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Accelerate your digital transformation: The power and bottlenecks of visual manuals in change management

Written by Data Expo | Jul 30, 2025 7:11:13 AM


In this article, we explore the power and bottlenecks of documentation and manuals in change management. You will read why good training material accelerates digital change, why images are so important and how organizations can avoid the pitfalls. Finally, you will get practical tips and examples to strengthen your own documentation permanently.

New processes? New systems? Always explain properly
Change is the only constant within companies. New ERP or CRM systems, cloud solutions, automation of work processes and more secure digital workstations; every project requires people to adapt. But many organizations underestimate how important clear explanations are. Especially with complex systems, a clear manual helps employees at every stage:

  • What exactly is changing?
  • What does the new process look like?
  • What steps do I have to follow?
  • What do I do in case of a malfunction or error message?

This is where good documentation comes in. It's not just a reference book, but above all a roadmap to any digital journey.

Why visual training materials are indispensable
The brain captures images up to 60,000 times faster than text. By adding images, instructions stick, people recognize patterns faster and the threshold to 'do it yourself' is lower. In many organizations you therefore see a shift from long, textual manuals to concise digital manuals with:

  • Screenshots with markers and arrows
  • Short videos explaining processes step-by-step
  • Interactive flow charts or checklists that you check off online
  • Visual FAQs and infographics

Why it works
Images speak universally. People from different countries or teams, with different working languages and backgrounds, often understand visual steps faster than text. Not everyone likes to read pages of explanations, but a screenshot or short video helps almost everyone along.

Image: example of a non-visual manual. Source: Salesforce

No success without good explanations: here are the benefits

  1. Scalable training

    Manuals allow organizations to avoid having to train each employee individually. Colleagues start independently at their own pace, with clear digital instruction. That makes learning scalable. New employees are inducted faster. In addition, you can repeat and look it up whenever you want. Advantage: the knowledge stays in the organization even when people leave.

  2. Speed and consistency

    With visual manuals, you make processes the same everywhere. Every team member follows the same steps. This prevents mistakes and speeds up adoption. Especially when growing or working in multiple locations, uniform instructions are indispensable.

  3. Better adoption of new systems

    The study Strategic Successful Implementation shows: employees who receive clear instructions (including images) score up to 30% higher on adoption rates than those who rely mainly on verbal explanations. This results in less stress, fewer support questions and more enthusiasm.

This often goes wrong: bottlenecks with manuals
While the benefits are great, good documentation is not a given. Companies run into four main challenges:

  1. It takes time to create good manuals
    Often, documentation is created only just before a launch. There is little time for collecting best practices, testing with users or neatly incorporating screenshots and explanations.

  2. Manuals quickly become outdated
    Every IT department knows it: processes, screens and buttons in systems change due to updates. Yet documentation is often not updated right away. Employees get confused when manuals no longer match what they see.
  3. Lack of visual support
    Many internal manuals consist mainly of text, while employees benefit from visual support. Research by Utrecht University (2022) shows that less than 40% of organizations regularly add images or diagrams to their work instructions. As a result, employees lose the overview faster and it is more difficult to understand complex processes.
  4. Findability and management
    Even the best manual has little value if colleagues can't find it. In practice, important documentation is often buried in a crowded SharePoint, Teams folder or Google Drive. In doing so, it is often not clear who is supposed to keep the manual current.

From pitfall to acceleration: how do you get it right?
Organizations that want to accelerate their digital transformation build a strong foundation for documentation. Here are the key success factors:

  1. Make manuals visual, simple and short
    - Use screenshots, arrows and markers for each step
    - Include short instructional videos for key workflows
    - Work with infographics or interactive checklists for process overviews

    Visualizations provide less text, more clarity. Test if someone on another team can follow your manual without help.

  2. Provide a central, findable location
    A knowledge base in an intranet, Confluence or an AVG-safe external tool, for example, collects all manuals. Use a single entry point, labels and smart search functions.

    Tip: Give files logical names, such as: "Instruction_SAP_order_creation_v4".

  3. Designate owners, check and update regularly
    Schedule a round of updates four times a year. Put who is responsible for each manual in the document itself. Reports on usage and feedback signal when updating is needed.

  4. Involve end users
    Have employees test new manuals. Actively solicit feedback, improve where necessary, and appreciate questions. A manual is only good if everyone understands it.

  5. Start with the most important processes
    First determine what is really needed for change. For example, start with the order process, declarations or customer contact. Add other processes step by step.


Picture: example of a visual manual. Source: SowFlow

Inspiring tools and examples
Modern tooling plays a central role in making manuals accessible, up-to-date and visual within organizations. Several categories of tools support this process, each with its own strengths:

First, there are general knowledge bases such as Google Drive and SharePoint. These platforms help organizations store documentation centrally and share it easily within teams. They provide basic findability and version control functionality, but often require manual effort to keep documents organized and up-to-date.

In addition, there are so-called in-app manuals. With these, software developers add interactive explanations or step-by-step guidance directly to their own applications. This way, while working with a new system, users get help or explanations directly on screen - for example via pop-ups, tips-on-screen or interactive demos. This lowers the barrier to getting started with new software.

Finally, there is specialized software for creating manuals. With these tools - such as SowFlow - you can easily put together visual instructions applicable to any application or process within the organization. They often contain smart automations, such as automatically recording steps, adding screenshots and adapting manuals in case of system updates. This saves time and ensures consistent, visual instructions that are easy to share and find.

By choosing the right mix of these tools, organizations strengthen their change processes: employees receive clear, visual explanations at the right time and can adopt new processes and systems faster and more independently.

Summary: Deploy visual manuals smartly for change
Digital transformation demands something of everyone in the organization. Clear, up-to-date and easy-to-find documentation is the key to success. By combining visual training with a central knowledge base and frequent updates, you avoid the pitfalls and get the best out of every change project.

Start improving your documentation today. Work step-by-step, test with users and make it visual. That way, every change will be a lot easier-and you'll achieve more results together.

This blog post is a contribution from SowFlow, professional partner in documentation management, for the readers of Data Expo. You can find more inspiration at www.sowflow.io or visit SowFlow during Data Expo at booth #129.