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As an entrepreneur, you find deep satisfaction in building your own business. It’s challenging, but you’ve cultivated your resilience to setbacks and your ability to overcome obstacles. And you’ve been able to do some exciting things that were once only dreams. 

But you realize that selling a business is a great opportunity to branch out and try something new. And if you can get more from your business sale, you’ll have that much more money in your pocket to tie up loose ends and move on to your next big thing.  

Here’s one critical component that can lead to a higher valuation for the sale of your business. 

Why Document Your Business Processes? 

The more you document your systems and processes, the easier it will be to sell your business. Why? Author Jaime Jay is relentless when it comes to documentation. Not only because it makes his business much more efficient, but because it also makes everything easier if he needs to delegate responsibility to another party so that he can focus on his best work. In his book Quit Repeating Yourself, Jay says: 
 
“The more detailed your systems and processes are, the more valuable your company will be. If you want to sell your business at some point in the future, or bring someone else in to run it for you, having extremely detailed processes will make it easier for you to remove yourself from the daily operations.” 

Whether you need to take a step back to deal with a personal crisis, enter a new and demanding phase of life, or sell your business for a substantially increased profit, rigorous and ongoing documentation is going to set you up for greater success!  

It’s also going to help everyone at your company take ownership and responsibility for their roles in completing tasks because they will be able to operate efficiently without annoying micromanagement. 

How to Document Your Business Processes 

The fine details for how to effectively, thoroughly, and efficiently document your processes can be found in Jaime’s book, but here are the basics: 

  • Document a process for every single task that is performed in your company 
  • Create a workflow for every process including the ‘why’, the ‘how’ and the ‘what-ifs.’ 
  • Create a workflow for making processes using verbal and visual recording. 
  • Create clear signals for when processes are complete. 
  • Make every workflow simple enough for anyone to complete. 
  • Create flowcharts to help employees navigate the “what-ifs.” 
  • Start with smaller tasks first to enhance your documentation process. 
  • Organize your documentation files for intuitive retrieval and back them up! 

There’s much more on offer in Quit Repeating Yourself, such as a guide for creating documentation for training, hiring, and recruiting. These critical components lead to greater productivity and profits. 

Get Faster and Easier Documentation with DPA 

While documenting your processes internally is a fantastic way to work on your business so that you spend less time working in your business, we know that it is also a daunting task. That’s why, when we use Data Processing Automation (DPA) to automate workflows at a company, we document your processes for you. It’s simply a natural byproduct of developing your custom automation software. 
 
So, not only do you get custom software for automatically completing your tasks faster and with greater accuracy, you also get custom documentation for how the custom software completes the tasks. And this naturally includes documentation for human involvement in the process. The result is that we deliver additional value to your business while ramping up production and profits. And when you sell your business, it will be leaner and more efficient! 
 
Be sure to grab Jaime Jay’s excellent book and leave your thoughts in the comments.