Get out of the desert of files!

The larger the company, the more important it is to define processes — at best, the processes are the company's written rules of the game. Existing (board) tools such as Word, Excel and Visio are often used for this purpose. After 1-2 years, the awakening takes place: administrative effort, frustration, outdated documents and little added value in the everyday life of employees. Pure documentary documentation for auditors is created with the aim of minimizing expenses.

With interactive management software, you enable your employees to actively participate in documentation, incorporate their knowledge into process descriptions and thus create up-to-date documentation with added value for the entire company.

initial situation

In all companies, there are processes and guidelines that should (t) be met in everyday working life. In smaller companies, this can often still be solved with simple, existing board tools such as Word, Excel and Visio. But these funds quickly reach their limits in many respects:

Dependence on individuals

A file created in Word, Excel or Visio is usually published as a PDF to ensure document control. New documents or changes to existing documentation are often distributed to colleagues via e-mail. If an employee wants to make a change, he is forced to contact the author of the document. This creates a bottleneck for a person: Versioning, adjustments, evaluations, document maintenance must be adjusted manually by an authority. This responsibility usually lies in quality management. The result: Changes are associated with a great deal of effort by both process owners and quality management and are not seen as added value in everyday life.

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Shadow documentation by process owners: wild growth occurs

To avoid these expenses, process owners and employees are increasingly creating so-called shadow documents. Employees start creating their own documents, with the processes and guidelines that are most relevant to them. This creates a proliferation of process descriptions and procedures, the same procedures are created by different people — but are stored on local, sometimes even private data carriers. The favorite place for documentation: Your own desktop. An overview or even joint preparation or combination of the documents is only possible to a limited extent.

In addition to wild growth, shadow documentation has other disadvantages: It is often unusable for audits due to a lack of document control, ties up unnecessary employee resources and creates more and more ambiguity among employees due to a lack of system.

‍Graphical modelling: Another tool is needed

In addition, there are the limitations of Word and Excel themselves: Since graphical modelling in both tools is not sufficient, a third software is used, for example MS Visio. On the one hand, this means that another tool must be used. On the other hand, granting individual licenses promotes dependence on a single person. Here, too, all changes must be forwarded to an instance, which must update the document and then make it available to everyone.

The result: A desert of documents is created that no one can overlook

This form of documentation does not add value to the company, on the contrary, ties up more resources than necessary for good documentation and creates ambiguities. The vicious cycle of QM is created.

Since updates by the central processing authority involve a great deal of effort, documents are only updated before audits and pure documentary documentation is created. The gap between reality and documentation is widening, relevance within the company is falling and the documents are being used less and less — frustrating everyone involved.

But how do I create a uniform platform that all employees contribute to?

In order to solve the described problem of Word and Excel deserts and to create a uniform platform for the entire company that brings added value, 4 factors are particularly important:

1. Involve employees:

When employees are asked which descriptions are particularly important to them in everyday life and where the errors, gaps and weaknesses lie, this is an extremely important factor. If employees even receive a writing license, they can contribute their knowledge to the instructions without detours via a single instance and the scarcity of resources in the QM department is resolved. If this is implemented together with a quick and efficient approval workflow/document control, the result is up-to-date documentation with real added value.

2. Easy, individual operation:

The new tool must be quick and easy for all employees to use so that they can contribute their experience without hurdles. Word and Excel are well known, so the tool must be kept similarly simple to use.

3. Documentation must be provided almost in real time:

One problem that results from the centralistic way of working with Word and Excel is the often long time spent at the central authority. Changes are often only approved after days or even weeks. This large time delay demotivates process owners and ultimately leads to frustration. If, on the other hand, changes are made quickly and easily and the current document is directly available to everyone, the new document can be used after just a few minutes to hours. In addition, the motivation of employees to contribute their knowledge is enormously increased. There must be an efficient, simple and fast approval workflow.

4. Linking other systems:

The management system is just one system in a company. This is where all knowledge is bundled and, ideally, links to other systems such as SAP, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Salesforce and Babtec are established at appropriate points. This allows you to navigate from the documentation directly to the appropriate system to the right place with one click. Search and query time is saved.

‍Work more successfully with an interactive management system

We will use an example to show how successfully our customers work with an interactive management system. The Zettl Group, a medium-sized company with 250 employees with various sub-areas, was faced with the challenge of introducing uniform documentation throughout the company. The 8 different document types used so far should be standardized and brought together in order to simplify the previously very complex document maintenance and control. The jumble of shadow documentation should be resolved, the documentation brought together and made available for everyone to see and, above all, editable. The outdated documents should become current work instructions, process descriptions and best practices that help employees in their everyday lives.

The new status quo

The company-wide documentation is now all displayed in Q.wiki — this is how the four different divisions of the company have been brought together. Decentralization is important for the further development of the system: Shortly after the introduction, a good half of all write requests came from employees who are not part of the core project team. The departmental structures could thus be broken up and a process-oriented system established. Thanks to the early involvement of employees, the distribution of responsibilities and the participation of everyone, the management system is now highly relevant in the company and has become an effective aid in everyday life. Q.wiki has become a process and knowledge platform and was accepted throughout the company right from the start. The figures from our analysis confirm this:

• 75% of users are regularly on the system
• perform 1,800 updates per month
• and provide a total of up to 23,000 accesses per month.

Thanks to transparent documentation, shadow documents have disappeared, resources are saved and cross-team collaboration is promoted through process-oriented presentation.

Bring your documentaries to life!

Leave the desert of documents behind and create a lively process culture with an interactive management system that benefits your entire company! Key features that make Q.wiki so successful as a management system:

1. As a central information platform for the entire company, the knowledge of all employees is accessible to all employees. This includes process knowledge, work instructions, and best practices that your employees collect on a daily basis. Access for everyone saves enormous time, as search and query times can be minimized thanks to the full-text search. This also makes it easier for new employees to join the company and contributes to rapid familiarization.
2. Clearly assignable process responsibilities have several advantages: Those responsible to date — mostly the QM departments — are heavily relieved and the new process owners are the knowledge carriers, the ones who carry out the processes. If your employees and even process owners are involved, identification with the processes and acceptance of documents and the entire management system increases.
3. Identifying interfaces and linking processes is another important aspect of our management system: Linking upstream and downstream processes to eliminate errors at interfaces and improve collaboration.
4. The clear and concise structure in Q.wiki is an extremely important basis for the success of your management system. Because only when information can be found quickly is it actually used! The heart of your management system is the process map. From here, your employees can navigate to the relevant documentation. Long search and retrieval times are a thing of the past!
5. We have defined intuitive usability as a further requirement for a functioning management system and implemented it in Q.wiki. This allows all employees to contribute their knowledge quickly and easily, even without IT knowledge. Together with the clear structure, Q.wiki gives you a platform on which every employee can quickly find their way around and actively contribute.
6. Last but not least, Q.wiki offers you easy document management and a quick approval workflow. In this way, we ensure that the changes are approved promptly by your employees and that they are updated almost in real time.