3 questions you need to ask about documentation

In this month’s blog, I’d like to take a look at how SAP Workforce Performance Builder can help you transform the way you both create and deploy documentation to your employees.

Let’s start by asking three questions?

1.             Do your employees use the documentation when they need help?

2.             Do you think your documentation is up to date?

3.             Are you happy with your documentation?

If you answered “No” to any or all of the above then it could be time to look at making some changes.

Let’s start with what documentation is created in the first place.  If some of your documents are called “manuals” then think again.  Manuals work well for training, but are much less effective for support.  How many people read a manual? How many people read a manual from start to finish?

Make it relevant, useful and easy to find

Chances are if you’re looking for help, then you’re looking for something specific. For example, “how do I approve this type of purchase order?”  You want something relevant that you can easily follow to enable you to do the task there and then.  This also means that a “how to” document needs to be sufficiently granular (i.e. covering a type of purchase order) and easy to reference quickly.

Finally, you need to be assured that the document you’ve found is up to date – if it’s not then you sure won’t be looking for more help in the same place.

Sounds great in theory right?  The bad news is that for most business systems users (e.g. SAP and Oracle) to document at any significant level of granularity means covering hundreds of transactions, reports and variants – and then a perpetual battle to keep this up to date.   The good news (for SAP Workforce Performance Builder users) is there are some great features you can use to produce large quantities of consistent documentation, automatically ensuring that any documents are easily referenced and easy to update.

Firstly, creating a document with SAP Workforce Performance Builder is really quick and easy.  Just record the application and generate documents in multiple customisable formats from a single recording.  For example the standard “Job Aid” template is a step-by-step guide that takes a user from A to B.  By speeding up the process with SAP Workforce Performance Builder, more time can be spent creating multiple scenarios and examples thus hopefully making the document more useful to the user.

Keep it up to date

Once you’ve created the documentation the bigger challenge is keeping it up to date.  If documents are not maintained then they will be discarded –like the dusty training manual lurking in your desk drawer. Not only is this a waste of the time spent creating the document in the first place, there is also a risk that users will not be completing tasks correctly or complying with company or even legal requirements when completing their tasks.

SAP Workforce Performance Builder will make it a lot easier to keep your documents up to date. Using SAP Workforce Performance Builder you can both re-record and update your processes and also republish them. If your documents are part of an online library you can quickly replace, update or add to them so there is always an up to date copy available for your users online.

Using Navigator you can also notify the users of changes to the documentation / processes that have been made in a timely manner and your documentation evolves with your system. When the system changes, and you update the documentation, the users are told automatically.

Involve others in the process

Why not try and get your local subject matter experts (SME’s) more involved in documentation?  Using the Instant Producer wizard your SME’s can develop their own “how to” guides.  Help desk staff can record solutions to FAQs.  Your documents can grow organically with the system, and over time your documentation can add more value to your employees meaning the more likely that your answer to the answer to the three questions I asked earlier will be “Yes”.