Should You Outsource Business Process Documentation to a Process Analyst, VA, or...Anyone?

When it comes to all the things that happen in your business, there is a lot of value in recording it, writing down how you do what you do. In other words, process documentation. Fancy word for a simple concept of making what you do repeatable by recording it. Here at ProcessDriven, we spend a lot of time making sure everything we do is repeatable. That's largely because I don't want to have to do everything myself. And so by writing these instructions down, we're able to hire new people, we're able to delegate, we're able to even automate based on clear instructions. And when I share these kinds of SOPs with my business owner friends, there tends to be a lot of pushback. There's this thought that writing out clear instructions and SOPs like the ones you see here is something that you need to have an expert help you with because it is just too complicated for the normal mere mortal business owner to actually accomplish. And that question of outsourcing business process documentation is exactly what I talk about in this video. I'm going to be going through the pros and cons of outsourcing your business documentation. And I'm also going to share what we do here at ProcessDriven to keep the process moving very smoothly. Now, before we get into the what and the why of outsourced business process documentation, that's a mouthful. Let me just first say hello. If you haven't been on this channel before, nice to meet you. My name is Laila and I'm the CEO here at ProcessDriven. On this channel, we talk a lot about process documentation, how to do it, what software you need, and how to make your ultimate work life more efficient. If that's something you are interested in, be sure to like and subscribe, you know, obligatory YouTube reminders. And with that, let's get into what is business process documentation. Business process documentation is the practice of recording what you do in a transferable format. So usually what that looks like is taking what you know and putting it in writing, because that's really easy for someone else to consume. Or maybe it's putting it in a video or even having a live discussion where you're transferring your knowledge through verbal communication for someone else to understand what it is. You know, Basically, if you're getting something out of your head and putting it into something else that can be passed down. That is business process documentation. Oftentimes, where most of the energy in documenting will go is in the creation of SOPs, standard operating procedures, just a fancy word for the recipes to how you do things. You'll also hear them called playbooks from time to time. So that's the basics of what process documentation is. It's figuring out what you do, maybe doing a little efficiency audit, putting it in something that allows you to transfer that knowledge, whether it's writing, video, software, whatever, and then often an additional step of working with your people on how to administrate that system or use those processes on a day to day. That blend is what business process documentation usually looks like as a service format. And, and even if you do it by yourself, that's usually the kind of categories you'd be working in. Now, of course, going through this process documentation journey on your own could feel a little overwhelming. So let's go over some of the benefits of outsourcing this documentation to a service provider who can take care of it for you. The first benefit of outsourcing is quality of work. And I do not want to discount this as a huge benefit of outsourcing. If you are in an industry where you are being regulated or you are trying to achieve something like your ISO certification, you need to be meeting certain quality controls. Working with an outsourced process documentation expert is probably going to give you a higher quality and faster result than if you were to handle it all in house. The quality of those SOPs and pieces of documentation created by people for whom that's their living, that's their bread and butter, it's safe to say it's probably going to be better than if you just sit down and start writing out some instructions. If we think of SOPs like recipes, it's like comparing Julia Child's cookbook to what you or I might create. If we wanted to create our own cookbook, I have a feeling Julia's is going to be a little bit better than ours. The second advantage of outsourcing process documentation is the expert perspective. Now this one is not something that you will get in all service engagement. So definitely seek this out and see if you're going to get this before you make any decisions. But what I mean by this is the ability to have an expert look at what you do and how you do it and nitpick to basically say, why are you doing it that way? Oh, that's interesting. You're only sending one. Follow up industry average is 7. Why are you doing that? Basically, having somebody challenge the way that you do your business, the default decisions you have made, can be incredibly transformational. I think many business owners place too much emphasis on the new and the shiny and not enough emphasis on taking what they already do and making it just 1 to 10% better. And this expert perspective can really help with that latter situation of looking at what you already do and just doing it a bit better. Just note that this expert perspective does rely on your service provider understanding your industry or at least understanding your business and having that consultative skill