Are you spending your time doing “strategic work” — the kind that adds meaning and value to your long-term goals? Successful small business owners, or SMBs, do. “But, how does a small business owner ever find the time to do strategic work?”, you ask. “That can take up as much as 80% of my day.” I’ll tell you how — by developing systems of policies, procedures, and forms for doing the tactical, daily work.

Unsuccessful small business owners struggle to prioritize their time. They’re continually fighting fires or doing the mundane tasks — going to the post office, running around their disorganized workspace, answering the phone — and getting nothing done.

Does That Sound Familiar?

If your business is based on a system of policies, procedures, and forms, it will run on its own without you having to tend to all the details all of the time. This may seem hard to believe, but it works — Fortune 500 companies have been doing this for decades. “McDonald’s” now uses a clearly defined system of policies and procedures to unify marketing, operations, and customer service worldwide — they started in 1940 with a single restaurant, in California.

“You deserve a break today.”
(McDonald’s campaign slogan, 1971)

McDonald’s is just one example of how a small business like yours can — and must — create a system of policies and procedures to ensure its success. Start by imagining that you’re creating a model for your own series of franchise locations. Every day when you go to work, take one process at a time and systematize it with the policies, procedures, and forms your employees need to do the job you want them to do.

Why Start from Scratch?

That’s where Bizmanualz MS-Word procedure templates come in. Our renowned series of policies, procedures, and forms provides hundreds of templates and guides for your accounting, finance, human resources, information technology, and other departments. Every Bizmanualz policy and procedure manual comes with a set of sample procedures, a “How To” guide to help you get started, and a sample manual for the department manager to use as a guide.

Focus Is the Key

Today, start working on your business instead of in your business. Focus on strategic work and delegate the tactical work with Bizmanualz procedure templates — you’ll realize your goals, get out of the office more, and build the successful business you set out to build.

Free Procedure Samples

Why not check out the Bizmanualz line of free procedure samples and see for yourself how you can use these powerful procedure templates in your business?

Policies and procedures provide the framework and direction for addressing many common business problems your organization might face.  Let’s look at the top ten business problems solved by Policies and Procedures.

1. Accounts Receivable procedures to reduce accounts receivable (A/R) aging and ensure even cash flow.  Every company needs Strategies for Writing Accounts Receivable Procedures.  Your accounts receivable process is the heart of your cash cycle.  Salespeople can find plenty of customers but without cash-paying customers, you can’t pay your bills, which is part of your Strategies for Writing Accounts Payable Procedures.

2. Sales procedures to standardize sales pipeline management and ensure a consistent sales pipeline.  Sales procedures allow you to take control of the sales and marketing cycle.  Developing measurements, sales assignments, and target markets are all important elements of your sales process.

3. Disaster Recovery procedures will assist in an orderly and timely response to emergencies your company may face, as well as control the inevitable chaos that occurs.  Every company needs to effectively respond to disasters or emergencies in a timely manner; if not, they could be out of business.  In recent months, we’ve had ample opportunity to learn the lessons of the Gulf oil disaster, such as “having a disaster recovery plan before the need arises”.

4. Human Resources procedures ensure non-discriminatory practices; specifically, well-defined employee hiring and termination practices will help you avoid costly litigation.  Human resources procedures address diverse topics such as recruiting, hiring, training, retention, termination, and — most importantly –complying with local, state, Federal, and even international employment laws.

5. Quality procedures (nonconformance, corrective action, and auditing) improve product and process quality.  The ISO 9001 quality standard addresses quality control, quality assurance, and quality management practices.  Learning how to meet quality standards with ISO 9001 will help your organization reduce costly rework and overtime, thereby improving quality, satisfying customers, and contributing to your competitive advantages.

6. Customer communications procedures, like collecting data from customer feedback and complaint handling for process improvement.  ”Poor customer communication” is the root cause of much customer dissatisfaction.  If you know what your target customer wants, your business has all the information it needs to satisfy the customer. Implementing communication procedures will help you act on your customers’ wants, improving sales.

7. Shipping and receiving procedures are needed to track materials purchased and sold.  Most of shipping and receiving revolves around inventory or assets, which requires processes for handling, inventory management, asset acquisition, and asset disposition.  Specific supplier requirements — and the policies and procedures that flow from them — ensure that you receive what you want, when you want it, in the quantity you want, and with quality built in.

8. Management procedures can improve poor meetings, poor internal communications, and poor reporting.  Management is really about communication — that’s why improving internal communication benefits the whole company.  One of the best ways to improve communications is to develop, document, implement, and monitor a procedure for communications.

Also, it’s important that management shows its commitment to the highest standards, whether those standards have to do with internal processes or processes that directly involve your customers.

9. You also need compliance procedures to ensure your company conforms to the requirements of various regulations, statutes, and standards.  This is where policies and procedures can help your organization.  Compliance is one of the primary problems solved with policies and procedures.

10. Accounting procedures ensure that you fulfill your fiduciary responsibility to your shareholders.  Accounting is a process to track transactions of items, cash, and information.  Accounting procedures help to ensure consistency, reliability, and accuracy of those transactions, which (in turn) helps to build trust in your financial statements.  What Are the Top Ten Accounting Policies and Procedures?

Prewritten policies and procedures from Bizmanualz help solve many of these common business problems.  The Top Ten Core Business Policies and Procedures you will need can be found in the Bizmanualz CEO Company Policies Procedures Manuals bundle.

