Improving Business Documents
What if your documents are missing something?
Some of the main problems we hear from organisations are:
- Word documents get passed around by email with little certainty as to what is the correct and latest version.
- Processes can get created, communicated and discussed via email, in a way that often resembles a game of "pass the parcel" or chinese whispers.
- In other situations, detailed processes can stagnate and die.
We work with organisations:
- That have inadequate documentation to help their business grow.
- Where talented staff leave without key information passed on to others.
- Where staff don't follow the correct procedures.
- Whose CEOs need to communicate their vision to others.
- Where poor documentation leads to failed projects, poor people development, inefficiencies and poor management.
- That don't have the time or systems in place to produce the document they need.
Take the Cherryleaf 1 Minute Documentation Audit
How Cherryleaf can help
Additional writing resource - when and where you need it
We can become an extension to your internal resources. You call on you as an when they need us. We become a flexible resource and part of the team. You, not us, are the consultant, in establishing best practice, compliance rules, because you probably know the best way to do things. Instead, we assist your managers by giving them the writing resource to capture the way things are or the way they want them to be.
We have a team of professional business writers who can capture critical (but missing) information and improve existing content. It's the step that enables businesses and people get clarity around what they do and how they do it.
We enable you to communicate clearly and simply, often spotting or information that can be re-used and shared elsewhere.
Systems for producing and maintaining better documents in less time
We can help you bring together existing information from disparate sources and provide a unified system for increased quality and consistency, reduced time and cost.
A fast way to acquire ready-made processes that work
Cherryleaf offers a set of process assets - a collection of managed process descriptions, standards and procedures that organisations can tailor according their situation.
Sustainable business improvement -and- shorter implementation times
Our tools and approach is a user-friendly and cost-effective method for implementing improvement programmes. These processes are your starting point to 'tailor' to their your own unique organisational needs, and can act as a model example of how you could structure your processes.
- Process are there to help the people do their work.
- Processes can be simple and usable across the organisation (no department boundaries).
- Processes (and procedures...) simply describe the work that people do and the information they use or create.
A single set of processes can meet multiple standards: ISO 9001:2000, CMMI, COBIT, SOX, PRINCE2, DSDM, ITIL and other standards. These are currently being used at some of the UK's largest organisations.
Contact us for free examples that you can use.
Business process automation
Wikis offer a new way to document business processes. However it's important to use one that fits in with the other ways you publish information. Cherryleaf can help you use wikis in conjuction with your overall publishing process.
Benefits include:
- Quick and easy to change
- Accountable and traceable change logging
- No IT department in the way
- Collaboration over content
- Management of knowledge
- Ready-to-use solutions
Contact us by email or telephone. If you can, please state the issues you are interested in fixing. We'll respond by email or phone.
Examples of what we do
- Cherryleaf has been helping a finance company reduce inconsistencies in the way that their staff approved or disapproved £100K+ loan applications. The policies and procedures existed, but were inconsistent in style and format, were in lots of locations and formats (such as emails and memos), and were not structured in a way that to enabled staff to find them easily. Cherryleaf developed a solution that put all this information into a single "house style", structured the documents to aid usability, and produced an online version that provided a single point of access and central "home". The result will be a more consistent approach to loan approvals.
- Cherryleaf has been helping a sales consultancy company develop an online guide for best practice selling, which they offer to their clients. Used by sales professionals just before they start each sales meeting, this guide is leading to a raise in their performance.
- A travel industry client of ours needed to increase efficiency, productivity and achieve associated cost savings by implementing single sourcing for its user information - approximately 12,000 product Help files, 8,000 pages of printed information and 700 elearning elements. Failure of this project could cause delays in the release of products, and additional costs to retrieve/recreate information. Cherryleaf determined the requirements for a in-house single sourcing tool they will develop. We also developed a single sourcing style guide for print and online documents.
- Cherryleaf has been working with a government body to complete, appraise and improve their Web site. We found some key content did not exist, certain content was inconsistent with other information, along with many other problems. We've provided resource to fix these and develop a measurement framework for assessing the effectiveness of their Web communications. In a recent assessment of over 400 similiar bodies, this organisation's Web site came out top.
Further information
Contact us if you would like to know more about how we can help you. If you can, please state the issues you are interested in fixing. We'll respond by email or phone.