6 reasons Xoralia is policy management software for small business

Dan Hawtrey
19 June 2025

Every organisation from large global enterprises down to small start-ups need policies and procedures in place that help minimise risk, standardise operations, drive efficiency, support decision-making, deliver excellent customer service, and ensure compliance.

Actively managing these policies and procedures is essential so that all staff (and possibly third parties) can find and access the right guidance and process steps at the point of need, knowing that have the right version, that the policy is up to date, supports compliance efforts and more. But policy management is not a given and there are actually many challenges involved, especially when everybody is extremely busy and policy management tasks never quite make it to the top of the to-do list.

Many smaller businesses – particularly those needing to ensure compliance with regulations such as HIPAA or GDPR or acquiring certification such as ISO 27001 – investigate policy management solutions that can help do most of the heavy lifting on policy management. However, they invariably find that solutions are not fit for purpose, have been mainly designed for an enterprise market, and are way too expensive.

In this post we look at why policy management is important for smaller businesses and explore the characteristics of solutions that are a strong fit for the particular needs of a small business.

What is policy and procedure management?

Policy and procedure management can be considered the collection of practices and tactics that are used to create, distribute, track, and manage organisational policies and procedures, to ensure compliance and standardisation, underpinning a range of business benefits. Policy management software is any solution that supports all this.

Why is policy management critical for small businesses?

Some small business regard policy and procedure management as something that is only really applicable for larger enterprises. It sounds like overkill, involves unnecessary “red tape” and is something to worry about further down the line. However, policy management is critical for smaller businesses too for a number of reasons:

If you are working in a regulated industry compliance will be an issue and you may need to demonstrate you have a robust approach to policy management
Similarly, if you work in highly regulated industries or as a supplier to large enterprises, you may be required to demonstrate robust and systematic approaches to areas such as cybersecurity where having policies in place is critical.
Smaller companies – particularly in the start-up phase – can experience crazy growth and very busy periods, with new challenges, and decisions to make. It’s all too easy to cut corners, take risky turns or let areas such as costs get out of control. Having solid policies in place can help everyone stay on the page and ensure there are robust processes to support the very best decision-making and reduce risks, for example as you enter into new markets.
Sometimes small businesses that are growing have overlapping responsibilities across different stakeholders and areas such as defining and managing important policies get either duplicated or missed. Taking an intentional approach to policy management provides clarity around who does what and when.
There are certain fundamental threats to every business including cybersecurity that need clear and consistent approaches that will be detailed in policies and procedures.
Smaller businesses often work with third-party suppliers that also need clarity on particular policies to drive efficiency and support compliance.

What do smaller businesses need from a policy management solution?

Smaller businesses have different needs to enterprises and medium-sized businesses. An effective policy management solution for small businesses has to tick several different boxes.

A solution built into Microsoft 365 and Teams

Many small businesses work with Microsoft 365 and its constituent tools. This means staff are spending much of their working day in and out of Microsoft Teams, Outlook and SharePoint.

One essential element of successful policy management is ensuring policies can easily be found and shared directly within the flow of work – the places where employees are working. This means that a solution like Xoralia that is built to integrate completely seamlessly with Microsoft 365 and Teams has a head start over other solutions:

Policies can easily be found via SharePoint and Teams and Microsoft-powered search.

There are no additional tools to use, and nobody needs to switch platforms, avoiding a major barrier to usage.

You can onboard new users effortlessly.

From an administration and management perspective, a solution built into Microsoft 365 also means:

Xoralia already meets your security and compliance requirements associated with Microsoft 365.

If you are already using SharePoint document libraries for policies you can actually integrate these into the product, making set-up even quicker.

You can even connect Xoralia reporting to Power BI dashboards.

You can onboard new users effortlessly.

And more!

A highly intuitive solution with minimal training required

Small businesses owners and staff rarely have enough hours in the day so do not want to invest in solutions that are complex and clunky and require a lot of cognitive effort or training to set-up and use. Unfortunately, compliance software or policy management solutions are often over-complex and hard to use and come with an associated learning curve, both for admins and for everyday users.

We designed Xoralia to be different – a product that is highly intuitive, and extremely easy to use, requires minimal training for administrators and policy owners, and no training at all for users to access policies. This still remains a core ethos of the product.

There are multiple reasons how we’ve been able to achieve this:

Our focus on the core capabilities of the product is guided by what our customers tell us they actually need, rather than adding unnecessary bells and whistles.

Our ability to leverage the familiar Microsoft 365 and SharePoint user interface.

Our team’s decades of collective experience in human-centred design.

Automates the administration of policy management

Policy management encapsulates a lot of “fiddly” aspects that sometimes get missed or take up a lot of time and manual effort, for example:

All the above are also prone to errors with things getting missed.

Effective policy management software will combine the right solution features with automation to remove at least 95% of the effort associated with all the above, significantly saving time, reducing errors and slashing the associated admin effort.

