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Information Mapping® Desktop Guide

6 STEPS
to better Standard Operating
Procedures (SOPs)
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By making your SOPs clear, understandable, and easy to use, you can help
your organization improve productivity, comply with regulatory
requirements, and gain advantage in today’s increasingly competitive
marketplace.

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When your policies and procedures, reference documents, training materials
and other business communications are user-focused, concise and easy to
follow, your entire organization will benefit from improved compliance, reduced
error rates, a safer work environment, enhanced employee performance and
faster Go-To-Market.

This Guide provides six simple steps to follow as you write, assess or revise your
organization’s SOPs. The steps are distilled from the principles of the
Information Mapping® Methodology, a proven, research-based structured
authoring methodology that makes information easy to access,
understand and use.

About Information Mapping

Information Mapping has over four decades of experience in helping
organizations reduce risk and enhance productivity by creating more effective
communications. Information Mapping’s professional services, training
programs and software solutions are in daily use within organizations in multiple
industries all over the world.

The Information Mapping Methodology is a systematic, research-based

approach to creating business communications that are accessible, clear and
user-focused. The Methodology consists of a set of easily learned principles
and techniques for analyzing, organizing and presenting information. It provides
organizations with a content standard that is highly effective for
communications ranging from emails and memos to complex systems
documentation.

While this Guide will not teach you to use the Methodology, it is designed to
help you look at information in a new way. It will provide you with tips and ideas
that can help you improve the quality of virtually any written business
communication.

OVERVIEW
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One of the most common mistakes writers make is to create SOPs and
other documents in a “one size fits all” fashion without considering the needs

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of different audiences. This leads to problems for readers, because one size
rarely, if ever, fits all.

Help all your readers find what they need

Say you are developing procedures for emergency evacuation. The document
you create may be read by security personnel, executive management, and also
by an audit team. Each group will require a different level of information. In the
same manner, a new hire filling out an expense report for the first time needs a
different level of detail than an experienced salesperson who just wants to check
the meal allowance before completing a weekly report.

When information for different audiences is mixed together without considering

audience needs, it creates confusion, inefficiencies, frustration, and mistakes.
Organizing the information so each audience can quickly find what they’re
looking for—and skip what they don’t need—will greatly increase the
effectiveness of your documents.

STEP 1: AUDIENCE
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TIP
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 Who are my audiences?

 Who needs to do what?

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To ensure that each of your audiences can quickly find
the information they need, before you begin writing,
ask yourself these questions:

 What do they need to know in order to do it?

As you review existing SOPs, ask these questions:

 Is the right level of detail provided for different

audiences?

 Can each audience easily find and access the

information they need, where and when they
need it?

 Do they find the SOP easy to understand

and use?
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Information is easiest to find and understand when it is categorized based on its
purpose for the audience. This table describes six distinct Information Types that

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account for 80 to 90 percent of the content of most documents.

Information Types
Information Type Description
Procedure A set of steps that a person performs to accomplish a
task.
Process A series of events or stages that occurs over time and
has a specific result.
Principle A statement that dictates behavior, such as a rule,
policy, or guideline.
Fact A statement that is assumed to be true.
Concept An abstract idea that needs to be defined or explained.
Structure A physical representation of parts and boundaries,
including charts, diagrams, pictures, and graphical
representations of relationships.

STEP 2: PURPOSE
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TIP
what your audience needs to know about each
Information Type.

Ask these questions:

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Create a list of topics for your SOP by considering

 Have you identified the procedures your readers

need to perform?

 Have you determined what they need to know

to perform successfully?

 Have you separated “nice to know” from “need

to know” information?
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Now that you have broken down your information into its components, you are
ready to organize and sequence it based on what readers need to do and what

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they need to know in order to be successful.

If your SOP includes extraneous information that buries important details or

fails to anticipate questions that may be asked, then your readers will quickly
become frustrated. They may turn to supervisors, coworkers or other sources
for the answers they need—but the answers they get may not be accurate,
complete or up-to-date.

For example:
If employees must wear safety goggles when performing a certain
procedure, you should bring that requirement to their attention early in the
SOP, and make sure that it’s placed prominently, where it won’t be
missed. This is important information that belongs right up front, not buried in
dense text or left until late in the procedure.

STEP 3: ORGANIZATION
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TIP
Always put yourself in the reader’s shoes.

Ask these questions:

 Have you presented information in the order in

which readers need to access and use it?

 Have you explained new concepts for the

benefit of novices, while making it easy for
experts to skip these explanations?

