A Practical Guide to Leveraging AI to Speed Up SOP Creation

The hidden costs of undocumented processes are huge. Without clear documentation, businesses are exposed to several issues. Imagine the cost associated with increased employee confusion, poor quality, delays, low productivity, increased risk of errors, and inconsistent decision-making. 

These issues can quickly snowball into a nightmare and a significant financial drain. 

Hence, organizations need a clear SOP (standard operating procedure) that prevents teams from reinventing the wheel, reduces errors, and boosts productivity. 

SOPs serve as a single source of truth, bringing clarity to routine tasks and ensuring consistency in delivering them. Whether you are onboarding new employees or managing client campaigns, SOPs can turn chaos into a streamlined process. 

But here’s the catch! Creating SOPs can be a slow process, demanding hours of discussions, writing, and reviewing.

AI is changing this by speeding up the SOP creation process. Deploying AI in SOP creation not only saves time but also helps you stay agile and ahead of the curve. 

In this post, we will throw light on how AI can be leveraged to speed up SOP creation. 

AI’s Role in SOP Creation 

Cutting-edge technologies like AI are poised to unleash the next wave of productivity in the business world. Leveraging AI for SOP creation can help businesses unlock renewed efficiency, accuracy, innovation, and adaptability levels in their operations. 

Say, you are introducing a team member to the new employee onboarding process. You’ve explained the process verbally and shared the key highlights. Instead of manually working on creating an SOP using the information, an AI tool like ChatGPT, Claude, or Loom can do all the heavy lifting. 

All you need to do is prompt AI with your rough notes, ask it to adjust the tone and simplify the language, and share clear instructions. AI will break down the complex actions into simple steps and apply templates across procedures, significantly reducing the time taken to complete this task. 

A real-world use case could be a digital marketing founder recording their client call explaining the client onboarding process. They use a tool like Loom and transcribe the key steps. They can then add a prompt to ChatGPT and request a specific format. Within minutes, AI will draft the first usable SOP, which can then be tweaked according to your business needs. 

Let’s look at this in more detail in the next section. 

A 5-Step Guide to Using AI for SOP Creation 

Here is a deep dive into how AI can be leveraged to create an SOP within seconds. 

Step 1: Capture the Process Accurately 

Start by listing the raw process you wish to create. You can use your preferred format. For instance, you can jot down the bullet points as rough work. We recommend recording it using video conferencing tools like Loom or Zoom while giving the task demonstration. Alternatively, you can also take screenshots of your rough work for later reference. 

Capturing the process visually or verbally ensures that no steps are missed, setting a strong foundation for an effective SOP. 

Step 2: Generate the SOP Using an AI tool  

Once the entire process is captured, it’s time to transform the raw data into a structured SOP using an AI tool. 

After pasting your raw data into the AI tool (like ChatGPT), share a clear prompt for the tool to act. 

For instance, ‘Turn these steps into a detailed SOP. Include clear headers, use basic vocabulary, and number the steps. Include the tools needed and the departments to be involved. Also, share the expected outcomes.’ 

With such a clear prompt, you will get the first draft of the SOP, allowing you to invest your time in reviewing and tweaking it, rather than building it from scratch. 

Step 3: Customize the Output

Here are a few tips to customize the output from the AI tool. 

• Ask AI to apply your desired structure to the SOP template. For instance, you may opt for an introductory section followed by Tools, Steps, Responsibility Center, and Output. 
• Determine what tone you want to adopt. Ask the tool to tailor the tone to your team’s communication style. For instance, formal, instructional, or casual. 
• Get rid of technical jargon or vague terms that could confuse your team. This can be easily done by clearly instructing the AI tool. 
• The language of the content shared by AI tools often seems robotic or generic. Using AI humanizer tools that can humanize AI text help improve the readability and user engagement. 

This step, when done manually, could take hours. However, AI reduces the time to SOP creation, allowing you to focus on other pressing tasks. 

Step 4: Automate SOP Distribution

Now that you have the refined draft of the SOP, it’s time to distribute it to teams across the organization. A workflow and process management application like Flowster can make this task faster through automation. 

Import the SOP to Flowster through an API integration and tag the SOP based on its function. For instance, client onboarding, billing process, etc. 

Flowster allows you to assign access and ownership to the relevant teams and schedule review cycles. Once the preferences are entered, add the SOP as a part of the automated workflow. 

Step 5: Prioritize Continuous Improvement 

SOP creation using AI is a good practice; however, the document must be updated at regular intervals to realize long-term value. AI can help with ongoing maintenance. As the SOP creation process evolves – 

• Feed updated bullet points and notes into the AI tool.
• Prompt it to revise sections/steps that are no longer relevant or need the use of a new tool. 

This capability of AI to continuously improve the document within seconds is especially useful in workflows that experience a lot of changes. 

For instance, if the finance team updates how income and expenses are entered, they can revise the SOP for preparing the income statement by simply sharing the updated sections. Once finalized, the outdated version can be replaced in Flowster, and the team stays aligned with its tracking feature. 

Summing Up

AI, when used wisely, comes across as a powerful partner for businesses looking to boost their productivity and reduce costs. With AI, you can speed up time and resource-intensive tasks like SOP creation and focus on strategic initiatives that generate more revenue. 

Use the information shared in this post to build usable SOPs in no time.