If you don’t want to spend years wishing you achieved your goals, you need to act on them now. The best way to do so is to have an action plan.
Having a long list of tasks to complete can be overwhelming. As you see the list grow, you may lose the motivation to do any of them. That said, if you have a step-by-step action plan that spells out your chores in achievable pieces, you can accomplish them without noticing.
Action plans assist in keeping track of your work progress. With an action plan in place, you’ll have an official start and end date, as well as an estimate of how long each step will take. You won’t have to spend mental energy each day trying to decide when and how to start.
Also, you can use an action plan to keep track of your project budget and determine whether you need to change your time or resource estimates.
In this in-depth post, you’ll learn what an action plan is, why you need one, and how to make action plan templates on Microsoft Excel, Word, PDF, PowerPoint, and Google Docs.
We’ll also answer some frequently asked questions about action plans. Finally, we’ll give you access to 65+ free, editable, and downloadable action plan templates for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, and Google Docs.
Let’s get started.
Every situation benefits from having an action plan. It is a simple success roadmap if used judiciously. In your job, business, or personal endeavor, a well-designed action plan will highlight what to do at every point and assist you in tracking achieved tasks.
For instance, do you want to switch to a tech career by a specific age? An action plan helps you consider your existing qualifications, identify your existing strengths, and point you to the courses you’re going to need to take to successfully achieve this transition. You can also include the top tech organizations you’ll hopefully transition into.
If you’re working on a project, the action plan forces you to consider the number of resources you have at your disposal, the complexity of the project or objective at hand, and the level of detail necessary when executing the project.
Action plans are communication tools that simplify complex tasks and initiatives. It is an organizational strategy framework for identifying steps that you must take to achieve a goal.
When using an action plan, you should consider and map out specific tasks to help the organization set quality standards and save costs. This enables you to avoid trial and error as much as possible.
An action plan is a social planning tool. With it, you can document actions that serve as a symbol of a company’s or nation’s accountability.
For instance, an action plan might be used by a city to express plans to enhance a neighborhood. This could involve plans for adding green spaces, services, living streets, and better rail service.
Many companies have a growth strategy, but nothing gets done at the end of the day. This happens because they have no action plan to follow to provide a roadmap for how and when to complete each task.
Your action plan is a working document that makes your strategy a reality. As a result, you achieve your tasks and allocate resources to your team for efficient job implementation.
You need an action plan so you can:
Action plans provide you with the framework to efficiently execute specific tasks, so you complete your work without distractions.
It assists you in completing your tasks in a logical order and ensures that you do not overlook or miss any essential steps.
Action plans make it easy to determine when you need to delegate or outsource tasks. The document quickly points you to what job to outsource and how to do it. That way, you’ll save time and effort as you’re able to delegate tasks that slow your progress or do not achieve the end goal for your business.
Having an action plan lets you document the time and resources you’ll likely spend on tasks. This way, you stay motivated and ensure that you complete your job in as short a period as possible.
With an effective action plan, you’ll avoid procrastination. This is because an action plan provides you with a visual map that documents achievement in a structured manner. As a result, it helps you see your progress when you need to complete each job faster.
Action plans are likely to fail for two reasons: You may not take action as written on the document, or you fail to include the essential points to make the path to success clear in the action plan.
When creating an action plan, here are the specifics to include to use it efficiently.
You need to understand your goal before creating an effective action plan. Having this at the top of your action plan motivates you to keep moving forward.
Write out the step-by-step actions that are involved in doing every task. This will help you to achieve your set goals and minimize decision fatigue.
Mention the employees who will be handling each step. This introduces accountability to your action plan and creates a sense of responsibility in the mind of stakeholders.
You’ll be less likely to achieve your goals if you don’t attach your set goals to a particular deadline. Having a deadline for each step keeps you on your toes to effectively deliver your tasks.
Identify the assets you need to allocate for each step. When resources are not available, your action plan will experience a delay. Therefore, in your action plan, ensure that you include plans to acquire the necessary resources to meet your project delivery deadline.
Be mindful of the factors that can potentially hinder the completion of each step. Considering this will force you to have mitigation strategies in place for every foreseeable problem that arises.
It won’t be fair to realize that your goals won’t be met at the end of your task. You should track your progress to avoid this. Not tracking each process leads to mistakes and inefficiencies, and you’ll waste time going back to fix your errors.
