Using a CRM system to get you to a paperless office

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Filing CabinetsImagine an office without piles of paper, without ugly grey filing cabinets taking up office space and instead a virtual filing cabinet available to everyone in the office.

e-Advantage Solutions have been introducing our clients to CRM systems such as eLink CRM and Efficy CRM for many years. These are business management systems as well as contact management systems. They act as a central point of information for all your staff, containing everything from contracts to invoices and client contact information. All you need is a computer and you can access any of your information from anywhere.

It seems that we are always going to receive some correspondence in paper format but the secret is to scan these straight into your shared system. Depending on the quantity of paper received you can have a dedicated fast scanner, or many smaller businesses just have a few people with easy to use desktop scanners. Rather than passing photocopies around the office you can feel good that you saved a few trees.

Having scanned your documents how do you find them again?

These systems automatically keep your documents filed by the relevant company, contact, user, date, title, projects, sales opportunity, support case and products. Efficy has a built in indexing system so you can search inside documents for keywords too.

A key advantage of storing your documents and files on such a system is that you can work from anywhere. Just you and your computer in a field if you wanted to and had internet connection of course. In fact, one of our clients uses the document filing facility so that he can work on them at home (in Sussex) or he can work on them from anywhere in the UK as he is often away on business. Basically he uses it EVERYWHERE. As a result he’s got control of everything that needs to be done and has now been able to grow his business with confidence.

As well as handling scanned documents, Efficy has strong Outlook integration. This means that your emails are easy to use within the system too, easy to find and easy to share. No more shouts across the office asking to see an email that has been sent.

Moving to a paperless office not only saves trees but it will improve the productivity of your business as you will spend less time searching for information and more time satisfying customers needs. Satisfied customers means higher sales, it’s a no brainer really, using Efficy CRM as a paperless office makes perfect business sense. As an added bonus you always have our helpful team at e-Advantage Solutions to help teach you how to use the system and really get the most out of it, so give us a call.

Check out this case study on how we saved International Horizons from being a paper based business.

About the author 

Pete Baikins

Pete Baikins is an international authority on gamification, a lifelong gamer, successful entrepreneur and a lecturer. As CEO of Gamification+ Ltd he mentors and trains companies world-wide on the use of gamification to solve business challenges. Gamification+ won the Board of Trade Award from the UK's Department of International Trade in January 2019.

Pete is co-host of the health gamification podcast Health Points and is also Chair of Gamification Europe, the annual conference for Gamification practitioners.

Pete is an Honorary Ambassador for GamFed (International Gamification Confederation), having previously been the Chair from 2014 to February 2019, whose aim is to spread best practices within and support the gamification industry.

After 15 years as a Lecturer on gamification and entrepreneurship at the University of Brighton he now guest lectures on Gamification at King’s College London and at ESCP Europe at post-graduate and under-graduate levels.

Over the past 20 years Pete has built and sold two businesses. One was in security software and the more recent one was a telecoms and internet connectivity business. He is also an Ambassador for Brighton & Hove Chamber of Commerce in the UK.

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