Recommended Tools To Document And Share Processes

The Design Startup Show

Hi design starters. I know many of you like to know about tools, right? As designers or people who have designed background. And we are, you know, kind of building a design agency ourselves. We know we like to dabble in like tech stuff, tools and anything that is techie equipment kind of, um, Um, thing to help us move quicker and more efficient in our work, right?

Especially in when you come to productizing your company or you productizing your services, it's way more, way more fun when you start to look at tools and anything to help speed up and expedite processes, because when it comes to productizing, you will need a lot of. Process processes systems to get things moving without you always being in it to, to run things right.

You, you don't want to be the bottleneck and that's the point of productizing and that's what productizing helps with. So just packaging your services is not good enough. All right. We have to use other tools to help us and where we can leverage on. To make things run smoothly. So when it comes to, when it comes to, um, putting down your processes, putting down all the knowledge of what you have in your brain down to something where, where another designer, another manager, another director can come in, look at it and know what is the next step and the next and the next of that.

So, yeah. So when it comes to processes, you need to have this place to document. It's something like an SOP or standard operating procedure, but it's much more than that because when it comes to SOP, it may not be something actionable. SOP can be just, um, Plain documentation texts of anything at all. And the person who is reading it may not know what to do next, but when it comes to processes, there is like checklist.

There are video screen recordings, or these are the things to show your next person who is running the business or running that, that kind of department, you know, what, what are the next steps? So. When it comes to tools, there are several ones when it comes to processes and documenting your processes. And if you're just starting out, I I'm just listing out the best ones that you can use.

Um, and, and there are not many around, there are many that are good when it comes to the higher level processes and putting down the systems, which are more pricey. But when it comes to good ones that are not so pricey, then also many, I believe some of you may be using like Trello, even a Sana, um, Nosha and slight, which are also the ones I have been using that I've been trying out slight.

And it's pretty awesome. It's uh, the interface is really good. I love the design and everything. The only question when it comes to the. The, when it comes to the payment plan, is that when it comes to the free version, there are, there is only a hundred documents and limited number of documents, which is a hundred documents for, for your members.

So that's very limited and you can just move up to the standard one and pay $6 and 67 per member per month to get unlimited documents. It's not a lot. So I find that slide is. Uh, a great one, which you can consider then the next one that is great for starters would be Tetra. Alright, try.call, which is free, uh, for it could be unlimited free unlimited documents.

And, um, but of course there are other limited areas within Tetra. I feel that it's good enough for you to get started. Without going too pricey. So slight Tetra and notion, notion notion is great because it's flexible. But the challenge with it being flexible is that, uh, as a starter doing a systems and processes at the start, it may not tell you what is the next thing to do in that time on any, you know, um, um, taps or.

Or templates that that is easy for you. They do have templates obviously, but, but I find that the way it works is more like a task management tool. You can use this as processes safekeeping for sure. And you can come on kind of develop it, but it takes some time to learn on, on putting them, putting the things together to make it a process, um, SOP or process systems.

Manager. All right. So it's not that it's not good. It's great. As well, notion is great, uh, because of its flexibility and because of its flexibility, you may need to spend a lot of time figuring that out to put things together. So that's a good and not so good thing, but, but it's really dependent on, on how you want to work with your systems, right?

So the slight there's a notion that Tetra. There is a little bit of a higher level is a process street, which I've also tried before they have been changing their pricing here and there for awhile. They were probably testing things out. They offered a fully free one before and with a limited checklists and templates.

But now I don't think they have a totally free one, but you can try for free. Yeah. And first. Plan is $15. So it's all right. It's, it's quite okay. Just to start with unlimited checklists and unlimited templates. So it's something that you can consider if $15 per month is something that you are willing to fork out right per month.

So these are the few, um, more, but once, uh, and for, to just get started, which is great. So don't use Google docs because. Google docs are just to keep your documents, but when it comes to processes, it's, it's not the right thing to use because you have to think of yourself as a day to day running business.

That's running every hour, every minute, even seconds. Imagine your teammate or your member trying to find out what's the next step. They have to go into Google drive. Figure out which document is the correct? One click on it, go in again, and then read word for word with where is the area to follow and where are the next steps?

There are too many steps. And when there are too many steps to open this, this document, go into this folder and then scroll down to look for a document. It takes a lot of time. Time is one thing, and it gets frustrating because. Your team member is trying to solve a problem. And if you use Google drive or Google docs for that, you are not helping your team member at all.

And that makes it harder for them to work when they find it harder to work, it's easy for them to give up and probably overwhelm and not do anything at all. And that leads to your, your productivity and your results, right? In, in what you are, what you are putting out and helping your clients with. So in order to get things moving fast and not to stress your members too much, you know, they, they want to have a seamless way to, to know.

Okay. So what is next right use of use the process system kind of, um, tool that's meant for it. That's why people create all these, because they already know that there is issue using just what document or, or Google dots too. Get processes put down. So, so, um, the next year, when, if let's say you are already starting out and scaling up, you can try sweet process.

This is a really good one because it's very simple yet. It's, um, powerful in, in, in, in scaling, in helping you scale with more team members, um, more ways to. Kind of refine your processes as you grow and you can also manage tasks within it. So, uh, you can also, you know, kind of create private or public knowledge base.

So I think this is great for scaling and growing and pricing is definitely for the, those who are scaling. The next one is also for scaling, which is system hub system hub, um, it's hundred and 20. Per monthly per month and you can include up to 40 users. So this is really for people who are really growing big and have more than 20 users.

You have so many in your company that you need something that can fill up with all these users at an economy price. So, yeah, so these are all that I would recommend and you can kind of. Pausing. You're looking for things, uh, and tools that can help with processes because these are what I've tried as well.

So it's men, it's, it's down to choosing one. All right. All these are great. You just have to try and play around to see which one fits you and your team best. Right. So, yep. That's it for now? I'll see you in the next one. Thanks. Bye.