello
We’ve been using Trello for quite a long time now for both internal and external project management. Trello allows you to document your business processes by creating boards for project executions. It’s a free project management tool and a powerhouse with multiple integrations with other apps. In a nutshell, it’s a well-organized, simple but detailed and reliable tool for a business.
– Kelly Richardson, Infobrandz
7. A Company Intranet
A company intranet is a great tool for not only maintaining documentation, but also for ensuring those processes and policies are transparent and readily available to employees at any time. Allowing employees to access the information when they need it, rather than wait for an answer, saves everyone time. It is also a great tool for gathering feedback and new ideas on how to improve current processes.
– Josh Awad, Flywheel Commerce
8. An Employee Hub
I think that building a hub or a gated website for employees is a good way to document internal processes. You can create pages and organize them using tags and categories, which will allow people to find content easily. This can also serve as an effective onboarding platform for new employees. You can build a new website or a simple subdomain with restricted access.
9. Video Content Library
We’ve begun creating a video content library for training. People are consuming video content at 100 times the rate of written content. Video allows the “trainer” to embrace the company mission, and only one “perfect” training session is needed to share to every employee over and over again. This also allows new employees to hear and see the passion and tone of the company’s best!
