Between 2022 and 2031, the Global Standard Operating Procedures Software Market is predicted to rise at an impressive rate.
From a process optimization perspective, standard operating procedure (SOP) software for small businesses allows managers to drill their procedures down to a high level of detail — granting teams the ability to execute tasks as efficiently as possible. Well-structured workflows documented within these applications allow for the easy, consistent execution of tasks, reducing mistakes and increasing productivity.
In other words, employees can follow documented instructions, cutting down on any variance that could occur during day-to-day procedures, ultimately making for a more streamlined operation and better overall efficiency.
This approach fosters a culture of efficiency and innovation, which is what will keep them afloat and help them thrive in the future.
For example, let’s picture John, a new hire, starting his new position in the company. Instead of fumbling through tasks because of outdated, confusing SOPs, John finds easy-to-use, current, and accurate procedures. What if instead of a harsh first day, John finds a welcoming company with SOPs that they want to look at? The baffling tasks in the SOP are still tough, but John at least has clear instructions on what to do.
Knowing how important SOP is for your small business is the first step. Your next step is to find the right SOP software. This is where the ball starts to roll into complexity land.
In this guide, we have simplified the whole process for you by throwing down the 8 best SOP software for small businesses.
Beyond just selecting a tool, we'll walk you through challenges to help you choose the right approach that has the potential to reshape your operational processes. In commonly available tools, we'll help you to identify the potential that will not only meet your current needs but can change your procedural standardization approach.
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6 Best SOP Software for Small Businesses
Let's take a quick look at some of the best SOP software for small business platforms. By the end of this list, we'll also shed some light on different aspects of SOPs as per small businesses' pain points.
1. Xenia - Overall No. 1 & Best SOP Software for Small Businesses
When considering SOP software, Xenia easily sets itself ahead of the pack as the most premium SOP software for small businesses.
To begin with, the platform's biggest advantage is its pricing, as it is the cheapest option among its competitors, which directly benefits those businesses who are on tight budgets.
Another way that Xenia would be a great asset to have is because it helps standardize all processes and inspections in facility operations. By using customizable templates, forms, and SOPs, you can track all your daily operations, inspections, audits, safety protocols, and quality assurance procedures. With their user-friendly software, you can customize your SOPs to best fit your needs.
Also, with Xenia's AI-powered SOP generation tool it has changed the game for SOP generation, since they have a whole dedicated module for it and the best part is that the module is completely free. This tool will streamline the process of SOP writing dramatically as well as ensure employees are acting by brand standards and industry regulations. With Xenia, you will be generating a SOP in seconds enabling you to save free resources and free up more time.
With a deep focus on the facility management, hospitality, and Food and beverage industries, the tool seamlessly rolls out new features to constantly meet or beat growing standards introduced by these sectors.
Whether offering multi-location business access permissions, or a key industry-specific functionality, Xenia is the go-to platform for SOP software, capable of catering to some of the most complicated user needs.
Key Features
- Operations Templates: Create fully customizable SOPs, documents, and checklists.
- AI-Powered SOP Generation: Improved artificial intelligence's ability to develop SOPs in seconds, increasing brand adherence.
- Tasks and Work Orders: A standard operating procedure for managing due dates, teams, locations, and priority levels. Configurable views allow you to schedule SOPs ahead of time and track their progress.
- Chats: Direct communication with team members to discuss important concerns with certain SOPs. Respond to employee queries right away to demonstrate transparency and accountability.
- Reporting: Use real-time dashboards and analytics to track progress and assess results. Filter data by location, team, user, or SOP to investigate prior action.
- Corrective Actions: Develop resolution processes based on SOPs and use conditional logic to efficiently track completion.
- Multi-unit Access: Set access rights for single and multi-location enterprises with various departments to ensure data security and confidentiality.
Pricing
- Free Forever Plan: Introduced at $0 for up to 5 users with access to all the basic features.
- Starter Plan: Starting at $99/month for the first 15 users, includes a work calendar view, work reports, template reports, sub-assets, and sub-locations.
- Premium Plan: Starting at $199/month for the first 15 users, includes reporting dashboards, time and cost tracking, template branding, public form submissions, automated templates, and more.
- Custom Plan: You get unlimited users, a dedicated account manager, onboarding and implementation, and integrations.
Available for up to 5 users
Premium for $99/month for the first 20 users (with free trial period)
Available on iOS, Android and Web
2. SweetProcess
After Xenia, SweetProcess is another remarkably intuitive and powerful SOP software for small businesses.
It provides everything you need to document, track, and automate your standard operating procedures and processes - making your business easier to run and scale.A key feature of SweetProcess is its ability to cut down on communication overload in teams due to its centralization of repetitive tasks.
