Integrating SharePoint Document Management with your CRM

For many organizations the CRM system is the best source of details about Clients and the Jobs that are done for them. For law firms and other professional services organisations the Practice Management or Case Management system plays the same role. With the increased interest using Microsoft SharePoint as a document management platform many organizations are asking how best to integrate the new SharePoint-based document store with an existing CRM or other client management system.

While some CRMs (e.g. Microsoft CRM) have the capability to store documents and files, the best approach is to store the documents and files in SharePoint and have the SharePoint document store mirror the structure of Clients and Jobs (or Projects / Matters) in the existing CRM or Client management system.

To do this you need to ensure that as new Clients and Jobs are created in the CRM system, corresponding Sites and document libraries are created in the SharePoint document store. You also need to record a link to those new Client Sites and Job Libraries in the newly created records within the CRM. That way users can easily click to see all the documents, emails and other files that have been stored for that Client or Job; alternatively the user can browse the SharePoint document store and (subject to permissions) see all documents, emails and other files organized into a familiar hierarchy of Clients and Jobs.

The WISDOM Document Management Framework add-on for Microsoft SharePoint 2007 from Microsoft Gold Partner MacroView is a great tool for providing a familiar tree-view of a SharePoint document store.

MacroView can also supply Smart Templates that streamline the creation of new SharePoint sites for Clients and new SharePoint document libraries for each Job (or Project or Matter). The resulting document libraries contain automatic meta-data columns, which minimise the effort required of users as they save a new document, email message or other file to SharePoint. WISDOM itself adds customizations that make SharePoint document management capabilities directly available while you work in Microsoft Office, Windows, Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat.