Amazing things happen when your CRM and DMS work hand in hand

A customer relationship management (CRM) system is a vital tool most businesses use to manage the customer journey.

At the start of the journey it helps manage data, sales calls and proposals, then once a prospective buyer becomes a customer it tracks important information like contacts, contracts, renewal dates and interactions. But what itdoesn't do - and what many companies forget about - is manage and organise documents related to CRM actions.

Customer information and relationship management only really becomes effective with structured, reliable document management such as that provided by a document management solution (DMS) like DocuWare.

How do a CRM and a DMS work hand in hand?

CRMs are designed to manage structured data such as customer names, company names, contact details, order numbers and the like. But most of the essential information, like that contained in proposals, contracts, emails and other correspondence, is at best difficult to find and at worst inaccessible.

Only by combining the data in a CRM with the content in these documents can you truly provide context to the data and a much improved customer experience.

Happy customers

Your potential and existing customers expect, if not demand, fast responses to enquiries and issues but if your sales and customer service teams need to hunt around for related documentation not found in the CRM they simply won't get it. Your reputation suffers and, eventually, so do your sales.

With your CRM and DMS seamlessly integrated, however, your staff have instant access to both customer data and documentation. Response times will be fast and complete and your customers will be all the happier for it.

Think too about the number of ways your customers can reach you - email, web form, chat bot, phone, social media. This can cause quite a headache for businesses when they have to piece together a conversation over several platforms just to manage the customer. And the customer doesn't care...they expect the same level of service no matter which way they contact you.

By integrating your CMS with your DMS the conversation will beautomatically pieced together and tracked, so your teams can follow along easily and you don't have to bounce your customer from department to department, leaving them increasingly frustrated.

Increasing challenge

The amount of data created over the next few years is set to increase exponentially, with much of it moving from paper to digital. That is going to give businesses a real challenge in terms of how they manage it - and it includes the data you have for each of your customers.

By integrating your existing CRM with a document management solution now, you'll get ahead of that increase - and your competition as you will be providing a much enhanced service for your customers.

Simple integration, huge benefits

You may be thinking integrating your CMS with a DMS like DocuWare will be difficult. But it doesn't have to be.

DocuWare Smart Connect, part of the DocuWare solution, reads terms directly from your CRM's interface and uses them to search for associated documents. With a single click users see all the relevant documents on a single screen immediately - emails, orders, invoices, contracts, any document related to the original search.

DocuWare Smart Connect allows DocuWare to integrate easily with Microsoft Dynamics 365 or any other CRM, giving your staff the complete picture for each customer, from initial contact through the sales process to present day, allowing them to provide the ultimate in customer service and retention.