[Bobby Dazzler]

I'm about to embark on a project to document every process across our business - not an insignificant task!! Fortunately there's a team of people to help me do it.

The plan is that we'll use it as an opportunity to standardise processes that have evolved differently in different parts of the business, and we'll also use it to produce a single set of training materials. It should also simplify the process for introducing system and process changes later, as we'll have all existing processes documented, and all users should be doing things one way.

We'll map each process, and link it to a short document that guides the user through how to complete each task. For example, if the process requires a Purchase Order to be raised in SAP, we'll provide a guide on how to do it and link to it from the process map.

We therefore need a tool for creating the process maps and a repository for storing the documents.

Microsoft Visio seems to be the tool most people in our company have used for process mapping previously - me included - but I don't think it's necessarilly the right solution in this case. For example, we'd like to be able to drill down from a process into a sub-process with a simple click of the mouse - and move back up again too. We'd also like to add the links to the guidance documents. I'm not sure Visio would enable us to make these features available?

The repository should enable us to search based upon multiple criteria, rather than just a keyword search. For example search based upon role, business area, and type of process.

Anyone got any suggestions on how to tackle this, and tools we could use for both process mapping and document repository?

All suggestions, thoughts, and comments are welcome!!