The system can manage SOPs in a central repository, meaning that key process documents are easy to find and protocols are easy to follow.Another valuable element included with SweetProcess is the ability to track your procedures, which provides a history of procedures and the ability to keep track of the last time the procedure was performed.
This allows the business to identify if any particular requirement needs improvement, was not complied with, or needs elimination.
Key Features
- SweetProcess streamlines task management by centralizing repeated processes, decreasing the strain of communication overload on teams.
- By offering shared access to procedures, the platform encourages cooperation and ensures that all team members are aligned and accountable.
- full procedure histories and real-time activity tracking, allow organizations to monitor execution and discover areas for improvement.
- SweetProcess uses visually appealing designs and interfaces to make procedures more engaging and understandable, resulting in more successful team performance.
Pricing
- Starting from $99/month
3. Document360
Document360 provides a cutting-edge solution for those time-intensive standard operating procedures you and your staff have been constantly churning out.
This AI-powered knowledge management platform is designed specifically with the needs of small, medium, and enterprise-level businesses in mind, and with its centralized configuration, allows you to craft, maintain, and publish your SOPs with minimal effort. Quickly produce important documents such as guidelines, procedures, protocols, and best practices with embedded video and other training materials, as appropriate.
Preliminarily assign roles and responsibilities related to those processes.The Eddy AI assistant helps users by generating outlines, creating article titles, summarizing content, and suggesting related articles for procedure inclusion. The platform also enables collaboration by allowing team members to mention each other for review and feedback, ensuring SOPs’ accuracy and comprehensiveness before publication.
Key Features
- Setup needs minimal technical skills, ensuring that all team members may use it with ease.
- Use advanced analytics to get insights into your knowledge base by showcasing data and providing actionable development recommendations.
- Utilize document tagging and content grouping features to enhance your navigation experience and make it simpler to access relevant information.
- Determine who can modify, review, or access SOPs.
- Quickly view the version history of SOPs and revert to previous versions as needed to guarantee accuracy and compliance.
Pricing
- Free
- Standard -$149
- Professional -$299
- Business -$399
- Enterprise -$599
4. Scribe
Scribe offers a new way to create SOPs by automating the documentation of every procedure and turning any workflow into a step-by-step guide effortlessly.
We'd say that you can use this highly adaptable tool to capture your work process using images and videos, and produce complete visual guides in no time. Be it for internal SOPs, customer support, FAQ, or onboarding, Scribe simplifies all documentation tasks for better efficiency and productivity.Scribe integrates seamlessly with any knowledge base or workflow, making it a versatile tool for any business operating at any scale.
Whether it’s integrated into an existing system or deployed as part of a standalone solution, Scribe improves documentation processes without causing disruption.
Key Features
- Automates the SOP generation process, saving businesses valuable time and resources. Capturing images and videos accelerates the documentation process, allowing users to focus on critical tasks.
- Scribe enables users to easily edit text, steps, and images, tailoring SOPs to their specific requirements. This flexibility ensures that standard operating procedures (SOPs) accurately reflect corporate operations and conventions.
- The One-Click Sharing feature makes sharing SOPs as simple as clicking a button. This tool increases collaboration and communication by allowing teams to easily exchange SOPs with the right stakeholders.
Pricing
- Basic - free
- Pro – Starts at $12 per seat, per month
- Enterprise – Contact Vendor
5. ProcessKit
Up next on our SOP software for small business recommendation list, we've got ProcessKit.
The program distinguishes itself as one of the best SOP software for small businesses built for agencies, centering around expediting customer and client onboarding.
Process automation is its primary priority, ensuring speed and productivity when incorporating clients.
Through onboarding forms the core of the service, the platform’s range of tools and features covers most tasks and operational flows critical to agencies.Optimizing workflows and making onboarding processes easier will help agencies give clients a smooth and integrated experience, which will lead to greater satisfaction and loyalty.
Key Features
- ProcessKit's automation tools speed up client onboarding by minimizing manual activities and automating the integration process.
- The tool provides a collection of ready-made templates and professional coaching to assist organizations with process optimization. These materials offer useful insights and best practices for building and improving efficient workflows that ensure consistency and quality in client engagements.
- The platform's customizable solutions serve a wide range of agency demands, including project management, work delegation, and quality assurance procedures, therefore improving overall operational efficiency.
Pricing
- Starts from $49/month
6. Tallyfy
Tallyfy proves to be a powerful solution meant to efficiently digitize and streamline business processes.
By simplifying complex workflows, Tallyfy helps organizations optimize their operation, fostering increased productivity and transparency.
