Ryan Stemen, MBA

Ryan’s Business Lessons 📁 #4

In the dynamic world of business, success often lies in the details—those intricate steps that make a processes efficient, effective, and replicable over a long period of time.

Today, I’m excited to share a valuable business secret with you—it’s about how to create and unlock value in a Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) manual. Having embarked on this task at three different companies, I’ve witnessed firsthand the transformative power of documenting every facet of our tax team’s operations and notes you can leave behind for your predecessor.

From the routine reports generated monthly, quarterly, and annually to the meticulous tax preparation steps, Excel spreadsheet updates, thorough tax return reviews, and the intricacies of crafting and inputting tax accounting journal entries—I worked with my team to meticulously documented it all. If our team performed a task, I made it my mission to capture it in a comprehensible and easy-to-follow SOP manual. Why? These SOP could be used to cross train employees and coach new employees how to do their jobs with ease.

Here the 8 steps you need to take to create your own Standard Operating Proceeds (SOP) in your business:

1. Start with a small repeatable process to document.
2. Document every step in one process at a time.
3. Review all your steps have been captured in the process with your team.
4. *This is a side step in the process. This is a good time to review any steps that can be removed to improve processes.
5. Map out all processes on a PDF document that can be shared with anyone.
6. Use the map to work through the process while asking did we capture every step – essentially test the SOP document to ensure anyone can follow it.
7. Publish and share the document with your team. Find a place where you can save the SOP for future team members to easily access it. Find a centralized place. If the document needs to be secure figure out how password protect it and who will own the password.
8. Update the document as needed. Processes can change over time so ensure that you’re always reviewing and updating the SOP document as needed.