Increase productivity with clearly defined roles in the document production process

According to research by the Harvard Business Review, clearly defining people’s roles and responsibilities matters more when determining a team's success than outlining the precise path the team will take.

In other words, team members perform better and are more productive when they know exactly what they will be responsible for versus having a specific set of predefined steps to complete.

This is most certainly true for document collaboration in teams that are typically dispersed across regions and times zones.

Establishing roles and responsibilities in the document process

Delegating tasks to the right people and setting individual deadlines is key to reaching your goals more quickly and finishing your tasks on time. However, managing your document production team is more than just setting deadlines and assigning tasks. While those are vital functions to a great business document, factors such as establishing roles and responsibilities and assigning both content and process responsibilities are critical to your overall success.

To put the right candidates in the right roles when selecting your team you must first define all roles and responsibilities. Depending on the size and complexity of your documents you may need multiple people to fill a “single” role, such as multiple project managers who are responsible for the output from individual business units within your company.

Content and process responsibilities

Differentiating between content and process will be key when it comes to boosting productivity, and setting proper expectations can make or break your document production process. 

Here is a quick example: You assign the engineering spec section of a proposal to a project manager in a satellite office on the other side of the country. Your expectation is to have the section completed, proofread and properly formatted when the deadline hits. Their expectation, though, is to write the content and submit it to you for final approval and integration into the proposal. A disaster situation in the eleventh hour. 

Setting the expectations of completing both the content and the process is key.

Read more: Can proposal software increase team efficiency?

Role-defined collaboration with a co-authoring solution

Using enterprise-grade co-authoring and automation software in your document production process enables contributors to collaborate based on user role or group membership for a specific section.

Imagine creating a proposal where you can easily and simultaneously assign roles and responsibilities to individual members of your team. Individual responsibilities can range from technical and operations through to resourcing and financial, enabling concurrent delegation within departments. Collaboration can even function outside your company, allowing clients and external specialists to participate.

Ensure clearly defined responsibilities and a streamlined process

Every team member needs to know their role and responsibility, and how their work will contribute to the overall result. This creates a more cooperative and efficient team, maximizing flow and productivity.

Is creating and submitting complex, business-critical documents a vital part of your company’s sales efforts and revenue generation? Then you should consider moving to a document collaboration solution that eliminates the typical pitfalls of having unclear roles and responsibilities in the process.