Top 10 Business Problems Solved by Policies and Procedures

1. Accounts Receivable procedures, to reduce A/R aging and ensure even cash flow.
2. Sales procedures, to standardize sales pipeline management to ensure consistent sales.
3. Disaster Recovery procedures, to control the response to chaos in an emergency.
4. Human Resources procedures, to ensure non-discriminatory employee hiring and termination.
5. Quality procedures, to improve quality.
6. Customer communications procedures, to collect data from feedback and complaint handling for process improvement.
7. Shipping and receiving procedures, to track materials purchased and sold.
8. Management procedures to improve poor meetings, communications, and reporting.
9. Compliance procedures to conform to regulations, standards, and laws.
10. Accounting procedures, to fulfill your fiduciary responsibility to your shareholders.

What do you think? How quickly could your most urgent problems be solved by implementing effective policies and procedures?

You have decided you need policies and procedures, but which business policies and procedures do you need?  Assess the business impact of each of your core business processes to generating revenue or introducing risk and then rank the results.  Core business processes that greatly impact your revenue or risk are where you want to start.

The Bizmanualz CEO Company Policies Procedures Manuals are designed with your core business processes in mind.  The nine business procedures manuals in the series provide your entire company with examples of the primary procedures used in writing your company procedure manuals.  How do the nine procedure manuals address the core business processes?

1. Customer Strategy & Relationships (Marketing) is a good place to start.  Most businesses talk about the customer being the most important part of any business.  Well, if your customer is so critical, have you mapped out a clear customer strategy and customer relationship process?  Do you have customer strategy procedures for developing awareness and education of your business in the marketplace?  The Bizmanualz Sales and Marketing Policies and Procedures Manual provides sample policies and procedures to help you set marketing strategy, marketing tactics, and marketing planning to cover the first part of your marketing sales funnel — awareness and education.

2. Employee Development & Satisfaction is essential to your business because your employees are the ones that talk to and develop your customers.  The Bizmanualz Human Resources Procedures Manual provides example procedures for hiring, administration (e.g., personnel records, compliance), compensation, and — the most important part – developing your employees.

The HR manual also includes a sample Employee Handbook and an HR Manager’s manual to provide a complete discussion of human resources.  Keeping employees and facilities safe is the focus of the Bizmanualz Security Procedures Manual, which includes coverage of guard force management, employee conduct, emergency operations, protection, and safety.

3. Quality, Process Improvement & Change Management is driven by competition, your desire to excel at what you do and make your customers happy.  The Bizmanualz ISO 9001 QMS Procedures Manual provides a sample quality manual, the six quality procedures required by ISO 9001, and additional supporting procedures to provide a foundation for your process improvement and change management initiatives.

4. Financial Analysis, Reporting, & Capital Management is critical to fast growth companies.  Cash is the lifeblood of your company and a fast growth company consumes cash quickly.  The Bizmanualz Financial Procedures Manual has example procedures for financial administration, raising capital, managing capital, financial statement reporting, and the internal controls necessary in a fast growth company.  A controllers manual is included to provide the direction and organization for controlling your company cash.

5. Management Responsibility addresses all of your core business processes and is integral to every area of your company.  Every manual in the “CEO Company Policies Procedures Manuals” covers the management of that departmental area.  Each manual provides a departmental (functional) manager’s manual that describes the departmental organization structure, major responsibilities, departmental guidelines, ethics, policies, and – of course – the primary business processes for that department.  The Bizmanualz Business Procedures Manual provides a simple, fast, and easy way to provide immediate oversight for all of your operations.

6. Customer Acquisition (Sales) is about engaging the customer and closing the sale.  The Bizmanualz Sales and Marketing Procedure Manual contains procedures for the entire sales funnel, sales process, sales administration and sales management common to organizations that have to oversee a sales force.  The Bizmanualz Accounting Procedures Manual contains procedures for controlling cash and the revenue cycle, which is a parallel and supporting activity to the sales process.

7. Product Development must obtain requirements from sales and develop products that satisfy the customer.  Therefore, product development procedures are found in both the Bizmanualz Sales and Marketing Procedure Manual and the Bizmanualz ISO 9001 QMS Procedures Manual, which contains procedures for customer requirements, as well as the design and development of new products.

8. Product/Service Delivery The Bizmanualz Accounting Procedures Manual contains procedures for shipping, receiving, and inventory control.  But since delivery is part of ISO and quality, the Bizmanualz ISO 9001 QMS Procedures Manual also provides coverage of this critical customer facing area.

9. Accounting Management is about accounting transaction management, as opposed to finance which is focused more on raising, managing, and using cash effectively.  The Bizmanualz Accounting Procedures Manual focus is on controlling operating cash receipts, cash disbursements, inventory and assets, the revenue cycle, and general accounting administration.

10. Technology Management is about all of the technology in your company.  The Bizmanualz Computer, Network and IT Procedures Manual contains procedures for IT administration, IT asset management, IT training, technical support, IT security, IT disaster recovery, and software development.  More in-depth continuity planning coverage is provided with the Bizmanualz Disaster Recovery Procedures Manual.

Business Process Policies Procedures

The Bizmanualz CEO Company Policies Procedures Manuals collection is the best overall deal — you save 45% when you buy the set, compared with purchasing all nine manuals individually.  The series covers all of the core business processes in one simple bundle.  It includes manuals for:

• Financial Policies and Procedures
• Accounting Policies and Procedures
• Computer & IT Policies and Procedures
• Human Resources Policies and Procedures
• Sales & Marketing Policies and Procedures
• ISO 9001 Quality Policies and Procedures
• Security & Disaster Policies and Procedures
• Business Policies and Procedures Sampler

Every critical area of your company is now covered with the Bizmanualz CEO Company Policies Procedures Manuals set.  Coverage is now easily at hand for Accounting, Administration, Customer Service, Disaster Management, Engineering, Environmental Management, Finance & Credit, Information Technology, Manufacturing, Personnel, Sales & Marketing, Security Operations, Shipping, Purchasing, Inventory, and ISO 9001 conformance.