Documentation is key to product success.

Read that again. This is what many founders say when asked about the most vital piece in their scaling processes. What has begun as an initial, quick way to get your first few customers, ends up being significant groundwork for continuous growth and scale - that gets amplified with time.

The shift from manual or micro-documented processes towards scalable workflows requires a complete shift in thinking: Documentation is not just dumping information into Word/Google Docs/Slack channel/something else, it's the act of carefully constructing instructions for people to use your product efficiently.

This can range from how you onboard new users through steps they need to take to use specific features - all the way down to why certain settings are applied and how to change them (yes, this is crucial for successful scaling).

The Secret Weapon of Successful Startups

However, documentation is often seen as an afterthought or a task delegated to the quality control department (often outsourced), and later on, it is primarily used by support (again, outsourced) if at all. Unfortunately, no one thinks about its value for growth/scaling - or even just customer happiness. Let's have a look at some numbers that prove how vital good documentation can be:

A study by Harvard Business Review states that reducing cycle time by just 5% increases a company's profit margin by 25-95%.

Customer surveys from Segment show that 39% of customers abandon a website because of bad support, and only 23.5% care about how good the product is (source: articles.segment.com/how-do-customers-really-feel).

The conclusion? Speed matters. And by speeding up tasks, you speed up your whole workflow - but this needs to be planned from the beginning.

Why Product Documentation?

Good documentation leads to happy users. This means fewer support issues which result in more time for scaling additional features and generating more revenue instead of covering basic user questions.

Having a well-structured knowledge base can lower a significant portion of costs from customer service as some questions are being answered automatically before they reach anyone at all.

The Return Of Investment (ROI) of implementing proper documentation enables you to handle around 30% more users/customers with the same amount of employees - even if data says so.

Creating good quality product documentation is getting easier all the time with tools like Zendesk and Intercom. Start small, iterate, and treat your docs as living and growing organisms.

General Documentation vs. Product-Specific

Why do you need both, and what makes the difference between good documentation and bad one? Let's get started with general documentation: these are handbooks that every company has to build before even thinking about scaling (and not just startups). They include procedures for employees on how to deal with specific issues - like using Excel or creating invoices.

The rule of thumb is: If it can be easily copied, don't write a manual.

Imagine your new employee has never worked with Excel before. What would you rather tell them: "Go Google something, I'm busy right now."; or send them a link to an article that shows them step-by-step how to use it within your company's context? In this case, a good rule of thumb is: If it can be found on Google, don't write a manual.

The good news is that tools use standardized processes to generate knowledge base articles which are constantly being improved by employees and customers alike. That way, what employees type into the system is immediately reflected in the user interface as a new article for users - no wasting time, no bad information.

Overall leads to less frustration from both sides and speeds upscaling they never have even dreamed of before. On top of that, it comes without any automated training costs - so you save money there as well. In most cases they wouldn't even need to spend their time typing stuff into Google - and they would not get the user interface that makes it easy to use our product.

Product-Specific Documentation

Startups are different from bigger companies. It is worth building your product documentation with that in mind. Let's have a look at the differences: Smaller teams often work on more than one project or product at once - especially when they are scaling fast. This means everyone has to know everything about all products, big time saver.

They usually don't have dedicated people for quality assurance (QA). Onboarding new employees become critical as it saves them time by having 100% accurate information on how things work within the company. Most of the communication happens over Slack, email, chat apps, etc., which means nobody reads manuals anymore.

And documentation becomes really important again. Because of this, you need to make sure that whoever created the documentation is still around, to answer questions once you are done reading.

This also means you need to keep your product documentation up-to-date at all times. This can be a lot of work, especially when introducing new features or major changes in any part of your product/service. That is why it makes sense to have an automated system for this process.

Requirements For Documentation

Every company is different, which means your documentation will vary greatly depending on the type of work you do. Here are some of the most common requirements:

• Every team should be able to update articles whenever they want - no matter who wrote them in the first place. Tools like Notion make this super easy for your team.
• New content should immediately appear on the page of all users (employees and customers) that use that article.
• Articles should be tagged by employees according to their area/topic so that they can easily find what they need. This can also help QA teams monitor what topics are being discussed more often than others.
• All content must remain professional at all times while having fun with it when possible.

When it's time to scale, the automated system makes documentation more accessible for everyone. That way you can train new hires faster and spend less time updating information around your company. The benefits are clear:

Notion is a great place for your docs to live

Internal Processes

Depending on the type of business you run, your internal processes will vary greatly. But the main idea is to make documentation scalable by having it in a central location - no matter how many departments are involved in each process.

For example, when scaling up you might want to expose more access for employees or clients early on. You can do this with our knowledge base software by simply giving them access to articles related to their status, without having to give away too much information.

That way new hires can get an idea about how things work within your company right from the start while saving time that would have been spent on telling them everything individually - scaling fast never looked so good.

You can also tailor specific instructions based on teams or departments using our software. This way your QA team knows exactly where to go when they have questions, while the support team only has access to relevant articles.

Every company is different, which is why it's hard to give specific examples of internal processes that might be good for documentation - but here are some ideas anyway.

1. Client onboarding process: The fastest way to get new clients started with your product. Or let them know how you can help them further if their needs change over time.
2. Knowledge base: Every article in a centralized location helps people learn and understand what's going on behind the scenes at your company, no matter who wrote it originally.
3. Internal communication: Our software gives every employee (at any level) the ability to update articles from within Slack, or whatever communication platform you use. This way you can make sure communication is up-to-date and accurate at all times.

Final Thoughts on Documentation

To finish off, here are some final pieces of advice when it comes to scaling your documentation in a startup environment:

The goal is to have the most up-to-date knowledge base in your industry, so your team and customers know they can trust you for anything.

When introducing new articles, always think about how that change will impact other articles or processes used in your company. This way everyone stays on the same page at all times - perfect for scaling up.

Having any type of documentation will set you apart from other companies in your field - but making sure everything is automated makes you truly unique.

Don’t be scared of documentation, even a simple document with a few paragraphs of a bunch of bullet points is better than no document at all!