Salesforce and SharePoint Integration: How it Benefits Businesses

How businesses operate today has evolved significantly over the past few decades. A significant part of the workforce today works from remote locations, which has led to a growth in the demand for collaboration systems that enable teams to work together on projects that would either usually need staff to be in the same location or be inefficient. In this context, Salesforce has constantly fared as the top choice. Moreover, while Salesforce's functionality for collaboration and document management is quite robust, most enterprises also use other collaboration systems, such as SharePoint, to supplement their arsenal of tools for storing documents and manage collaboration. While this helps save on license costs, expand relevant Salesforce functionality, and enhance cross-departmental collaboration, it can also impact employee efficiency unless the possible issues get addressed. The pitfalls of using the two tools without proper integration can include problems in syncing processes since SharePoint automates contract approvals for customers, vendors, and partners whereas Salesforce needs users to move from the CRM to collaboration system. It can also impede team collaboration because Salesforce users end up spending much time running between two systems. Furthermore, since sales professionals must first download documents from SharePoint and then upload them in Salesforce every time they have to share these documents with either their customers or other team members. It, in turn, results in duplication of records in two systems. However, with robust Salesforce-to-SharePoint integration solution can tend to all these challenges and deliver myriad benefits for companies. Let us take a look at how companies stand to benefit from it. 1. Flexibility: The integration helps sales professionals save time by providing them access to essential resources from any mobile device, no matter if they are online or offline. 2. Enhanced collaboration: It empowers users of both systems to interact in real time and receive relevant notifications instantly. 3. Improved document management: A Salesforce and SharePoint integration facilitates access to documents and provides the ability to work on them within the preferred system's UI. For example, if a user is not sure about the document's name and whether the record that they are seeking get stored in SharePoint or Salesforce, they can look it up via content search and preview of either of the two systems. Then there are also custom workflows that automate the document review process across both networks. So, if a sales professional triggers a contract approval from Salesforce, the adoption goes in SharePoint, and the contract's status gets automatically updated in Salesforce. Besides the benefits above, enhanced communication and workflow between the sales team and the rest of the organization can also contribute significantly to boosting business results. Moreover, since it enables sales professionals to concentrate on making sales instead of getting caught up with trying to locate documents, the company’s sales, and thus profits, are bound to go up. With that being clear, the next step is for enterprises to find a dependable provider of SharePoint application development services to get started on harnessing benefits of the Salesforce and SharePoint integration.