Are you a worker who wishes to enhance your job performance, or a project manager whose task is to delegate responsibilities to team members?
You need an action plan to help organize human and material resources. With this, you can identify a clear route to meet your objectives and confidently manage related tasks in the most effective sequence to attain your goal.
But creating an action plan from scratch could be time-consuming for you. Hence, the need for an action plan template.
Action plan templates are industry-specific, ready-made documents that you can instantly download and use.
You need to use action plan templates because they not only help you stay motivated and track your progress toward your goals, but they also help you save time as you can adopt them very quickly.
Whether you’re working alone or with others, action plan templates guide you in all categories of your work and can be a reference for those who should be held responsible for each task. Using an action plan template helps you prevent delays and errors.
Action plan templates enable you to transform your vision into attainable objectives and tasks.
To make an action plan, here are steps to consider:
The first step to solving a problem is to understand what it is. By identifying the problem, you can assess the circumstances surrounding the problem and examine possible solutions.
At this point, you’ll consider all ideas and ask for feedback from your team and the parties interested in solving the problem.
The next step is to gather and analyze the collected data to support or reject whether the problem exists or has a different root cause than you anticipated.
You would figure this out by asking questions like:
In cases where you find there are more problems than the ones you envisioned, there is a need to prioritize them so that you may focus on the most pressing issues first.
Ask yourself the following questions to assist you in sorting the concerns:
Now that you’ve identified the problems and gathered information associated with it, write out the goals’ statement for each solution using the S.M.A.R.T framework. Setting S.M.A.R.T. objectives or goals means the goals are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely.
You should then look through the solutions and analyze them for difficulties. If you identify any, then find a solution as you proceed.
Next is to itemize the actual steps to solve the issues.
An action plan developed this way will let you complete your tasks effectively and efficiently. It will also transform your elusive goal or strategy into a people-oriented solution.
Then create your resulting action plan. This should answer what, when, how, where, and who.
Walk through each action’s process. Evaluating the process is the best strategy to determine if the goal and action plan effectively resolve the issue.
Sticking to a well-designed monitoring technique will assist you and your team in determining when the action plan requires revision.
Excel is an intuitive tool for creating an action plan template. We’ve compiled some free action plan templates for Excel below, which you can download, tweak, and use for your organization.
The work action plan template contains a list of actions you must complete to accomplish a simple project. In addition, it has sections documenting needed resources, possible difficulties, and results.
You can use your action plan to structure tactics and modest stages toward reaching long-term objectives.
The corrective action plan template lets you spell out the steps needed to deal with an issue disrupting your organization’s operations.
Businesses can streamline their procedures and remove errors when they use these templates. Corrective action can take numerous forms, including training, product redesigns, and other enhancements. This template enables users to make a cohesive action plan.
A mentoring action plan template identifies the mentor and mentee relationship’s actions and goals. With this template, you’ll have the themes to focus on to help your mentee define their professional goals.
The Excel sales action plan template helps you plan your sales targets using the built-in flexibility of an Excel spreadsheet. This sales plan template is segmented into 12 months and divided into product lines.
It includes columns for last year’s performance, current sales goals, and outcomes. It also lets you create a yearly sales strategy and compare statistics across products and over time.
A maintenance action plan template is a document that outlines what must be done to keep assets in a facility in good working order. The information in the template will assist you in ensuring that an asset is used to its full potential. You can keep track of maintenance schedules using the estimated time column, and check and record accountability when the task is complete.
Microsoft Word is one of the most straightforward tools for making an action plan template. It provides you with easy-to-use features to achieve an easy-to-read, comprehensive document.
Here are some free action plan templates for Word, which you can
download, tweak, and use for your organization.
The project action plan template provides you with a place to document the steps needed to finish a simple project or goal. In addition, it identifies the vital tasks you need to focus on to deliver your projects within timelines successfully.
The blank action plan template outlines a series of stages or activities that must be done to complete the work or task correctly. It helps you keep track of task accomplishments and the money and equipment needed to execute the action.
A sales action plan template outlines what you’ll do to meet your sales objectives, with an emphasis on the transactions and relationships you can build with clients.
Things included in this template are:
A sample corrective action plan template helps you lay out the process of prioritizing and correcting specific hazards or deficiencies in running your organization. In addition, it helps you to deal with any issue that may disrupt your workflow.
It has sections to streamline your work process while eliminating errors.
