I’ve previously covered M-Files, an application that enables companies to organize and manage company documents and information on cloud servers. Today Motive Systems, the company behind M-Files, is previewing it Salesforce integration. The idea is to create a one stop salesforce management solution that includes the organization and management of customer-related documents. Of course salesforce already has built in document management, giving users the ability to store files and relate them to particular customers or opportunities, but as Greg Milliken, president of Motive Systems explains, the M-Files approach goes further;

What truly sets the M-Files-Salesforce integration apart from what’s already out there is the tight integration itself and that fact that M-Files is tightly integrated with Windows Explorer. This makes M-Files for Salesforce CRM the first app that is completely integrated on the desktop so that anyone can develop (for instance) a proposal using Word or Excel, or a presentation using Powerpoint, save and classify it directly in a true DMS, *and* then have it then be fully integrated with the SF database of contacts, accounts, etc

Other applications offer pieces of this. As I mentioned previously, salesforce offers document management natively but there is no real classification and the integration with Office is minimal. Meanwhile, services such as Box.net have an interface to salesforce, but there is no metadata or classification or workflow, so it is more of a file-sharing tool than  full DMS in this context.

With M-Files for salesforce, users can tag documents to related records, such as leads, opportunities, accounts or contacts, and easily locate important customer-related documents directly from the Salesforce CRM user interface, or with the familiar Windows Explorer interface of M-Files. See video below.

For sales staff who spend their working day within salesforce, this integration is an obvious move. Despite the much heralded (although strangely lacking in substance) announcement of salesforce integration with Google apps a couple of years ago, the majority of sales staffers would use Microsoft Office as their office productivity application – any integration that allows the two main tools of choice to work together seamlessly is a no brainer in my view.

Enhanced by Zemanta
Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.