Other than solopreneurs, all small businesses will eventually have to add employees to meet their growing demands. These team members will be thrown into an environment where processes may not yet be codified and an organizational hierarchy may not yet be fully established.
Confusion among new employees introduces obstacles to collaboration and engagement, and small businesses can’t afford much time building teamwork. Their ability to run lean-and-mean and make quick pivots, both of which are impossible without strong internal collaboration, are some of small businesses’ greatest competitive differentiators.
To maintain the strengths of collaboration, small businesses can ground their software suite in tools that foster communication and partnerships, which goes beyond chat-focused apps.
Look no further than online word processing software, an indispensable and affordable tool that has become a staple of tech stacks across company sizes. By introducing a shared word processing app, small businesses can encourage collaboration, codify approvals, standardize workflows, and position themselves for growth—far more than typing up documents. Here are some of the ways in which small businesses can benefit:
Standardizing and templating
Once online word processing software is in place, it’ll become tempting for new employees to utilize whichever processes works best for themselves, as they’ll likely be performing multiple different functions at the company. The challenge, then, is for small businesses to build sustainable and repeatable workflows, allowing for growth, that employees can adhere to when they lack guidance.
Document templates serve an invaluable purpose in fostering collaboration and encouraging standardization. They provide guardrails within which employees can work without the need to micromanage how information will ultimately be communicated within the organization. These can include official document templating, layouts with space for images, invoices containing embedded calculators, and much more. Best of all, many software vendors offer the ability to create, edit, and even fill out these templates using AI, which will significantly reduce the workload and ensure adherence to best practices.
Once templating is complete, small businesses can utilize these documents within workflows they’ve created for employees. This serves two purposes: the first is to install additional guideposts that keep employees within a process that can be more easily communicated throughout an organization.
Secondly, workflow creation is an endeavor that helps small businesses codify their processes moving forward. It requires working through operations, step-by-step, until everything becomes standardized and runs at maximum efficiency. Not only are these workflows simple to communicate, they set employees up for success by seamlessly integrating with word processing software.
Encouraging collaboration
For years, online word processing software has served as the center of company collaboration, enabling real-time edits and comments from multiple people at once.
The core of these apps remain the same today, though their functionality has increased exponentially. The introduction of AI unlocked smart writing suggestions, plagiarism checkers, and automatic translation to the mix. If small businesses have created workflows, AI can integrate documents into them to ensure each step in the process is as effective as it can be.
However, these significant bells and whistles ring hollow if employees refuse to use the software, either because it’s not tailored to how they work or it’s far too complicated to be practical.
Small business owners can ease employees into new word processing software by immediately using it once it’s implemented. That way, they can offer employees a chance to weigh in on documents, even if they may not have done so in the past, to demonstrate the benefits of maintaining a centralized space for collaboration. Companies that offer remote work to their employees are well-suited for these efforts and can even cross-edit a document in real-time while on a call to make meetings feel even more efficient.
It’s also worth designating an employee to be the lead editor of a document, responsible for consolidating all tracked changes and addressing queries and comments in a timely fashion. These employees will receive a front row seat to this new piece of technology and grow to appreciate its time-saving automation features.
Eliminating bottlenecks
When small businesses launch, their owners absorb the lion’s share of responsibilities, even when new employees are brought aboard. All of the information lives in their heads, so it makes sense that it would take less time to execute tasks than to explain their thinking to others. And, as with all small businesses, time is of the essence.
This can’t last forever. Small business owners must eventually delegate if they want to grow their company. Yet, too often, this task proves difficult when owners are required to sign off on just about everything. It’s easy for them to become overwhelmed and for necessary approvals to fall through the cracks.
Shared word processing software can help. Once templates are created, most writing software can automate the approval process by sending alerts to the appropriate parties or utilizing authenticated signature software to securely collect permissions without interrupting workflows. The software could even create the appropriate documents from a simple prompt, saving even more time.
Because this software lives in the cloud, it can be accessed from any device at any time. Small business owners won’t have to tether themselves to their machines, especially if they set up automatic approvals in advance, thus speeding up the time between requests and sign-off.
Processing more than words
Online word processing software stands alone, but performs even more admirably when part of an integrated suite of apps. Workflows can include processes from across an organization. Information can be monitored and communicated more effectively. Documents can be embedded into shared dashboards, making them easier to find.
Regardless of how it’s eventually folded into small business tech stacks, or operating independently, cloud-based word processing remains a wise investment early in a company’s lifespan due to its flexibility. These apps not only provide tools for production, they are foundational to the sorts of idea exchanges that foster teamwork and growth. And, small businesses can rest easy knowing that they no longer have to double check that they’re working from the correct version of a document—a headache no company wants.