This startup business plan template includes the essential elements you’ll need to pitch investors and stakeholders on your business idea and strategy.
An executive summary, a financial overview, a marketing plan, specifics on product or service offerings, and more are all included in the template.
The personal development action plan template provides you with an assessment for personal growth in the context of professional goals, education, relationship, or self-improvement. This is usually based on awareness, values, reflection, goal setting, and planning.
A nonprofit action plan template outlines your organization’s current state and lays out a strategy for the next three to five years. It also details your objectives and plans for achieving your organizational goals.
You need to consistently update your charity business plan to reflect your changing goals and circumstances.
The account action plan template provides your sales team with practical and effective strategies for transforming major account relationships into long-term partnerships.
It serves as a tool for the sales team to plan and manage the account and keeps critical developments up to date for management. It’s also used to maintain control of the account’s performance.
The basic action plan template contains sections to focus on when achieving your fundamental goals. It allows you to create action stages that you can prioritize and keep track of when completing your project while you measure progress and evaluate performance.
An education action plan template allows you to monitor the progress of a new educator through the set objectives toward a goal of achieving professional growth. Also, it provides instructional assistance and comprehensive assessment across educational boards.
This sample action plan template allows you to manage your work and complete tasks on schedule. It provides you with information such as the purpose of your plan, instructions for using it, goals, and action items.
It also allows you to add the timeframe for completion, who is responsible, resources, potential hurdles, communication strategy, evaluation method, and so on.
The simple action plan template allows you to keep track of the tasks that must be accomplished daily to achieve a larger goal. You can document your objectives, task list, success criteria, timeframe, and available resources. Each page has a label where you may enter information about your firm in addition to tables and images.
You can easily create your action plan templates in PDF format. We’ve compiled 20+ free action plan templates for PDF, which you can
download, tweak, and use for your organization.
The recruitment action plan template helps you recruit potential partners for your company. It includes responsibilities for recruitment and appointment, and recruitment timing so that potential partners are tracked and approached on time.
The team action plan template includes sections for listing team members and keeping track of attendance at multiple planning sessions.
It also includes all of the necessary components for producing an effective action plan for a team with a straightforward layout that makes group work more accessible.
The epilepsy action plan template includes a section for healthcare providers and patients to collect data about the patient’s health.
This template encourages healthcare practitioners to use a shared decision-making approach that allows the person with epilepsy and their family to engage as partners in all healthcare decisions in a collaborative relationship.
The emergency action plan template outlines detailed procedures for dealing with any work-related situation that is likely to occur. An emergency action plan is a written strategy that specifies the proper response to several unforeseen emergencies.
This template makes it easy to create and share emergency action plans that include names and phone numbers for emergency personnel, utility company emergency contacts, and training plans.
A business action plan template lays out the needed resources to achieve a goal, creates a timeframe for completing specific activities, and determines the resources required to achieve the business’s aim.
This template has sections for recording required resources, future challenges, and ultimate outcomes. Successful completion of an action item may be the end outcome, or you might have discovered more actions needed during the process.
The incident action plan template is a written document that outlines the incident objectives and the techniques used to manage them over the operating time.
It contains critical information on who to contact in an emergency, task assignments, resources, and safety requirements, based on the incident objectives.
A 90-day action plan template contains a framework for onboarding, acclimating, and educating new team members. It establishes expectations for what the person is expected to do in the first 90 days including learning and performance objectives.
A 90-day action plan template helps you set short- and long-term goals for new employees.
An affirmative action plan template defines your company’s attempt to provide equitable employment opportunities and encourage employee progress regardless of gender, ethnicity, disability, or veteran status. Based on federal rules, affirmative action should be reviewed and updated at least once a year.
A strategic action plan template provides you with steps needed to achieve strategic actions. It allows you to mobilize the resources needed to carry out those activities to ensure timely task delivery.
The housekeeping action plan template shows how to recruit and train housekeeping staff. It delineates the goals and objectives for training as well as the training stages.
The human resource action plan template provides a continual process of systematic planning beforehand to ensure that the organization’s most important asset (quality employees) are used to their full potential.
Human resource planning ensures that employees and jobs are a good match while preventing labor shortages or surpluses.
A church emergency action plan template is a document that provides answers to all questions of what, where, when, how, and who in a church emergency event.
The more detailed the plan is, the less valuable time will be lost in a calamity. In addition, this plan can provide information on a familiar gathering spot in an emergency, ensuring that no one is left behind.
