3 Steps to Building Great Documentation
BY IT GLUE | April 24, 2018
Building documentation is strategic. It’s not simply about how much you document, but how well you document your information so that it offers the most value to both you and your client. It might seem tricky to master at first, but consider these three steps for building your documentation and you’ll quickly find yourself on the road to documentation success.
Documentation takes time and commitment. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. But where there are opportunities to pursue an automatic two-way sync for your data, ensure you’re taking advantage of it. Take the time to consider what integrations you can build that will help you save time.
Using IT Glue, you have the ability to access many RMM and PSA integrations that we’ve already built for you. Rather than manually entering all of your client’s information, using an integration with your PSA will do that for you. With our API, you also have the ability to script your own integrations to pull data from other platforms that you already use. The possibilities are truly endless. Taking advantage of the ability to build integrations, or using ones that are already built, will save you the time of manual entry and allow you to focus on other tasks.
It may seem obvious, but in order to start building your documentation, you have to set aside time to do so. When onboarding a new client and left with a plethora of their information, consider what works best for your team. Whether it’s an hour every day, or a massive weekend dedicated to documentation, organizing these blocks of time will ensure the documentation gets done.
There are many angles you can take to get your team to document. For one, consider creating a hierarchy of information that needs to be documented. You can start by focusing on high ROI tasks, such as documenting the customers that generate the most tickets, and then continue your progression to the rest of your clients. Avoid trying to tackle everything at once. You and your team are likely to become overwhelmed with the information, and your work will lack efficiency because of it. Instead, break the documentation into digestible pieces and you’ll find progress increasingly evident.
Consider adding incentives or gamification to encourage your staff to adopt documentation best practices. Creating a game out of documentation which features rewards will allow your staff to feel motivated in their documentation. Reward those who have not simply pursued their role in documentation, but those who actively work to make their documentation more efficient. Over time, documentation will become a part of their everyday.
Building a documentation culture needs to stem from the top down. Leaders have two very important roles they must fulfill. First and foremost, they have to lead. This means they should not only be supporting staff in their documentation, but should practice what they preach as well.
Not only should leaders be the documentation cheerleaders, but also the enforcers of the documentation culture. It should be understood throughout the organization that documentation is not optional, nor is it only in the job description of a few employees. When documentation is viewed as fundamental, or even better, as a core value of the organization, it will be clear that everyone must comply.
To generate a documentation culture, ensure all of your staff understand the benefits of documentation as well. Ultimately this isn’t simply for the clients, or an added task on everyone’s to-do list. Instead, this will benefit each employee individually, allowing them to increase their proficiency and save the time spent searching for information to get a simple task completed. It’s also not just for your techs. Everyone in the organization benefits from documentation. Whether they’re a tech, a human resources coordinator, or the graphic designer, it should be known that they not only have the responsibility to document, but the opportunity to reap the benefits.
Together, these three steps offer you a package for building your documentation. However, the ribbon that ties it all together is having a platform that allows you the flexibility and accessibility to do so. Using IT Glue allows all of your staff to access their documented processes in one secure location with a continuously growing list of features that seek to maximize your efficiency. To find out more about how IT Glue can help you improve the state of your documentation, sign up for a demo today.
IT Glue is the world’s leading documentation platform. By automating much of your documentation, we help streamline your operations and eliminate time waste. When you document your SOPs, contacts, locations and other information, your entire team can tap into the power of IT Glue.
