For Immediate Release
Contact: Chris Anderson
Bizmanualz, Inc.
(314) 918-0990 (tel)
(314) 918-0980 (fax)
chris@bizmanualz.com
Bizmanualz Inc. Now Offers Bizmanualz Technical Writing Review Service
St. Louis, MO - November 7, 2004 - Bizmanualz Inc. now offers Bizmanualz Technical Writing Review Service - the fast, economical and easy way to upgrade your documentation to "best" practice" standards without hassles or commitments.
Small- and medium-sized business owners do their best to make sure their organization is operating as effectively as possible. But if their policies and procedures are incomplete, outdated, or inconsistent, then they are not driving the performance improvement they should. When employees try to use incomplete or undefined procedures, waste and costly errors soon follow.
Bizmanualz has found that procedure mistakes add up quickly, as seen in the following case study.
Without knowing it, employees at a local auto parts company were having a costly problem determining when to accept customer credit. The company actually had a detailed credit application procedure, including an exhaustive error correction routine, but the procedure had one fatal flaw: it was not properly indexed.
It is shown that indexing improves procedures' usability. Without a way to readily locate and reference the applicable procedure in the operations manual, employees could not find it and were simply not using it at all - leading to an inconsistent process and wildly varying output. Potentially valuable customers were regularly turned away by some staff members, while others accepted bad credit risks because they were unsure of which ones to reject.
A small omission like this can add up to thousands of dollars in lost sales and good will. Even the most thorough procedures inevitably have gaps that come from being "too close" to the process or not following the basic rules of effective procedure writing.
Business owners can profit from process experience. To be effective, procedures must be action oriented, grammatically correct, and written in a consistent style and format to ensure usability. These guidelines, along with industry "best practices" that are documented in auditable criteria, can be used to improve your procedures.
For context, actions must properly describe the activity to be performed. For consistency, all references and terms are used the same way every time, and the procedure must ensure consistent results. For completeness, there must be no information, logic, or design gaps. For control, the document and its described actions demonstrate feedback and control. For compliance, all actions are sufficient for their intended compliance. For correctness, the document must be grammatically correct without spelling errors.
And for clarity, documents must be easy to read and understandable.
Business owners can quickly improve their policies and procedures without the hassle. They can quickly resolve these usability problems and improve performance, and also upgrade their documentation to "best practice" standards without hassles or commitments. By beginning to improve their documents, they will be able to identify areas for improvement. And they can start today with the 7 Cs of “best practices”.
Bizmanualz offers training, department manuals and process development consulting for: Accounting, Human Resources, and ISO Quality Management Systems. Bizmanualz Policies & Procedures products combine a printed manual with easily editable MS-Word documents on CD-ROM enabling executives to create and maintain internal controls. Products are available through the company's web site www.Bizmanualz.com, www.Amazon.com, www.bn.com and other affiliates. Dealer programs are also available.
For more information, contact: Chris Anderson, Bizmanualz, Inc. 314-863-5079 chris@bizmanualz.com
# # #
Bizmanualz is a trademark of Bizmanualz, Inc .
