Crafting Standard Operating Procedures: The Foundation of Operational Excellence

There are so many different business units and so many teams and team members working on a project in an organization. At any given point in time, with so many individuals working on the moving parts of a project, it becomes difficult to keep everyone on the same page.

Not having a common reference point can be a huge setback. Eventually, the projects may start to fall apart because of the lack of a common checkpoint. This reference point or the checkpoint can be referred to as the SOP or the Standard Operating Procedure.

This article attempts to cover the length and breadth of the SOP and how they are beneficial for an organization. Let’s begin.

What is a Standard Operating Procedure?

A Standard Operating Procedure or an SOP is a reference guide that provides clear guidance to the users. It includes clear directions or instructions that are required to perform a specific task or action. These instructions are essential for the users to complete the task efficiently, aligning with the regulatory standards.

While SOP provides instructions to the users, it serves as a document beyond a user guide. There are process documents that give an overview of the process. However, an SOP is essentially a guide that provides a step-by-step method to complete a process. It ensures that all the steps entailed result in the successful completion of the task.

Apart from guiding the user, an SOP also ensures safety while driving the process and is certainly a means of problem-solving tool through the enterprise.

Purpose of Standard Operating Procedure

The primary reason to have an SOP in place in an organization is to provide clear and precise instructions to the users while they try to adopt a new process or methodology. With its point-to-point instructions of how the steps should be carried out, an SOP ensures that the work is performed in a standardized way. This ensures consistency and paves the way for performing the task safely.

Aside from this, the SOPs ensure that the tasks performed are in compliance with the industry regulations and standards. Overall, this benefits in reducing the risk of non-compliance and errors.

SOP Templates

While the creation of an SOP differs from company to company because of the difference in the procedural format, there are templates available that can come in handy. Customizing one of these templates can be a starting point.

Let’s look at the components of an SOP template:

In this section, we have included a general example of an SOP template.

The highlighted text denotes the text that will be changed or updated in the SOP for a particular process. The rest of the text depicts the essential sections that the SOP is divided into. This helps the process designers to include the most essential points in the SOP related to the process.

What are the Benefits of a Standard Operating Procedure?

As we have seen earlier, the purpose of the SOP goes beyond just a procedural document. It is a blueprint that helps and supports organizations to reduce miscommunication in the deployment of their existing or new processes. They are effective means of completing a process in a standardized manner.

In the absence of an SOP, an organization may leave a lot of space for errors or mistakes. Without the SOPs, the chances of occurrences of mistakes may drive up to a huge extent. With an SOP in place, companies can set clear expectations and keep all the team members looped in about the common goals the process tries to achieve.

The following points give away the major benefits of implementing an SOP in a company:

Adopting best practices

An SOP ensures that all the steps for using a system or for a specific process are adhered to. The SOP provides actionable steps in an hierarchical manner. This ensures mandating the adoption of best practices across the teams or users.

SOPs essentially provide the most efficient way of completing a task to derive optimal results while minimizing the expenditure on resources and effort.

Ensures consistency

As an SOP includes the instructions in a step-wise manner, all users will adopt the same process. With the users using the same document and method to complete the process, the SOP reinforces consistency. In other words, it guides the users to accomplish the results by deploying the common steps efficiently.

Quality assurance

Achieving quality work through a single source of truth, known as SOP, becomes easy. Overall, this raises the bar of the quality with which the users can complete the task.

Paves the way for proper onboarding

When organizations have a clearly defined SOP, they can simplify and ease employee onboarding. Also, training the new team members can be easy as well. In the case where the employees need to be introduced to the best practices, SOP is the best means.

Moreover, with rectification measures clearly laid out, users will know beforehand how to deal with the challenges encountered.

Preserving knowledge

Documenting sop manuals for future reference is a good practice. Changes keep occurring and new teams may be formed. SOPs can be helpful then. Also, when new team members join in, an SOP can serve as a good starting point that can help them use the SOPs and carry out the processes efficiently.

How to Craft an Effective Standard Operating Procedure?

The ten basic steps to crafting an effective SOP are mentioned in the following. Let’s go through the steps.

• Define the goal of creating your SOP: This is the most important point as you must know the objective of creating the SOP. Just like deciding the route you will take, you must define the destination first.
  You can also use a standard operating protocol such as who will the SOP help if the SOP enhances efficiency and saves time. Such questions will help in crafting the need for the SOP.
• Enlist the key players and stakeholders: Assembling the different teams can be instrumental in charting out the SOP. Bringing together all the personnel from the different departments can help in the development of the SOP.
  You may include the C-suite executives, who can help in shortlisting the high-level achievement goals. Management leaders can help with the best practices for compiling the SOP. Finally, the ground-level team members can help put together the different pieces such as feasibility and resource consumption.
• Determine the end-user: This step is to decide who will eventually be using the SOP. There could be a range of people with varying levels of expertise. So, this step requires you to ensure that the actual content of the SOP solves the problems of its users.
• Decide the scope and the format of the SOP: The scope of the SOP will largely depend on who will be using it. Also, determine the equipment and materials required for the SOP.
  The format of the SOP is also an important consideration. It can be a step-wise format, a flowchart, a video, or a simple checklist. There could be some other formats also that could enhance the understanding of the SOP.
• Data gathering: Research the task for which the SOP is being created. You may seek help from the SMEs. This will help create a more accurate SOP. Additionally, review the current policies to ensure the content of the SOP.
• Shortlist the components of the SOP: Once you have your prerequisites ready, you can start composing your SOP. The title, the table of contents, and preparatory information should all be kept ready.
• Recheck and review: If you are looking to perfect your SOP, it will have to be rechecked, proofread, and tested. All these steps will ensure your SOP has all the essential elements intact. You can create a test group within the team to check if the SOP gives the desired output. This will help spot any issues that may have been missed by the team earlier.
• Train the end-user: While there may be experienced team members, you will still have to train them for efficient and optimum use of the SOP. Conducting end-user training sessions can be a good step.
• SOP Software: Utilizing SOP software can go a long way in speeding up the process of creating SOP. There are various in-built features in software that can be helpful in the initial stages of creating an SOP. All the team needs to do is do a bit of research about the software in terms of its suitability for your organization.
• Implementing the SOP: This is the final stage of the SOP creation. While implementing the SOP, it is important to remember in the beginning, that you will need to keep room for criticism and be ready to make any improvements where applicable. As one of the final steps, ensure that there are enough reviews and updates so that the SOP remains relevant and up to date.

Approaching an SOP consultant or SOP writing consultants can be a step that will ease your path. Business process consultants with expertise in SOP creation can guide in creating an SOP.

About BPX

BPX stands at the forefront of SOP Consulting and Process Consulting services, boasting over 12+ years of dedicated experience in the field. Our seasoned team has partnered with a diverse clientele, spanning more than 12 countries, to tailor and refine business processes. At BPX, we specialize in crafting Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and adopt BPMN 2.0 methodology for leveraging advanced process consulting methodologies to optimize performance and efficiency. If you’re looking to boost efficiency or scale your business with streamlined processes or establish robust SOPs, BPX is your trusted partner in driving operational excellence and sustainable growth.