Documenting your Systems and Processes, it's either something you have on the to do list, maybe it's been sitting there for a while but mapping out your business' Systems and Processes can greatly benefit the overall efficiency and buy-in from staff within.

It does not have to be a huge and complicated task. Quite often, a discussion stared with your team about how it is assumed a certain business process or workflow is carried out starts to immediately identify discrepancies, differences in opinions and a lack of uniformity.

Take these discussions one step further. Find a process or workflow that the team affected agrees on, map it out. It may be that this process needed improvement, either way, your business now has hte ability to monitor if there have been any efficiency gains as a result and then transfer the same logic to other areas. If it did not improve the process, you now have a map to work out which steps in the process were causing issues and you can work together to implement corrections.

Ultimately you need a solid understanding of what works and what needs improvement. It is at this point in time that you can decide to 'visually represent your procedures'.

Process maps as a guide book to existing and new staff, they are not simply boxes and connecting lines, they act as a tool kit that, when used correctly, can have the following effects:

• Improved efficiencies

• Elimination of redundant tasks

• Improved turnaround time

• Increased simplicity and clarity for your team

• Reduction in dependency on other team members

• Additional buy-in from your team ensuring a smoother change management process