Integrating Document Scanning Services with Your ERP or CRM: Benefits & Best Practices

"Professionals integrating document scanning services with ERP and CRM systems in a modern office setup"

Customers are certainly the main driving factor of any business. Serving them in the right way is the key to making or breaking your business. With a document management system in place, you must certainly integrate document scanning services to improve efficiency in your workplace. 

CRM (Customer Management Software) and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) are the two most important systems you must connect to document scanning services. Integrating them with scanning services can streamline sales, boost profitability, and create a base of loyal customers. 

Keep reading as we list the benefits and best practices for integrating your ERP or CRM with document scanning services. 

Benefits of Integrating Your ERP or CRM with Document Scanning Services

  1. Easy to Access Customer Data

Integrating document scanning services with your CRM or ERP allows you to access customer data from a centralised database. This will save a lot of time, energy, and resources, and your employees will no longer have to look for records in multiple places or inquire with their colleagues for the same purpose. 

With every other customer’s data made available in one window, your working staff can now serve customers faster.

  1. Less Time Consumption for Customer Document Generation

Document scanning services ensure your CRM system has the upper hand while generating customer-related documents. With an integrated solution, your colleagues can skip the time frame involved in scanning and emailing customer-related documents. 

They can wisely pull up every related document from within the CRM interface without opening a separate program for the same purpose. 

  1. Easy to Track

By opting for document scanning services, you can easily store a digitized version of printed documents. Later, it can be conveniently shared among team members. Also, you can track who has been working on which module. 

This makes it easier for your employees to follow up on any document. By integrating document scanning services with your CRM or ERP, you can acquire any information your staff tends to search for within a few seconds.

  1. Secured Operations

When you integrate document scanning services with CRM or ERP, customer data will be made available centrally for your employees’ use. Although this can sound like a potential threat, certain features can be used to customize who can work on a particular file and how. 

By handling data this way, you will ensure that you have secured operations. Sensitive documents can be protected and made available only to the staff you have selected to access in the first place. 

  1. Improved Employee Efficiency

While answering customer queries, your employees must have the right information to fetch, analyze, and create possible solutions at the right time. By integrating document scanning services, your employees can fetch customer-related data in a single click and address their queries instantly. 

By reducing the number of trips made to find customer details, you can certainly increase the working efficiency of your employees. 

  1. No Duplication of Data

Without integrating scanning services, your employees in different departments will find it difficult to simultaneously handle customer data stored as physical documents. This can lead to data duplication, and your business might face unwanted data breaches and errors. 

When you have both document scanning services and CRM in one entity, you will be assured of no data duplication. Customer information is logged in one place and made available for multiple access.

  1. Improved Customer Interaction

Once your business-related documents are scanned and made accessible in your ERP or CRM system, any data can be retrieved faster with just a few clicks. This improves customer interaction and increases customer retention. 

Providing a better experience to your customers with your business will let them return to use your services any day. By creating a valuable customer base through quality customer interaction, your business gets word-of-mouth promotions. 

Practices to Maximize Document Scanning Service Benefits with your ERP or CRM

  • Assess Your Workflow

While implementing document scanning services, evaluate your document-related process. This step involves identifying manual data entry points, repetitive tasks, and areas prone to errors. By doing so, you can determine the workflow that can benefit from document scanning services. 

  • Ensuring Data Accuracy

Implement robust security protocols to handle sensitive and confidential information through data scanning services. To mitigate potential risks, you can invest in artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze and validate data as it is processed through document scanning services. 

Role-based access control, encryption, and regular audits are some of the best practices for safeguarding your documents. 

  • Train Your Staff

The success of ERP or CRM integration with document scanning services depends on how well your team members can adapt to the new technology. Training your employees about how to use these systems is crucial. 

Conduct regular training sessions that cover the functionalities and features of the scanning services to help them better integrate them into their daily workflow. 

  • Prioritize Scalability

When implementing the document scanning process, the volume of documents that needs to be processed will increase. Go for solutions that can handle the growing workload without compromising any part of performance. 

The document scanning service that you have chosen must be adaptable to new document formats, types, or workflows. Being for your future needs can ensure that the integration process provides value in the long term.

  • Prefer Cloud-Based Solutions

Cloud-based document processing solutions have various advantages. Transferring scanned documents into your cloud account offers greater flexibility and improved accessibility. 

Cloud-based solutions, as recommended by document scanning service providers, ensure that your document scanning and processing system remains current and follows the latest technology and security standards. 

  • Disaster Recovery

Disaster in this context refers to losing sensitive records or information to hacking attempts. Once your business data is digitised, backups can be used anytime to restore data as it was last saved. 

Always choose document scanning services known for offering disaster recovery plans that can help recover documents in case of misplaced documents. 

Conclusion

Implementing document scanning services with your ERP or CRM can improve your business operations’ accuracy, efficiency, and security. By following the best practices discussed, you will ensure a successful transition to document processing automation. 

Investing in document scanning services reduces manual tasks and helps position your business for long-term success. 

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