Starting with mapping processes and supporting ongoing collaboration, the software is built to keep teams aligned and performing at their best.Tallyfy equips staff with step-by-step process maps that are easy to follow and repeat.
This means employees can execute tasks quickly and consistently. They have clear guidelines right in front of them - and they can focus on that. Employees perform their roles quickly and effectively - and focus on the quality of their work instead.
Key Features
- Tallyfy's user interface is easy to set up, making it easy to do complex tasks. Its simple design enables it to manage even complicated procedures, allowing users to effortlessly navigate tasks.
- By integrating communication features, Tallyfy enhances teamwork and efficiency. Users may easily engage, exchange updates, and collaborate on projects, fostering synergy and ensuring alignment with shared goals.
- Tallyfy provides real-time insights into process performance, allowing businesses to identify bottlenecks and areas for improvement immediately.
Pricing
- Tallyfy docs - $5
- Tallyfy pro -$30
Challenges in Choosing the Right SOP Software for Small Bussiness
There are many hurdles to overcome when choosing SOP software for small businesses. The following are a few common obstacles users often come across:
Cost Factor: All SOP software are not created equal and you’ll see the difference in their prices. Some of the popular solutions available in the market are anything but affordable and their expensive price tags make them out of reach for small businesses working with limited resources.
Compliance: Almost every business has to deal with the task of getting or staying in compliance with certain regulatory bodies. Making sure your employee policies, operations, and maintenance procedures are in line with state, federal, and local safety regulations can be an arduous task for any growing business. With a seemingly endless supply of regulatory bodies, it’s more important than ever to make sure your safety software is up to compliance standards.
Specificity: Finding an SOP application that can be modified to meet the unique and specialized safety procedures of your location is often difficult. Most solutions offer a one-size-fits-all approach with features that are generalized and do not address the specific industry or niche requirements.
User-Friendliness: Poor performance has caused 90% of app users to stop using an app. Complex user interfaces or unclear instructions may inhibit user adoption among employees. Suppose the platform is not easy to use, and employees have a difficult time with it. In that case, they will not feel inclined to incorporate it into their daily job routines, thus affecting the effectiveness of the use of the application.
Integration: Integrating with the software and systems already being used at the facility is crucial for maximum efficiency. Integrating standard operating procedure software with other business applications can cause compatibility problems which can cause data silos and can lead to inefficiencies in the operations.
Real-Time Monitoring: Ensuring the safety of an organization’s workers requires the ability to detect and respond to safety issues promptly. If your SOP software cannot monitor in real-time or has no alerting capability, this may not provide enough insights and actionable intelligence to prevent safety issues.
Training and Onboarding: Proper training materials and support during onboarding are both crucial to the successful implementation and adoption of an SOP software system. If the company does not have proper guidance on how to use the system, this may lead a user to not properly use the application or stop using it altogether.
Mobile Functionality: A mobile-friendly website increased the online sales of 68 %of businesses.
In the fast-paced world we live in, having the ability to access safety checklists on the fly is often necessary.
Purchasing an SOP software that does not have mobile functionality, limits the usefulness of SOP's. This can become a problem during busy work hours when employees often need to access procedures out of the confines of their offices.
The Final Verdict
To sum up, SOP software for small businesses is a crucial player in the world of modern businesses, as it ensures smooth operations, promotes team cooperation, and maximizes outputs. This software allows automation, hundreds of templates, and real-time data that helps you to speculate outcomes and achieve the presumed.
Though there are several choices out there, Xenia is the top pick as the best small business SOP software. With its budget-friendly pricing, cutting-edge AI, and an easier-than-ever experience, Xenia is the go-to option. Small businesses can fully rely on Xenia, with its process standardization, regulatory oversight, and team collaboration, to triumph in the modern world.
The integration of SOP software in the everyday processes of businesses not only establishes smoothness but also strengthens transparency and efficiency in the company as a whole. In leveraging these modern technologies, businesses have encountered the prevention of undue processes, curbing avoidable risks, and grown their institution healthily and sustainably.
FAQs: SOP Software for Small Business
- What is SOP Software for Small Businesses?
When it comes to implementing standard operating procedures across an entire organization, a lack of the right tools can make it an incredibly difficult task to achieve. That’s where Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) software comes into play. This variety of software aims to give companies a centralized platform upon which to create, manage, and share standard operating procedures.
Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) software streamlines the process of retrieving and storing internal documents, like SOPs, for easy and quick reference of employees. These software types usually provide a variety of capabilities like templates and tools that support the creation of new documents and the management of old ones.
- What is the Importance of SOP Software for Small Businesses?