The physical fitness action plan template allows you to complete the daily fitness routine. By completing the fitness action plan you reduce the chances of developing certain illnesses and diseases that may arise due to inactivity. Physical activity aids in the maintenance of healthy bones, muscles, joints, as well as weight management.
The company emergency action plan template documents all the critical and significant information to create a solid emergency action plan. This template comes with various headers, sections, and fields that you can modify to suit your company’s specific needs.
A discipline action plan template contains the information necessary to maintain a company’s or organization’s standards of behavior. In the workplace, the purpose of discipline is to correct wrong behavior step-wise and document each step in the process.
A disciplinary action policy can shield you from legal implications while also preventing issues from impacting your staff and company.
The diving emergency action plan template provides explicit instructions to help uneducated witnesses contact emergency personnel and provide them with details about diving accidents.
In an emergency, processing too much information wastes time. So information that includes a scuba-specific emergency hotline, standard emergency numbers, and diving locations are essential.
The personal mental health action plan template makes personal health goals simpler for you, although planning personal health does take time and effort.
Still, the template emphasizes the significance of prevention while also recognizing the critical role of mental health in achieving health for all individuals.
The preschool or early years action plan template allows you to create the school action plan for your children, making it easier for them to learn and grow.
As a teacher, you must establish an action plan for your students to benefit both the students and yourself.
The library planning action plan templates aid institutions in addressing broader shifts in how information is sought, accessed, and consumed so that students prepare ahead for success in an increasingly data- and knowledge-based world.
Higher education institutions can use library strategic planning to save money, control rising student fees, and meet accreditation requirements.
The presentation action plan template provides a blueprint to prepare slides or collections of slides that you can use for a meaningful presentation. It includes layouts, colors, fonts, effects, background styles, and content to guide your presentation.
The gender action plan template contains a road map for gender activities that a company or organization has adopted.
Its goal is to make institutions’ operations more gender-responsive, transformative, effective, efficient, and successful by redressing existing gender disparities and redefining women’s and men’s gender roles and relationships through gender mainstreaming guidelines.
A church mission action plan template provides a hopeful and optimistic glimpse into the future. It’s the church’s inspiring, long-term plan for what they’ll be able to do, who they’ll help, and how they’ll be seen in the future.
A wellness recovery action plan template is a framework that teaches how to make positive personal adjustments in your feelings and how you respond to life’s obstacles.
It is a self-designed preventive and wellness planning technique based on mutuality, self-determination, and the concept that resilience, recovery, and wellness have no bounds.
An employee action plan template contains an incorporated performance planning process that maps out the steps an employee plans in order to achieve a particular goal or objective.
It provides a process that an organization must develop to identify and prioritize their actions and identify quick and simple changes to demonstrate to employees that it is committed to implementing an action plan in response to employee engagement feedback.
The family emergency plan template is a valuable document that helps you identify each family member’s roles in an emergency and guides you and your family members to work together as a team in the event of a disaster.
It’s an essential aspect of any preparedness strategy and may help protect people’s lives, limbs, and property before, during, and after a disaster.
A marketing action plan template is a crucial tool that can assist your marketing department in determining the subsequent measures to take to improve the company’s marketing procedures.
It has both a marketing strategy and an action plan. The vision, goals, and target audience of your organization are defined in the strategic component of the design.
The printable action plan template provides you with a solid reference point for gathering and printing actual copies of action plans without the need for any special software or device. In addition, it gives ease in writing on them and highlighting essential portions of relevant themes.
The internal audit corrective action plan template helps you adhere to the step-by-step instructions to conduct the financial inspection of your company. In addition, it allows you to determine cost-saving strategies and reveal spending deficiencies.
It is the state where you can discover the answer to your financial situation’s nonconformity. The strategy aims to avoid and regulate the recurrent problem. It addresses the issue at its source and reduces the likelihood of recurrence.
PowerPoint helps you visualize your action plan. Here are some free and downloadable action plan templates for PowerPoint, which you can download, tweak, and use for your organization.
The meeting minutes action plan template contains written notes taken during a meeting. They emphasize the essential subjects debated, motions made or voted on, and activities carried out.
You can use the meeting minute template to keep track of your project or company meetings. This easy-to-follow, step-by-step template for minutes contains a formatting style that everyone in the conference will appreciate.
