Business Documentation Software
Excerpt from the Fourth Edition of Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less. “The very beginning stage of documentation is where the ball is usually dropped – where a massive “error of omission” can occur – not just because this is new, but also because the awful habit of being comfortable with fire-killing is still in full force, still poised to haul one back into chronic mole-whacking.”
Overview, from Sam Carpenter:
BDS exactly conforms to the Work the System Method. It’s an intuitive and simple platform designed to make it easy for you to create, tweak and store your three primary documents and your own Working Procedures as described in Part Two of Sam’s book.
BDS is simple to use. There’s no fluff or excess. It’s about “bottom up,” point-of-sale, and never-ending system improvement.
Chain-of-command document production: BDS ensures that your documents are available for use only after they’ve been thoroughly reviewed and approved per you and/or your management chain of command. This guarantees that your staff is following the most accurate and up-to-date policies and procedures. Because BDS’s architecture is “bottom up,” anyone within a department can recommend a system improvement to a procedure, or recommend a new procedure, by simply and privately submitting the idea to management.
Once approved, automatically and instantly, via email notification, newly published documents, document changes, requests, questions. etc. are delivered to your pre-selected staff. No need to constantly check in to see what’s new and what’s changed. An important feature is the administrator’s ability to easily insure confidentiality of documents between people and departments.
BDS is cloud-based and so is fully accessible from anywhere, and is compatible with all popular devices.
History and Development:
You know by now that I am passionate about keeping things simple. The BDS team is a talented, tight-knit, get-it-done-now crew. Marcello and Manu, our long-term programmers located in Italy and Romania respectively, and who work for me full-time and exclusively, are brilliant, and the rest of my American-based Bend, Oregon team has also been with me for years. No part of BDS is outsourced. It’s created from scratch by my in-house IT engineers.
Trust this: they all get what my book is about and what we want this software product to be. It’s an exact reflection of how my companies operate day-to-day.
Regarding the systems mindset, there are nuances that matter and features that must be included if things are going to be intuitive and move fast. You won’t find these subtleties in any of the other process documentation software platforms that are available.
If you choose to use BDS, of course we welcome your comments and specific suggestions. It’s bottom-up!
-sam