Customer information is one of the foundations of successful business. How do you handle customer information? When does it inhibit or accelerate? In this article, we look at the balance between usability, security and confidentiality. How can companies better serve their customers thanks to smart information management?

Many business service providers need to exchange business-critical data with customers and must operate under strict confidentiality policies or strict privacy or financial regulations.

At the same time, companies need to cooperate effectively internally and externally for quality services. Many companies and their employees struggle with this puzzle every day.

A successful business must create and maintain a balance between:

• Seamless sharing of sensitive data
• Maintaining confidentiality. 

This balance can be struck by using the right customer information management solution.

Good customer information management as flywheel

To begin with, what is customer information management? 

Customer information management can be divided into the following four parts:

• Managing information on customers and customer relationships
• Onboarding new customers with efficient delivery of products and services  
• Managing the relationship
• Keeping staff productive and satisfied while ensuring watertight customer confidentiality and regulatory compliance.

Take the consultancy sector, for example. For consultancies, attracting new business is all about staying relevant to clients and prospects by showing that you understand their business well.

As a consultancy grows, it can become difficult to keep up with all the knowledge and insights in different business lines. 

Studies show, for example, that employees spend up to 2.5 hours a day searching for information. The ability to find the right information at the right time (read quickly) affects the value you as a company offer to your customers. 

Good customer information management helps companies in two crucial ways:

• Link all documents to the right business context, making it easy to find information related to a particular customer.
• Encourage internal collaboration and easily leverage knowledge and insights from an industry or functional domain.

Customer and employee central

Many companies try to induct new employees efficiently using customer information.

In the consulting sector, staff turnover is high and this creates a steep learning curve. For many agencies, getting new employees up and running quickly is a challenge. As an agency, you want an employee to be up to speed with clients, their needs and, for example, compliance requirements as soon as possible.

A common problem is the repetitive sharing of pre-existing data, documents or information. This has a negative impact on a company's reputation. Not to mention the wasted time that could be much better spent.

Accountancy firms, financial services providers or law firms can put their customers at the centre by deploying a platform for:

• Onboarding new customers speeds up through automated workflows and templates for quotes, contracts and other standard documents.
• Ensures that customer-related information is easy to find and maintain, allowing new employees to start work more efficiently and orders to be completed more efficiently.
• Implement a robust versioning and review system to ensure employees are always working on and with the correct information.

Watertight compliance with laws & regulations

For business service providers, navigating the latest regulations and withstanding the latest data security threats can seem like an almost insurmountable challenge. These threats can lead to fines, loss of reputation or even bankruptcy.

Up front, a robust platform for managing customer information will not solve every legislative issue or rid the world of cybercriminals. However, a smart platform can ensure that employees and customers adhere to best practices for sharing and storing sensitive data. Moreover, a smart information platform prevents endless back-and-forth mailing of data and documents, which can create a confusing and unsafe customer experience.

A good customer information management platform offers strong advantages:

• Modernise secure information exchange between all customer and business channels.
• Automate secure document sharing and permissions management.
• Streamline audits with automated workflows and advanced search capabilities that provide instant access to information auditors need.

M-Files provides a seamless set of capabilities to effectively onboard new customers. It helps business service providers securely exchange information and smooth customer relationships, while guarding customer confidentiality and ensuring regulatory and industry compliance.