A task action plan template is a document that outlines the steps necessary to achieve your goal. A solid action plan will specify all of the required procedures to attain your goal and assist in reaching your target efficiently by giving each stage in the process a start and end date. It also breaks down the goal into short, quantifiable activities, which might assist in achieving your objectives.
A project planning timeline template encompasses the whole duration of your project, from beginning to end, and includes the dates of each deliverable and project milestone in chronological sequence. It allows the project manager to see all the tasks in one spot, making planning easy.
Google Docs helps you create action plan templates for your business
from scratch. Here are some editable and downloadable action plan
templates for Google Docs, which you can download, tweak, and use for
The employee retention action plan template contains an easy-to-edit format to assist with adjustments to the employer-employee contract. Using retention action plan templates makes it easy to keep your valuable human resources team.
Some of the standard components of the retention action plan include survey and exit interview analyses, the employer’s strengths and weaknesses, the retention plan’s purpose, and finally, the exact measures to be implemented.
The reading action plan template outlines the steps you’ll take to reach your reading objective. This involves the reading exercise, rewriting the learned concepts through the recall process, and taking meaningful notes. Maybe you need to ace an exam or teach an idea to others; the reading action plan template is a tool to achieve reading success.
A one-page action plan template allows every organization, particularly new start-ups, to quickly develop new versions of their business plan to keep track of the most recent assumptions and strategy changes.
Sequential planning is essential when you’re starting your business plan. List your original assumptions, and then try to validate the assumptions. Most of your premises will be incorrect, and you will need to shift course.
As the name implies, an employee engagement action plan template provides a strategy that necessitates deliberate action. The goal of an employee engagement action plan is to help your team members become more engaged, have a better working environment, and increase staff retention.
An employee engagement action plan is an essential process that organizations should go through to determine the activities to improve the organization’s structure. However, you must demonstrate the changes to your staff through employee feedback and meetings.
The work action plan template is a detailed work plan template that guides you in achieving success in your initiatives. The steps of the work plan, as well as critical data, are clearly described. The template also makes it easier to focus on the most vital issues like:
A change management action plan template can assist you in document management including tracking document owners and responsible parties.
You’ll need a change management strategy to thrive in business. During the control and execution stage of your change management plan, this template describes all of your duties in managing and controlling change.
The company action plan template sets out every piece of a standard business plan to help you develop your own. It includes space for companies seeking investment to add finance information.
If you want to achieve your goals systematically, use the personal action plan template. A personal action plan template can influence you to achieve more productive and efficient results.
The sales and marketing action plan template outlines how you intend to attract, engage, and convert prospects into paying customers. The template directs marketing and sales in their day-to-day actions, assisting them in defining agreed goals, and strategies for achieving them.
Compliance corrective action plan template includes compliance action plans to ensure that your organization and staff follow the standards you’ve set for a work environment, as well as the standards set by local and national governments.
The contents, such as actions and tasks, must be as precise as possible so that your team members understand what needs to be done right away.
An easy action plan template consists of a list of actions or tasks that must be accomplished to achieve the goals you’ve set. This easy action plan template will guide you to get through the disorderly situation and help you reach your goals faster.
A stay interview action plan template includes a planned conversation that a leader has with each employee to understand the precise steps that must be taken to improve the organization’s engagement and retention.
The rescue diver emergency action plan template provides potential diving accident victims the aid and guidance to help themselves and assist rescuers during response.
A 100-day action plan template provides you with a structure to onboard, accommodate, and educate new team members. It outlines expectations for what the person should do in the first 100 days, including learning and performance goals.
A 30-day action plan template provides you with a structure for figuring out how to onboard and educate new team members. In addition, it defines expectations for the individual in the first 30, 60, and 90 days as they learn to manage social media.
A case management action plan template allows case managers to record, plan and execute case actions. It includes the overall administration of cases and ongoing monitoring and evaluation of service needs.
The first aid action plan template assists you in dealing with a health crisis. Following it helps keep a person breathing, lessen their discomfort, or mitigate the effects of an accident or unexpected sickness before the ambulance comes.
You can take first aid training so you can recognize an emergency and provide basic first aid until expert help comes.
Below are some ways to make an action plan template.
Word is a popular commercial word processor created by Microsoft. It is included in the Microsoft Office productivity package and is available as a standalone application.
You can create an action plan on Microsoft Word.
Here is how to do so:
Select a blank document on your Microsoft Word application home tab and click on create. This will create a new Word application for you.
