Is Your Organisation Divided? Some Users on SAP, Some on Salesforce, with Your Content Lost in the Middle?

The seamless way to tackle costly and challenging information silos

The terms Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Salesforce® have become interchangeable in recent years. One is a concept and the other a software platform. But as popular and widespread as Salesforce is, the old IT problem threatens again: another information silo – only this time in the cloud!

For Salesforce users, it is the place they spend most of their days. Customer service and sales representatives live in Salesforce, it’s what allows them to do their jobs. More importantly it’s helping them to delight their customers. But success in sales and service depends on other departments, for example purchasing, legal, and order fulfilment – although these teams often won’t access Salesforce.

Shared content solutions are an answer here.

In most organisations well–known systems are in place from SAP, Oracle and Microsoft – as well as Salesforce. All these different systems have their specific advantages and cover the different, role-specific requirements with their own functionality.

But what all departments (not only sales and marketing, but also service, purchasing and legal) need to work together smoothly is an all-round view of customers, suppliers, quotes and contracts.

The purchasing department's work does not end with the signed contract but extends the entire duration of a supplier relationship. To continuously develop this relationship and adapt it to changing customer requirements, purchasing is working more closely with sales.

If sales colleagues are in customer negotiations and must reach an agreement on discounts and delivery times, they need information on the status of the supplier relationship. However, sales usually do not have direct access to this data from Salesforce.

To calculate an optimal quotation price that is both competitive and profitable, sales and distribution must be able to quickly access information on the conditions under which the goods offered can be procured and the delivery dates agreed. To do this, sales need to be able to view all relevant contracts, evaluations of the vendor relationship, and correspondence with purchasing.

This means that there is a risk of considerable losses through misunderstandings, inquiries and queries between departments. The reason for this is the lack of content co-ordination between the various IT systems, which are used to map and support the business processes.

Key information must be accessible to all participants, regardless of their access system, and must always be up–to–date.  This is only possible with the help of solutions that are seamlessly integrated with all the leading business systems. The views of the common information can be different, but the key information must not be reserved exclusively for certain departments. Whether customer, supplier, service or contract files – all departments involved in the sales and purchasing processes must have the key information preferably available from within their access system.

With a central system-independent platform for content, access to a constantly updated and uniform information set can be made possible. With OpenText Extended ECM for Salesforce, such a platform is available as the basis for productivity–enhancing content solutions – whether in the cloud or on-premise.

Realize the benefits of connected workspaces for your organization with the experts at TerraLink; an award winning solutions integrator and OpenText Platinum Reseller.