 Have you placed cautions and warnings

prominently at the beginning of a procedure,
rather than burying them in dense text or
leaving them as notes at the end?
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Consistency is critical. Be consistent in your use of terms, acronyms,
abbreviations, and formats. Consistency aids comprehension, making it easier
for readers to understand where to find and how to interpret complex
information. SOPs and other business documents are not the place for writers

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to exercise creativity.

Follow these guidelines for achieving consistency:

 Decide on the terms you want to use, and apply them consistently. For
example, an “illustration” should not later be called a “graphic”.
 Decide on a standard way to present each type of information. For
example, every procedure should follow the same format.
 Once you have defined an acronym, continue to use that acronym. For
example, after introducing “Adverse Drug Reaction (ADR),” use “ADR”
throughout the document.
 If you have typically presented a certain type of information in a table
format, do not later present that information as a graph, simply to add
variety.

STEP 4: CONSISTENCY
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TIP
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Varying your terminology may be desirable in creative
writing, but in business documentation aim for
consistency so readers won’t become confused.

Ask these questions:

 Have you clearly defined terms, acronyms and

abbreviations and used them consistently?

 Have you presented the different information

types in consistent formats?
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Ask employees where they go to find information, and observe them to see
how long it takes them to get answers to their questions. Do you see excessive

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use of sticky-notes, bookmarks, and copies of controlled documents? Are
supervisors being flooded with questions?

When employees cannot find the information they need, it is often because
necessary details have been relegated to appendices or stuck in other places
where they may be missed.

Make information easier to find with access aids such as a table of contents, an
index, titles and labels, and hyperlinks. Charts, tables, graphics and bulleted
lists also make important information stand out.

STEP 5: ACCESSIBILITY
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TIP
Use clear and succinct labels to help readers find
information quickly.

Ask these questions:

 Did you include access aids, such as a table of

contents, index and hyperlinks?

 Are titles and labels descriptive and distinct?

 Are charts, tables, graphics and bulleted lists

used to help highlight and clarify information?

 Is the information stored and distributed in a

way that makes it available when and where it is
needed?
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Creating content in small, modular units allows you to easily reuse the content
for multiple purposes without losing the integrity of the information.

For example:

or other types of documentation within your organization.

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Safety instructions you developed for a SOP can be repurposed for other SOPs

Reusing information in a consistent way from one document to the next helps
ensure compliance and reduce corporate risk.

Research has shown that creating content in small, well-defined units also
makes information easier to find and remember, aids comprehension, and
significantly reduces the time it takes to update and revise documents. If your
SOPs aren’t structured into small, well-defined information modules that are
grouped together into meaningful topics, it will be difficult to ensure
compliance and productivity.

STEP 6: REUSABILITY
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TIP
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Think of your modules of information as “building
blocks” that can be reused to assemble other
documents.

Ask these questions:

 Have you created small, well-defined units of

information?

 Have you grouped information into meaningful,

relevant topics?

 Can your units of information easily be reused

for multiple purposes?
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BEFORE: Why write SOPs like this?

Logging of Incident

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The originator (this may be the person who identified the incident or responsible
person of the department) shall record the incident along with
correction / immediate action performed, if any, within 24 hours from the time
of observing/identification of the incident, through SAP.

AFTER: When you can write them like this!

Logging all incidents

Log all incidents, with the corrective/immediate action preformed,
within the first 24 hours:
Step Action

1  Categorize the incident based on the impact.

Refer to Categories of Incidents.
 Seek inputs from Quality Assurance for
categorizing the incident, if required.
2 Record the actual, complete and accurate
information of the incident (available at
the time of logging) along with its category.

B&A
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When you improve the quality of your Standard Operating Procedures, you
help improve productivity and reduce corporate risk.

Ask these questions to determine the quality of your documentation.

 Have you assessed your audience’s needs?

 Have you categorized your information by type

and purpose?

 Is the information organized from the reader’s

perspective?

 Are the language and formatting of your

SOP consistent?

 Have you made the information accessible to

those who need it, when and how they need it?

 Is the information presented in small, well-

defined, easily reusable units?

CHECKLIST
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Join the thousands of individuals and leading organizations who have
transformed the way they write and work through the power of Information
Mapping®.

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www.informationmapping.com
Information Mapping International - T +32 (0)9 253 14 25
Information Mapping US - T +1-800-463-6627
Information Mapping India - T +91 (80) 6793 5328/29

CONTACT