Next is to click on the “Insert” tab, then select “Insert Table.” Create a table of five columns and five rows.
Insert text headers: Action, Who, Due Date, Status, and Additional Action to your table.
Then, under each header, state the action you want to achieve, who’s responsible for achieving it, the due date for completing the action, its current status, and additional tasks or actions that may arise from that task.
Below is a video tutorial that walks you through how to do this:
Excel is a spreadsheet tool available as a web, mobile, and desktop application. It’s perfect for creating an action plan and similar to Google Sheets.
This is the step-by-step process for creating an action plan in Excel.
Open your Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and click on the “New” tab. Then double click on a blank document or click on the “Create” tab.
Left-click, hold, and drag your cursor to the portion of the Excel spreadsheet that you want to use as your action plan.
After selecting, click on the icon as shown in the image below, then select “All Borders.” This will give the selected area a nice full border, making your selected area stand out from the entire spreadsheet.
As shown in the image below, type text in the headers of your table and label each as What, Who, When, Status and Comments.
Now you can fill in what your action is, who will be in charge of it, when the action should be completed, the status of the completion, and any needed comments.
This video tutorial below shows how to create an action plan on Microsoft Excel:
Google Docs is a word processing tool that comes with Google’s free,
web-based Google Workspace suite. It’s perfect for creating an action plan template similar to Microsoft Word. Its sweet spot is that it allows you to share the document with your team easily.
This is the process for creating an action plan on Google Docs.
Make sure that you log in to your Google accounts. Then, from Google applications, open Drive, then open Google Docs as shown in the image below.
Give your action plan a befitting title.
Now click on Insert, then Table.
After that, type in the header text and label each, as shown in the image below.
Below is a video tutorial on how to create and share action plan templates with your team:
Here are the answers to some frequently asked questions about action plan templates.
To make a simple action plan template, you need to:
A good action plan template guides you to achieve your goals and objectives and evaluate your progress.
Yes, there are different action plan apps. Examples are the 90 Day Action Plan on Google Playstore, My Action Plan app on AppStore, and InPhase Assurance app.
You can also use SweetProcess iOS and Android apps as an action plan software to create and manage your company’s processes, procedures, and policies.
Action plans are effective because they make your goals clearer. They also aid in forming consensus toward a goal and foster a sense of responsibility and accountability.
The main purpose of an action plan is to specify the resources you need to achieve your goals and provide a schedule for when you must perform certain activities.
To write a better action plan, you should have a clear idea of what you want to achieve, then make the objectives quantifiable. After this, download the relevant templates specified in this article and tweak them to represent your required actions.
SweetProcess helps organizations document their company’s policies, procedures, and processes.
If you want your team members to achieve their goals on time and become more productive at work, you can use our software to do so.
Here are some companies who have leveraged the power of our software to manage their employees effectively and efficiently in one place.
Spark Marketer is a marketing agency for small- and medium-sized local businesses that want to leverage digital marketing to grow their businesses. Its dedicated team works closely with companies to navigate the digital space and achieve measurable results.
The Nashville-based company has a track record of success working with chimney businesses in the home services space. It is committed to offering its clientele a custom experience and more than essential online services. They also create marketing campaigns focused on the unique attributes of each business to generate continuous income.
One of the biggest problems Spark Marketer faced was a lack of documentation. As a result, employees depended on tribal knowledge to get things done, which resulted in disorganization in the workplace.
“When you’re doing work to a standard, then you can measure against that standard. Before, we would have these nebulous conversations when we had to let someone go: ‘Well, we don’t feel like you’re doing the job well.’ ‘Show me where I wasn’t doing it well, and I’ll change.’ This is horrible to admit now. I’m almost ashamed to say it but you know, there was no objectivity,” said Carter Harkins, co-founder of Spark Marketer.
Then they adopted SweetProcess to foster growth. Carter and his partner were introduced to SOPs by a business consultant, and they gave it a shot using Google Docs. However, they soon began to see the importance of documentation, and as their business began to grow, they realized that Google Docs was insufficient to sustain their growth.
Carter said, “Growth causes you to think differently. You start realizing what got us to this point will not get us to where we want to go, so it’s time to shift gears. It’s time to look for efficiencies, so I started looking for systems that would help us document our processes more easily and more uniformly, and I just literally went out and started scouring the web.”