set. So if you're talking about using a dictation software to outsource or a SOP writing va, you, you may not receive this benefit as part of the given service because of the caliber of a person you're working with and honestly the price point of service you are investing in. Generally, that expert perspective is something you're going to see at more of an expert price point. But again, that efficiency boost very well might be worth it. Number three is accountability, and this is a huge one. As someone who works in the process documentation space, I will just acknowledge that process and SOPs, they're not sexy, right? Like no one's waking up in the morning saying, gee golly, I just want one more SOP to be done. It's just, you know, we're just not a very fun group. And despite ProcessDriven trying to change that, I think there's a lot to be said for the accountability that comes with giving somebody a chunk of money and saying, hey, do this and knowing that it's going to get done. Because they're going to hound you to make sure your work gets done and they're going to make sure that their work gets done done. Working with a reputable service provider will give you way more accountability than just saying to yourself, hey, I should get my processes in order. And I think that's the third and not to be overlooked, final process documentation outsourcing benefit. Ooh, just want to jump in with a quick word from today's sponsor, textexpander. Now, if you don't know textexpander, where you been guys? Textexpander is a software that allows you to save snippets of text, like pre written stuff and use a few keystrokes that you get to define in order to load all that text without you having to manually retype it. For example, I created my own snippet here at ProcessDriven to use this little symbol here and then YT and then have that create my YouTube link so that way I don't have to remember or manually type this out every time someone asks for it. Because textexpander is kind of like the go to text expansion option out there. You can use their public groups that their public template libraries really in order to use other people's snippets too. So for example, under general we've got different APA formatting snippets, letters, upside down snippets, brand names and more. So that way you don't have to create these snippets by yourself. You can have your text formatted and saving you time by using somebody else's layout that they've already made available to you in this giant public library. One of my favorite public groups is the social post outlines where I can go in here and have preloaded free formats or scripts to create social media posts without having to create them from scratch. If you're someone who would like to spend more time doing less time typing and support this channel at the same time, use the link below to check out textexpander Back to the Video so this all sounds great, right? But I also want to talk about some of the downsides of outsourcing your process documentation. I'm also going to then say what we do here at ProcessDriven, that's kind of a hybrid that you might want to consider as well. The first risk of outsourcing process documentation is always over servicing. And this is something that you're gonna see across the space. As a business owner, this isn't a new concept, but basically what I'm talking about here is when you hire a service provider to say, document your processes and their packages or offers, or their default service structure includes training with your team, workshops, 50 different versions of SOPs, video tours, and all this other stuff that you as the business owner or leader, do not need or do not find valuable. Because process documentation is a unsexy space. It's not as crowded as those SMMAs out there. Because of that, most people only know of a handful of people in this arena. And so when they're looking to find the service provider to work with them, they're looking at a very small pool. Because they're trying desperately to make something work. They end up settling on a service provider that offers packages that may not perfectly suit what they need as a client avatar. The result is that you end up paying more money or time for services that you don't necessarily value as much as someone else might, assuming you're lucky enough to even find a process documentation service provider. This over servicing piece is a huge problem in all professional services, but particularly in this arena. The second issue with outsourced process documentation, which is one that I am really passionate about, I talked about it more in this video up here and it's ownership. When you hire somebody to create something for your company, it is always going to be something separate than your company. Let's just picture you hire an artist to do a portrait, you hire a Van Gogh, right? You've got this beautiful work of art and then you give it to your team and you say, hey, this work of art isn't finished because process documentation is never finished. What I want you to do, dear team, is to take this Van Gogh and just touch it up with a brush every so often. Make it, you know, a little bit more modern, let it evolve with our company. Can you imagine? Right? There's a bit of an issue there, right? You've got an expert made piece of art that was just plopped onto your team's plate. They have no idea where it came from, why it's there. They weren't involved in the process, most likely, and now you're telling them to update it, keep it moving, keep it looking the way it should. That is a very intimidating ask. I