Imagine a few businesses working in diverse sectors like Insurance policies, Digital Marketing, or Manufacturing processes. Seemingly, these industries have nothing in common. However, there is a common link connecting not only these but every business out there. This common, underlying theme is the widespread use of documents! All industries heavily rely on documents, either in the form of contracts, receipts, invoices, employee details, or sales records.
Documents are the foundation of every business. They store valuable data and inputs for businesses to make informed decisions and streamline business operations. Documents are heavily relied upon in every aspect of the sales cycle, and they are indispensable for the work of any company.
Right from simple tasks like creating leads or storing inquiry forms, or major tasks like creating quotations and post-sales services- we require documents in every stage of a business’s operations. If any piece of the document goes missing, is tampered with, or cannot be found at the time when it’s needed, it will lead to chaos for the business. An asset as important as documents must hence be managed well to leverage its full potential.
Let us see the importance of document management for businesses, and how CRMs can help in this process.
Besides document management, sales CRM systems like Kylas can help your business in several ways. It streamlines your end-to-end operations and enhances the productivity of your teams. It helps boost your revenue and sales.
The Importance of Document Management
A document may be as brief as containing the name & email of a client, or it may be as complex as containing the details of the quotation sent to a client. Irrespective of its nature, every document is important for a business. There is perhaps no activity in the entire workflow of a business that does not entail some use of a document.
Let us imagine if the documents of a company are in disarray, with no system to store, track and retrieve them properly. An agent of that company might send the wrong communication to the wrong client. Or perhaps an invoice might be wrongfully calculated since the order details are not clear. Or worse still, the entire client database might be lost simply because the document containing it has been lost. It is hence no surprise that document-related challenges are responsible for a 21.3% loss of productivity.
To avoid situations like this and ensure that your operations run smoothly, document management is a must. Here are some of the other compelling benefits of this process:
1. It Increases Work Efficiency.
Statistics show that employees spend up to 30% of their time manually searching for information. Instead, if you store and manage documents properly, every piece of information is available at your agents’ fingertips. If the data is easily found, agents can quickly act upon it and thereby increase the efficiency of their work.
2. It Ensures the Safety of Documents.
Mismanaged documents are always at a high risk of getting misplaced or damaged. Since vital and sensitive data of companies and their clients is stored in documents, companies cannot afford to lose them. A proper document management system ensures the safety and security of your documents and the data stored within them.
3. It Contributes to Data-Driven Business Decisions.
25% of poorly managed documents are not retrieved. If your documents are not managed well, you will not be able to access the important information they contain. This will compromise your ability to make informed decisions for your business. However, accessible and properly stored documents will allow you to leverage their full potential to make data-driven decisions.
4. It Enhances Team Collaboration.
Teams can work well when there is transparency maintained between them. With proper document management, team members can easily share documents with each other. The time required to convey information, hand over work, and maintain work updates among teams is greatly reduced.
Given these major benefits associated with document management, every company should make it a top priority. However, it is not easy to set up such a system. Tech adoption plays a major role in helping businesses with document management. Tools like CRM manage almost all aspects of a business, be it data collection, analytics, tracking sales, or monitoring the performance of teams. Let us explore the role CRM can play in document management for a business.
How Can CRM Help in Document Management?
CRM software is an all-in-one solution to streamline the entire functioning of businesses. Among its various other advantages, it is a reliable tool for businesses to collate and manage all their data and documentation.
Here’s how document management is made easy with CRM:
1. It Creates a Centralized Document Storage Platform.
Inquiry forms, client details, sales records, inventory lists, and invoices- are just a few of the numerous documents that a company uses daily. These documents are usually generated at different touchpoints of the sales process and compiling them is no easy feat. However, it is essential to do so, because your business efficiency can take a big hit due to misplaced documents. Studies have shown that 83% of employees try to recreate missing documents, which wastes their bandwidth.
With CRM in place, you can store all your documents on a centralized platform. This can be easily accessed at all times, by every member of your team. It is tamper-proof and does not require your agents to manually store documents in files and ledgers.
2. It Helps You Segregate Documents.
Businesses deal with multiple clients, each of whom has several associated documents. Besides, the nature of documents also varies depending on the type of information it contains. It is essential to segregate your documents so that the right one can be found at the right time.
CRM tools help you sort and segment documents into categories, based on your business requirements. You choose to group all your quotation documents separately from your employee records, or group together all documentation relating to specific clients. This enhances your efficiency in finding the required data contained in every different document.
3. It Helps You Track Multiple Versions of Documents.
You generate documents at every touchpoint of your sales process. Since different teams are responsible for managing different aspects of your sales cycle, there will be numerous revisions and edits made to such documents. It is essential for your teams to identify the latest version of documents, and also know who made the changes.
CRM can help you stay apprised of every change made in the document and recover even the prior versions. Besides, you can also stay informed of the team members who have worked on the document, and the corresponding changes made by them.
4. It Allows You to Share Documents Exclusively With the Required People.
One of the biggest advantages of using CRM for your document management is that you can selectively and automatically share documents from within the system. Not every member of your team needs access to every document. You can automate and choose to share documents with only the right people, at the right time in the sales process. This is a crucial step in document management, as you can ensure that your data contained in documents is only accessed by the staff who have the required clearances.
5. It Provides Remote Access to Documents.
8 out of 10 employees require access to documents on the go. If traditional document management methods are relied upon, employees would need to carry dozens of files everywhere they go!
However, CRM systems allow you to access your documents remotely since they are all stored on a digital platform. Besides, it also allows you to add and edit documents in real-time since your agents can do so from anywhere.
Hence, CRM is a robust tool to help businesses with their document management. It creates a unified repository of documents, and helps you manage, share and access these in the best way possible.
Ending Note
Having well-managed documents is the key to having a well-run business. Document management is a vital practice for businesses to maintain, as it can improve their overall functioning and scale the productivity of their teams. CRM can support companies through their document management process, and hence is a great value addition for all businesses.