SweetProcess has a reputation as a results-oriented software. Like many businesses, the team at Spark Marketer has been enjoying the benefits of the system. Carter provides more details of how the software has improved operations at his organization.
1. Simplified process documentation
Capturing the right amount of information makes the difference in business process documentation. On the other hand, your processes may not be of much help if they are overly detailed and clustered—this is often the case when you use manual tools such as Google Docs for your documentation.
“In a Google Doc format, you’re grabbing an entire section of text and moving it up above and just trying to organize things, but with SweetProcess, it’s super simple to break things out into new tasks and reorder them so that everything flows in a much more natural way.
2. Decentralized knowledge base
Documenting business processes goes beyond writing a bunch of information. There is a need to sieve out relevant information from the shaft and make it easily accessible by team members using a knowledge base software.
“The ability to group things into procedural or process-based groupings has been a real change for us. For example, in Google Docs, it was just turned into one folder that was shared with everybody, and nobody knew exactly how to find what they needed.”
All that time spent by employees looking for specific information for their tasks could be used better, and SweetProcess made that possible.
“SweetProcess not only standardized the format but made it easy to create the teams that we needed so that you only see the processes that you need to see, which makes it so much easier for people to go find what they need.”
Another company, Zen Media, is a public relations (PR) firm specializing in the tech niche. Established in 2009, the Dallas-based organization captures key moments in a brand’s life and turns those moments into the talk of the town. Plus, they have a track record of offering results-driven PR services to B2B and B2C brands worldwide.
The new generation PR agency gives brands their desired level of exposure and ensures that this translates into money. It uses various techniques to measure the performance of its PR campaigns to understand their efficiency and round up the numbers.
When Stephanie Chavez resumed her role as the company’s chief marketing officer, she found out that they had a series of great products that catered to their client’s needs but lacked operational structure underneath this excellent performance.
“We were always producing great products and doing a great job for our clients; that wasn’t debatable. What was debatable was the ‘how can we streamline?’ and so that was one of the first things that I noticed,” Stephanie said.
In the absence of a central knowledge base, employees relied on tribal knowledge to get by. Little could be done when the people who knew how to perform specific tasks were indisposed, holding the organization hostage.
“What happens if one of the employees is out or sick? Every client is a little bit different—the way we research their content topics and their hashtags and whatnot, they are all different,” she said.
Having noticed the structural gap in the organization, Stephanie was keen on finding the right system to resolve the problem. She found her answer when she attended a marketing class organized by a friend on LinkedIn. He recommended SweetProcess as an effective tool for streamlining business operations, and she checked it out.
“Anthony talked about SweetProcess, and I thought, well, I’m going to check that out, and it’s been really wonderful. I have each department go through it, and we have a list of all the things that they do that are repeatable each month so that I can make sure, ‘Hey, what did you put in this month? Let’s run through it and make sure it makes sense to everyone.’”
Read on to see exactly how SweetProcess facilitated the growth at Zen Media.
1. Employee onboarding and training
Hiring more employees is necessary as a business grows, but it is a challenge for many organizations to bring new hires up to speed with the processes and procedures in place. The team at Zen Media now enjoys a seamless onboarding process thanks to SweetProcess. Rather than going through a rigorous onboarding process, they direct new employees to the standard operating procedures in the system to get all the information they need about their duties.
“When we hire new interns or employees, I send them to a whole bunch of the SweetProcess steps that we have, and I just send in the email, link it, and say watch all these, go through these processes, and that’s the very first onboarding process.”
Employee training on SweetProcess is not a one-off. New and established team members can always go back to the system if they doubt any process or procedure.
2. Quality control and assurance
Achieving desired results at the workplace is more feasible when team members operate on the same level and produce consistent results. Beyond creating uniformity in organizational output, quality assurance and quality control help to win customer trust and loyalty as the customers are sure to get great results repeatedly. SweetProcess has helped the company work consistently as a team rather than individually.
“It helps from a consistency perspective because everyone might be doing something a little bit differently, and I think it’s really hard to scale. Think about McDonald’s: if everyone in every franchise were making their hamburgers a little bit different, it wouldn’t be McDonald’s because you couldn’t expect the same thing every time. So by having everyone on the same page with SweetProcess, they can have a more efficient and predictable result.”
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Conclusion
An action plan helps you to achieve your goals. It transforms your vision into attainable results that boost your company’s growth. It also assists you in staying focused and success hungry.
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