- SOP software enables the creation of digital SOPs that replace the old paper ones. This transition to digital documentation enhances storage security, simplifies sharing processes, and aligns with the convenience of our digital environment.
- This software enables businesses to establish SOP rules and implement stricter compliance processes via approval process control. This guarantees that process documentation meets company standards and has a bigger impact on operations.
- SOP software improves collaborative efforts by making it easy to exchange SOPs with team members. This encourages collaboration and ensures that everyone understands operational processes.
- Top SOP software solutions guarantee that SOPs adhere to the required structure and are approved by specified persons before deployment. This reduces risk by ensuring that processes are carried out accurately and consistently with defined norms.
- SOP software simplifies access to and maintenance of SOPs, allowing several people to readily view and change records. Furthermore, organizations have more control over who may view and edit these crucial papers.
- What are the Key Features to Look for While Selecting SOP Software for a Small-Scale Business?
During the selection of SOP software for a small-scale business, the significant features to be kept in mind are:
- Template customization that tailors SOPs to match precise business requirements.
- Workflow automation that streamlines SOP creation and approval processes.
- Access control and permission management that ensures the security of SOP documents.
- Version control and revision history that tracks changes and keeps SOPs compliant.
- Integration with other business systems or tools for seamless workflow management.
- User-friendly interface and navigation that boosts employee adoption and usage.
Unify Team Operations, Maintenance and Safety Compliance with Xenia
Xenia unifies daily operations, maintenance management and quality assurance to help ensure teams and facilities are effective and efficient.
Our customers love Xenia's robust use cases including:
Operational Execution
✔️ Checklists & SOPs
Create checklists, SOPs, Inspections and Data Logs to power accountability, training and staff clarity on every task.
💪 Team Task Management
Assign work digitally to defeat pencil whipping and disorganized teams. Complete tasks, chat with teams on any device, track time, collect photos, and ensure high quality work.
📆 Recurring Tasks
Create recurring schedules for daily opening and closings, performance review meetings, inspections, cleanings and more.
📲 Chats & Announcements
Centralize team communications with in task chats, one-on-one chats, team messages and company wide announcements
📊 Team Performance Reporting
Use Xenia's analytics dashboards to view staff work reports. Filter by asset, location, category or due date and export the report in PDF or Excel
Maintenance Management
🛠️ Work Orders
Create work orders with associated team, asset, location, priority, category and due date. View live progress reports on each work order, chat with teams, and review resulting template submission, images and notes to improve operations.
🧰 Preventive Maintenance
Create a preventive maintenance calendar to ensure asset uptime is not compromised. Attach images, templates, videos and notes to every task and assign to a team or individual for completion.
📲 QR Codes
Generate and attach QR codes to equipment and facility locations to enable fast and accurate inspections and data logs.
⚙️ Work Order Requests
Receive, approve and assign work order requests from tenants, regular customers and vendors. Enable requesters to submit, track, and communicate with your team, without access to operations templates or unrelated work orders.
📁 Equipment Work History
View work history for every asset and sub asset in Xenia. Review performance data and enable corrective actions to improve your operation.
Safety Compliance & Quality Assurance
👍 Concrete Brand Standards
Put your brand standards in a clear and operational checklist to be attached to work assignments.
🔎 Smart Inspection Workflows
Xenia's operations template builder has built in conditional logic into each step. This allows you to trigger actions based on a form response such as creating a corrective action on a failed inspection step, sending a notification to management for out of range meter readings, and much more.
✨ Corrective Actions
Operationalize inspections with fast work order assignment arising from a failed inspection step. All corrective data is stored in the checklist submission for auditing and accountability.
📋 Analytics and Reports
View live dashboard summaries of tasks, employee performance, template submissions and more. Filter, organize and export compliance reports to PDF and Excel formats to simplify compliance management.
Streamline Your SOP Management With Xenia's Robust AI Solutions
Our state of the art AI-powered SOP writing tool is here to revolutionize your sop processes, document management and more!
Operational Execution & Process Excellence Redefined!
✔️ Checklists & AI-Powered SOPs
Create checklists, SOPs, Inspections and Data Logs to power accountability, training and staff clarity on every task.
💪 Build Inspections, SOPs and Logs Within Minutes!
Take the lead on your church facility management activities by creating detaild templates with unlimited steps and diverse reponse times.
📆 Plan Ahead With Scheduled & Recurring Tasks
Create recurring schedules for daily opening and closings, performance review meetings, inspections, cleanings and more.
📲 Dedicated Mobile App
Download and install Xenia's official iOS and Android app on your smartphone to centralized your on-site facility management activities.
📲 Chats & Announcements
Centralize team communications with in task chats, one-on-one chats, team messages and company wide announcements
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