The Ops Portal

Louise Harris, TOP (The Ops Portal)

Using a templated manual does a considerable disservice to you and your business. There are ways to save money, but this one is a false economy.

Before thinking ‘you would say’ that because we make money from writing them: most of our clients write most of their manuals. At TOP (the Ops Portal), our role is to guide, to edit and to ask the right questions to help people succeed (in addition, of course, to providing the enabling technology).

We do, of course, write some manuals, but mostly we simply ‘right’ what we’re sent.

If you plan to franchise your business and already have a franchise with trading franchisees, or have a company with remote workers, you will already have ways of working. It would be impossible not to.

The operations manual should capture the essence of your business

The operations manual needs to capture the essence of that business – your business. It includes setting expectations for all parties, how to perform necessary tasks, where to find information and often provide access to forms or to reference sites.

The manual grows and flexes with the business you’re operating.

It is often helpful to have an index to start with. We often start with a comprehensive content list and strike out what’s needed.

In theory, copying might work if you found a manual from a similar business and changed the names, but you’d have to ask yourself how this showcases the ‘difference’ you are selling. And are you sure that what someone else has written is accurate?

We do have some (original) templated content that we share with customers – rewriting every part of a manual can be time-consuming and costly. These templates are used when a business has a generic process, such as vehicle safety checks mandated by law.

Whilst having a complete template for a franchised business may seem an easy option, it will not serve you well in the short or long term.

Avoid Templated Operations Manuals: Tailor for Growth

There are businesses which position themselves as consultants but sell you a templated manual – it will often be a standard manual with the company name changed.

Ask yourself: does this reflect your business? A ‘one size fits all’ template can’t possibly capture the activities YOUR business wants to encourage, the attitudes you expect, or the style with which you want to communicate.

At TOP, we are frequently provided with a templated manual that someone has bought – and often it’s not worth the ink used to print it! Sometimes, the ‘replace all’ search function hasn’t worked and we can see precisely which brand has been ripped off to produce the manual.

On one occasion, the presented manual spoke extensively about vehicle management: the company that had bought it did not use vehicles!

Moreover, this copying is a breach of copyright and a foolish way for a bona fide and ethical business to act.

How TOP Creates an Effective Operations Manual

We run an initial workshop to build the manual framework that accurately reflects the business we are working with. We work together with you to identify your processes.

This activity, building a manual, greatly supports the business all around. Often, where an existing process is clunky or unworkable, the company benefits hugely from re-engineering that process, streamlining or simplifying it.

Once the framework is created, we determine who within the organisation has the information needed to fill it out.

In addition, we focus on the language and style of delivery, who the readers and users of the manual will be, and how to capture the brand.

The Final Product

The manual created should reflect the soul of the business.

The standards, style, expectations and all the relevant organisational know-how for success should now lie in the operations manual for all to follow and refer to.

How can a templated manual possibly capture that?