Standard Operating Procedures

0:05 You have done too far censure. Wow for you young. This is the pipe Man here on the Adventures pipe Man W four c Y Radio and this is our positively Pipeman segment and we have our resident expert on business with some powerful business strategies. This week we're going to talk about procedures. What does that even mean? Michael Barberita, can you tell me what that even means and how we handle it? Yes? Well, first of all, it was a dirty word.

0:46 It's been a dirty it still probably is a dirty word for most business owners. They for the most part, business owners absolutely see the value in it. And I'll describe it in a second, but they absolutely see the value in it. But the work involved historically has been nothing should have devastating. So what a standard operating procedure is or s OP is, It's a it's all taking each hit, every process in your business and putting it on paper as to what that process is and the value that that has is a couple of fold. One, it allows a new employees to understand process the process in your business much easier than some type of training program, although the training program should still be employed. The s OP accelerates the understanding for a new employee. Secondly, when a buyer is looking to buy your business and you show them your s ops, you know, when they're under a confidentiality agreement of course, then you can, uh the value of your business goes up dramatically because everything, every every part of your process is documented. Now the horror show historically has been preparing those you know, some people have their employees prepare them. Uh, each individual employee prepares

2:20 like to do of what they do all the time. But it's that's not a homogeneous standard operating procedure. That's the collaboration of multiple documents that make up a standard operating procedure. So but what I found is is I and I've done it for a client recently. When an employee when who understands the process and the processes if there if there's multiple processes, uh, the employee puts together an outline of the process. Now if there's ten different processes, then the employee that does ten different outlines, we put it into preferably and it doesn't have to be but preferably either you know CLAUDE or chat GPT, and preferably CLAUDE because of project knowledge. But anything could be argued on that it doesn't matter. And then that outline is put into your your your robot, whether it's a CHAT, GPT or claude, and they print out the s OP in a in a a format that you want because you also explained to the AI that you want a specific format, and it prints out the s OP and the person, the employee who gave you the outline, he

3:50 edits it and that's it. And I was able to produce s ops for my client. We have fifteen SOPs. It's in the trades. We produce those SOPs and about a grand total of about six or seven hours, and that includes the outline that was prepared. Once it got to me and I did the sop, it literally took me maybe three minutes, but it took him about six or seven hours in total to put together all the outlines. And that's it and what used to take and if you ever were going to do that manually as some companies have done, it's days and days of work, days and days. So it's a really it's a very effective way to generate SOPs and there's plenty of value in it with new employees but also existing employees too, because you can't take for granted that the existing employees know the process right exactly. Yeah, so that's dangerous.

5:02 Uh. And as a matter of fact, the sps I put together for my clients, some of the employees that have been there for years were enlightened about some things. So so it has that value. Then of course at resale or at exit, it has tremendous value because a buyer puts a lot of stock in a company that is that organized and has standard operating procedures. In place, it makes for an easy transition too. Yeah, absolutely, And that's that adds value to the to the to the business. Uh And so uh, I have found it to be a real something that was not even in a conversation that a business owner should put together s o p s because of the burden associated with preparing them to Now it's definitely clearly in the conversation and a lot less burden.

6:03 Nice. So how do people reach out to you to get more information on this and other things that you do to help those in businesses, Well. If they go to our website NEXTSTEPCFO dot net. In the upper right hand corner is an orange button. What that orange button is it's an AI business assessment that takes less than ten minutes, that will find three strategies related to their business, the impact that that strategy could have on the business, on the revenue impact, and a little explanation of how to go about implementing that strategy.

6:43 And that's free and it takes less than ten minutes. So if they go to the website, they'll see find hidden Revenue an orange button that says find hitting revenue in less than ten minutes and they could click that. They could go to it free of charge and find out what what what's that that hidden revenue of fifty to one hundred thousand dollars that's hiding in their business in three strategies. Wow. Well, once again, you're a wealth of information and very helpful for all our listeners who have a business, and everybody needs to check out you. Michael Barberita, next step CFO, and I think you'll be very happy that you did. Thank you, Thank you for listening to the Adventures of plate Man on w for CUI Radio.