Playbook Software

Author : Puvadi Rakesh | Published On : 09 Apr 2024

If you’ve only heard the term ‘playbook software’, you’ve surely been living under a rock. Not that there is anything sinister about living under a rock, but a thriving business is surely difficult to build from that remote location.

Given the popularity of business playbooks these days, I am pretty sure the term would reach even if you were living under a rock. So, what exactly are playbooks? And why is playbook software a must-have when it comes to organizational assets? Without further ado, let’s find out!

Understanding Playbooks

Playbooks refer to comprehensive guides that capture the standard operating procedures within your organization. They also capture other relevant business information like organizational strategy, goals, stakeholders involved, roles and responsibilities, etc. The primary goal of playbooks is to facilitate consistent and uninterrupted operations of your business.

They do this by identifying the critical processes within your organization and documenting every step involved in their successful execution. Alternate steps in execution and failure-handling mechanisms are also captured. In essence, playbooks try to provide all the information you need to seamlessly drive your organizational processes, even in the face of uncertainties like stakeholder unavailability and employee attrition.

Scale of Playbooks

Since playbooks aim to be so comprehensive, organizational-level playbooks tend to be quite voluminous. Capturing all the processes within an organization is no walk in the park. This complexity is all the more pronounced for a multinational enterprise, which is essentially an organizational behemoth.

However, a major advantage of playbooks is that they can be created at any scale. You may choose to do a playbook pilot first by picking a not-so-critical process within your organization that is straightforward and repetitive. If the results are good, and chances are they will be, you can extend playbook adoption to a small team. Progressively, your organization can adopt playbooks across departments as the returns of investment begin to pour in.

Since the scale is so flexible and organizational-level playbook creation can be daunting, except for a small business, most enterprises choose to create department-level playbooks. So you tend to have marketing playbooks, sales playbooks, operations playbooks, and so on.

Types of Playbooks

Depending on how they are executed, playbooks can be broadly classified into the following types.

Manual Playbooks - These playbooks capture every step of the process execution in detail, but they depend on an external operator for their execution. The operator/supervisor is in charge of tracking the execution, ensuring satisfactory outcomes at every step in the process, keeping the stakeholders informed, and maintaining overall quality. Manual playbooks assist the operator and help them to effectively drive processes within your organization while avoiding errors/pitfalls.
Semi-automated Playbooks relieve the operator of the need for constant supervision. These playbooks utilize advancements in technology to take care of tasks like keeping the stakeholders notified, kickstarting the next step in the process automatically, rolling back in case of errors, and so on. But these playbooks nevertheless require manual supervision at times when they cannot decide on the most suitable course of action.
Fully-automated Playbooks are the ideal that organizations must aim for. These variants require little to no manual intervention to drive organizational processes. They ensure that business operations are effectively monitored and streamlined and all the stakeholders are duly notified. In the case of failures, these playbooks can pick between the most appropriate course of action and even escalate the problem to higher management when a solution isn’t found. But achieving this level of complexity requires the expertise of a reliable playbook services provider like Smartplaybooks.

Depending on the scale and complexity of organizations, creating playbooks can be a tedious and time-consuming task. That’s where playbook software comes into play. Playbook software are IT tools that contain all the necessary functionality to create, execute, and manage playbooks. These software capture a wide range of functionality and facilitate the creation of manual, semi-automated, or fully-automated playbooks.

Playbook software should be your chosen means of creating a playbook, whether manual or automated. While manual playbooks can be created relatively easily even in a non-digital format, they pose significant problems when created in traditional formats like printing. For example, the cost of traditional printing is often exorbitant. Distribution, storage, and updation of printed playbooks is also quite a hassle. Any change within your organizational playbooks would lead to reprinting and redistribution of playbooks. As opposed to this, digital playbooks can be updated with little to no effort.

Different playbook software services providers offer different playbook software with varying levels of functionality. Industry leaders like Smartplaybooks offer playbook software that can capture every step in your organizational process and automate them seamlessly. Software from Smartplaybooks offers other rich features like trigger-based execution, role-based access, real-time stakeholder notification, pre-built templates that can be adapted to suit your organizational needs, and so on.

Dive into this article to learn more about the advanced features provided by Smartplaybooks’ playbook software. To get in touch for a demo of playbook software, reach out here. Any change within your organizational playbooks would lead to reprinting and redistribution of playbooks. Instead of this, digital playbooks can be updated with little to no effort.