You Can’t Afford to be Indispensible

A business operating manual is the difference between a business that can run without you, and a business that can’t. Normally, not being indispensable would be certain bankruptcy for a small business owner, however, as a techie, your customers will still be there, even if you aren’t, and you need to ensure your business continues being able to service them, even if you’re absent, away, ill or unable to function. Someone else needs to be able to follow your work, and to carry out further support for your customers if they need it.

Imagine if you got hit by a bus. What would happen to your customers? How would their calls and needs be met, and by whom? Who would know enough about what you do and how you do it to step in? An operating manual can do just that for you, and, when touting for new business, can ensure that your potential customers feel just as comfortable hiring you as they would a three or more person outfit.

Items to include in the operating manual

The structure of your business – what you deal with, how many employees you have (just you, likely) where you operate from, what your contact information is, and any other key pieces of information – this should be near the front of your operating manual, and should be clear to read and easy to find.

The manual should then be divided into sections -each section should match an area of your business operation.

For example, how do you conduct your customer contact? Your procedure for dealing with your customers. Do you courtesy call them to make sure everything’s OK on a weekly/monthly basis for any regulars, or is it more often? Do you wait for them to come to you? (I hope not – you should always have a regular contact set up). How do your customers make contact if there is a fault or a need for your to visit? What happens if they want to make a purchase from you?

How do you organise support mechanisms? Do you connect remotely to customers, and if so, how? Do you need passwords? If so, please don’t keep these with your operating manual, but instead, ensure they are accessible only via a secure method such as a safe or passworded file. Customer details and operating manuals should never be kept in the same place!

Do you always run a set of diagnostic tests first? Do your customers know what they are? You can save time, money and irritation by documenting what your diagnostic tests are, and, in some cases, training your customers (especially if you are supporting a workplace with many machines) to run through these diagnostic tests with you. Can you give your (regular) customers a procedure to follow? How do you provide them with details of their security/password/admin rights setup/software licensing information?

How do you collect payment? Do you invoice after 30 days? Do you offer a discount? When and why? What is your model?

What about suppliers? Do you have key contacts at your suppliers, and is there a mechanism for ordering that you use? Do you look about for the cheapest, do you have experiences of particular suppliers that you will benefit from noting for the future? When do you pay your bills, and how? Do you get notification via email, letter or telephone? Again, point to the place these details will be kept rather than keeping each individual item with your operating manual.

How to get started!

It’s OK knowing you have to do something, but a whole lot harder to actually do something about it. Follow these steps to make a start!

1. Document your business outline – you should have this on the tip of your tongue – failing that, get it from your website or business plan. Who are you, what do you do and who do you do it for?
2. Start making a file for key customer and supplier contact details. You can think about how to organise it later.
3. Keep a rough note of the work you are doing – is any of it repeatable and should there be procedures to make it easier? Look back over the notes at the end of each week and ask yourself if any of it can be improved or documented.
4. Make a list of the weekly jobs you do, the monthly jobs and the daily jobs – these are also operating instructions – then create procedures (instructions) to show HOW and state WHY you do the daily/weekly/monthly jobs.
5. Are there things your customers should know that you currently only share verbally with them? Would they know what you had done if you weren’t there to tell them? Would another technical firm be able to step in if they needed to? If the answer is ‘NO’ go back to the beginning of this article and READ IT AGAIN starting with the title!