Automation is built into the fabric of a product like Xoralia. It handles automatic document version, approval workflow (defined up front) for policy creation and review, and sends out reminders and tracks employee attestation, where employees can confirm they have read and understood a policy. It can also automatically send out reminders to new starters for policies they might need to read and confirm they have read. You can also use Power Automate within Microsoft 365 to drive further workflows and notifications.

Is affordable and cost-effective to meet small business budgets

Smaller businesses have limited budgets, and any solution has to be appropriately priced. This will always be a determining factor in any product selection and often excludes many compliance solutions that are more expensive, because they are:

Part of a wider suite of compliance tools that smaller businesses do not actually need.
Only cost-effective when there are a high number of users which most small businesses will never reach.
Have hidden set-up costs or require professional services to configure and implement.

Xoralia is different and is extremely competitively priced:

There are no set-up fees, and the large majority of clients need no assistance in setting everything up.
Xoralia is focused on the essentials around policy management, so you are not paying for extra features you do not need – no bells and whistles.
Xoralia leverages SharePoint and Microsoft 365 so you’re not paying for an additional SaaS platform on top which is often the case with policy management software, so costs are reduced.
Xoralia has predicable, cloud-based pricing which can be paid per month or annually.
Xoralia even has a free version so you can try before you buy, and even use it free of charge for a while and then choose to upgrade at the right time.

Flexible and scalable as you grow and evolve

Inevitably smaller companies and start-ups grow and evolve with changing needs. Any solution has to be able to flexible and scalable to incorporate any changes and meet future requirements. A solution like Xoralia achieves this in a number of different ways:

We are fully scalable so you can easily add users as you go.
Xoralia is a highly configurable product – we know one size does not fit all – so you can configure it to how you want it to be accessed today, but also for tomorrow and beyond.
We always stay aligned with the Microsoft 365 roadmap and add new features and capabilities as M365 evolves.
We have an active product roadmap based on real world feedback from our customers, so we extend the product to meet emerging needs.
Our flexible pricing plans are built with small businesses in mind.

Establishing governance and structure but without complexity

As a small business ourselves, we are definitely not fans of unnecessary complexity and red tape, and we know neither are our clients. Sometimes policy management solutions more designed for enterprise customers require large amounts of administration and set-up that are then difficult or time-consuming to change afterwards. Solutions can also be overwrought and overengineered in tying much unnecessary process to policy management, which can sometimes disengage the policy owners who use the system.

Xoralia is designed to give the right level of governance and structure you need for effective policy management – clear ownership, configurable workflows and the right access control –all without the unnecessary administration overhead. In some senses Xoralia is quite a lightweight product, but powerful and flexible enough to establish just the right level of control.

Get the right policy management solution for your small of growing business

Policy management is important for small businesses. Software can help but it is important to have a flexible, competitively priced product such as Xoralia that meets your needs. Why not arrange a free demo?

The story behind Xoralia

Xoralia was built by the team at Content Formula, an intranet and digital workplace consultancy that has built SharePoint intranets for some of the world’s most famous companies. Now, most companies want their policies and procedures on the intranet but they don’t just want to store them there, they also want tools to help better manage them. Over the years we came across just about every single requirement for a policy management system. As this article above explains, there are gaps in SharePoint and so we never built what in our mind was the perfect policy management system.

However, one of our clients challenged us to build something for them that filled all the gaps but still used SharePoint at the back end. We had a great relationship with them and agreed to share the budget to do this, provided we could then market the solution to others. That was in 2019. We’re now on version 3 of Xoralia and the product has grown and evolved a lot.

3 benefits you can expect from Xoralia

Make it easy to find policies

Centralised policy library with powerful search and filtering.

Reduce administrative burden

Automations and notifications so that all policy tasks are carried out on time

Demonstrate compliance and best practice

Sophisticated tracking and dashboards to drive and measure compliance.

And lots more!

What our clients say

AppSource review

A great time saver and tool for document management

We have found Xoralia to be very beneficial to us as it has allowed us to focus on other area’s as Xoralia will take care of who has read the documents and notify them if they have not. A great time saver and tool for document management all together.

Tim Galer

IT Coordinator

Hughes

Ideal partner for our regulated environment

LifeArc operates in a strictly regulated sector where compliance and information security are critical. It is essential that LifeArc’s workforce have easy and effortless access to the latest up-to-date policies and procedures, which is the structure Xoralia gave us.

Adam Lythgoe

IT Manager

LifeArc

How to get started with Xoralia

Step 1: request a demo

Fill out our form and we will be in touch to arrange a time. You can even book a time yourself.

Step 2: get a price proposal

If you think Xoralia is for you ask us for a quote. This will set out any options you may have.

Step 3: install and launch

We’ll install Xoralia in your environment (or you can do it yourself). We’ll provide training and support to get you up and running quickly.

Here's what you'll get

And last but not least:

Ready to get started?

Connect with us to streamline your policy management and ensure effortless compliance.

AppSource review

Uniting excellence in integration and features for seamless policy management

As the newly appointed IT Manager at our company, I was tasked with implementing the Xoralia policy management tool, and the experience has been nothing short of impressive.

Rian Stuart