Is Your Document Register Alive?

Business Monitor has, of late, been focussed on model documents, as a number of forward thinking clients started asking us to run an eye over their documents and give them feedback as they prepared for a new financial year.

Our first question is: do you have a Document Register and is it a living document?

The answers varied from spreadsheets to CRMs to websites and more. There is no right or wrong here BUT there needs to be consistency, access and a living document.

As each project progressed, we found locating the documents was the easy piece!

Matching titles to register entries, dates for review against what is recorded, responsibility for documents, was there evidence of ownership or just templates with no unique business features, legislative updates and more were all triggers for the documents to be reviewed and updated or, in some cases completely rewritten

Of the companies we have had the opportunity to work with to date, many had made a great start when they first built their Document Register, but it was not a living document - much of the material was no longer relevant.

We worked through our Business Monitor process of Evaluate, Develop, Implement and Maintain - to achieve a living Document Register with corporate ownership.

What was impressive about this - these organisations came to us to discuss how they could do better at managing their policies and procedures, as their own awareness of the missing pieces was causing concern.

They were not looking for an easy fix, or a piece of software but instead they wanted to move towards business improvement and development, instead of pushing back because it is all too hard,.

Business Monitor is all about helping businesses be the best they can be and, when companies are so committed to this, the result is really worth watching.