Establish an exception management process

Any process documentation needs to deal with process management system procedures. These vary according to the organization involved but should always include how variations and changes to a process will be handled.

Called an exception process, this sort of documentation is critical to ensuring that processes don't morph into unrecognizable procedures from country to country as changes are made to processes. At the same time, it's important to recognize that different countries or regions will have different requirements -- some legal, some consumer oriented, some language related.

To address those differences, your process management system procedures need to include concise instructions showing who can initiate a request for process change, who can approve a request, and who will implement a request if it's approved.

You could use an Exception Change Request form, which would be a form included in your guide (usually in the appendix) that asks for details about the requester, the reason for the exception, where the exception applies, the funding implications, and implementation requirements.

Process Master deals with this in both the documentation output and as part of its library functionality – making it easy to get on with the job and cutting out the red tape.