can't imagine taking a brush to a Van Gogh and being like, sure, let me just add a little blue here. That's not the situation we want. And that's what often happens with outsourcing process documentation. Unless you are in an extremely large company with very strong regulations, most process documentation is intended to be developed with you. If you are not updating your processes every month or every quarter, let's just on the high end, then most likely your process documentation is out of date. It no longer matches reality because humans are always innovating and changing and so are the tools that you use as well. So when you outsource that process documentation, you're giving up the opportunity for your team to become co authors and, and you're also preventing them from building the skills to create and add to that documentation over time. Instead of the Van Gogh technique, by doing process documentation in house, you actually are doing more of a paint by numbers where you're painting with your team. And so later on when you ask them, hey, update this painting, they understand what they need to do because they've had that practice and they feel a sense of ownership, co ownership over that creation you've built. If you are struggling at all with people using your documentation or updating it, this second con of outsourcing is one you definitely want to keep an eye on. Now, last but not least, the last con of outsourcing your process documentation is the cost. Now, this is the elephant in the room, but I'm not just talking here. About the consulting cost. For many of you out there, the cost of, you know, finances is usually not the limiting constraint. It's your time that's really the cost. When we do outsource business process process documentation, what ends up happening is often a long series of extraction sessions. This could be video calls, workshops, phone calls, voxer. Whatever you do, somehow your service provider needs to get that information out of your head, which means you need to spend time getting it out of your head. The only difference when we're outsourcing is that you have someone sitting there pulling it instead of you just sitting down and recording it. That has an enormous cost attached to it. Your time is very valuable. And even more than the service cost, your time to sit down or be in those meetings and define everything that you do both for yourself and have your team replicate those same steps is extremely, extremely costly. And because you're trying to communicate to another human being, and Elon's musk brain, technology isn't yet here to allow us to just telepathically communicate, there is going to be more time spent communicating with another person than if you were to just record things in your own perspective, in your own sitting, least in my experience. Because not only do you have to communicate, you have to have them understand what you're saying, which means back and forth via conversations, questions, and just uncertainty, because they don't know your business as well as you do or your team does. So in my view, those are the pros and the cons of outsourcing your business process documentation. I would weigh these based on your specific situation and figure out which path is right for you. I think there are some for whom outsourcing is the absolute only way they're going to get through that kind of systemization journey. But for others, doing it themselves is well worth the investment upfront, so that they make sure they have a system that really develops with them, for them and by them. If you're not sure which of these paths is the right one for you, I also want to suggest a middle path in case that's helpful. Here at ProcessDriven, we actually don't really do either extreme of these. We do the middle. So we actually run a program called Process Driven Membership Link in the description below, where we guide people through documenting their processes. So we give them all the structure of what I used to experience when I was working with clients on outsourcing their business process documentation, but we give them a structured path, accountability, and guidance along the way to be able to make that journey on their own. So it's kind of an in between between do it yourself and done for you. It's the done with you model to make sure that your business processes are getting documented. Our program is definitely not for everybody, but it's a nice middle path and how we give ourselves here at ProcessDriven Accountability around actually getting our processes documented in that done with you model. So all that to say if you are someone who's been saying, oh my gosh, I would love to get my processes in order, but I'm not sure which path to go. I've given you three choices in this video for how to explore some next steps. If you have any questions that have come up for you though from this video, please do drop a comment below. I'd be happy to answer any questions you have about the outsourcing path, the DIY path, or the middle path that we do here. I um, anything we can do to help. And of course, if you want to get more tips just like this, more videos just like this, be sure to like and subscribe and check out the link below for a bonus training where we talk about how we exactly approach process documentation here at ProcessDriven. Link in the description below. Thanks so much for watching guys and until next time, enjoy the process. Also, don't forget to check out textexpander in the description below if you'd like to support this channel and boost your productivity at the same time.