Manage Business Document Design & Development Essay

1. Consider this scenario. You and four friends have developed a new environmentally friendly heater. You all have extensive business experience. Together, you have established a new company, Green Heaters Pty Ltd ACN 512 302 XXX, which will manufacture and sell the new heater to wholesalers. The five of you will comprise the board of directors. The board has forecasted that Green Heaters Pty Ltd will sell 650,000 heaters in the first year and will employ 100 staff. You have been given the task of designing and developing the standard documentation which will be used by Green Heaters Pty Ltd. You must present details of your plans to the board of directors. Prepare a comprehensive report to the board. Explain what you will do to manage the design and development of business documents. Explain details of the methods and processes you will use to produce high quality documents. Provide details of the types of documents which you will produce and how you will ensure that they will be suitable for requirements. Explain the methods you will use to develop standard documents including templates and macros and provide information about any assistance you will need, including details of external sources. Detail the strategies you will use to ensure employees use standard documents productively. Provide information about the proposed organisational policies and procedures which will be implemented to govern the use of standard documents as well as ensure standard documents meet any changing requirements of the organisation in the short and long term. Document Design & Development – Green Heaters Pty Ltd Having recently been charged with the task of designing and developing the business documents of Green Heaters Pty Ltd I would being the process by consulting with the board to determine the organisational requirements so that I could develop a style guide that employees tasked with document production can use to ensure that the organisation requirements are continually met. The style guide will incorporate the organisations style including; 1. Templates 2. Writing Style 3. Filenames 4. Company Logo Use 5. Hyperlinks 6. Headers & Footers 7. Text & Layout 8. Appearance. As Green Heaters Pty Ltd will continually produce high quality documents to publicise and market the environmentally friendly heaters I will investigate the types of equipment that can be purchased, this will be either via a contract or outright, depending on the best option, that can produce high quality documents on recycled paper and with the environment in mind. We would use a desktop publishing program to design and create the documents internally. There will be a number of documents that will need to be developed these will include; Letters Faxes Reports Memos Invoices Quotes Orders Statements Catalogues Emails Employment Applications These documents will need to be developed and tested to ensure that they meet  the organisations requirements. I would have the staff that are responsible for using the documents to test the documents and provide feedback on these to ensure that they are suitable. Whilst a number of documents will be designed and managed as per the style guide there will be numerous documents requiring templates or macros. Therefore due to the number of documents that will be introduced will be templates or have macros for ease of completion. As this can be quite complex I would enlist the services of an external consultant to ensure that the documentation functions as it should. After much research I believe that â€Å"Office Experts† www.accessexperts.com.au would be the ideal firm to use for this as they have a broad range of skills and knowledge. Once the documents had been established a training program would be developed so that staff that are responsible for output are fully trained in the use of the templates and macros. There would also be very detailed instructions on how to use each template and macro to ensure that all documents are produced to Green Heaters Pty Ltd standards. As there will be a large investment in time and also money in developing the standards and templates/macros, there will be continuous reviews of the documents produced by employees to ensure that they are using the documents productively. There will also be feedback forms and focus groups to determine that the current options available to staff suit the purpose and are functioning correctly. The investment that Green Heaters Pty Ltd would need to make to ensure that the style guidelines and organisational requirements are met would include; External contractor to design develop and implement standard documents including templates and macros. External contractor to provide written instructions on how to use the templates and macros. Staff training in use of the templates and macros. Purchase or contract for equipment to complete in-house printing. To ensure that the standards of the design and development of documents are upheld, specific policies and procedures will be developed and implemented, the policies will outline why the specific formats and designs are to be used and the processes will outline, in conjunction with the style guide, the correct way to manage the development of documents. A continual review of the documents will be undertaken to ensure that changes to legislation, branding, technology and document trends are reflected in the policies, processes and style guides.