The Nightmare Scenario you have to Avoid

Sweat is dripping down your brow and you have a queasy feeling in your stomach, it’s 2 o’clock in the morning and you are desperately trying to reach the person who your Investor Relations team accidentally emailed an investor (NAV) statement with the investor’s social security number in it. If you have shared a sensitive document with the wrong person, you know the sheer terror these moments can bring. We see the most sophisticated financial services companies in the world taken down by these types of mistakes all the time. Even if the email is retrieved the public relations fallout will likely cost you investors or in some extreme instances the shut down of your fund.

Given this risk, it is hard to believe that the majority of funds and other financial services firms are still not integrating their CRM systems with enterprise-level document management systems like SharePoint Online. At FinServ Consulting we work with 40 of the top 100 hedge and private equity funds in the world and very few of these firms currently use enterprise-level document management systems to protect their investor data.

The Quick and Easy way to Use SharePoint Online in Salesforce

Most Salesforce clients abandoned Salesforce Files a long time ago. Due to its lack of user-friendliness and severe limitations, Salesforce Files became one of the least-used features in Salesforce. At the same time, many companies have been moving to cloud-based office suites like Office 365 from Microsoft. With most Office 365 licenses, you get SharePoint Online for free. SharePoint Online is an extremely secure, cloud-based and feature-rich enterprise-level Document Management system.

Has anyone in your firm ever accidentally sent a sensitive document to the wrong client?

SharePoint Online has the ability to stop the recipient from opening that document even if they have already downloaded it onto their computer.

Inserting a Cloud-based Link to a SharePoint Online Document in Email

Removing Access Quickly

If you realize you made a mistake, you can stop the person from accessing the document you shared with just a couple of clicks. Even if they downloaded the document onto their hard drive, they will not be able to open the document thanks to Microsoft’s use of dual-key encryption. This means once you take away your side of the key, they can never open the document again.

2 clicks and access to the document is removed

Has anyone in your company ever accidentally or purposely emailed a file to an external recipient with Social Security numbers in it?

SharePoint Online with Outlook / Email integration means that you can stop any email or attachment from being shared if it contains sensitive info with PII (Personally Identifiable Information).

Particularly for highly regulated industries, like Financial Services and Healthcare, the built-in dual-key encryption and information rights management (“IRM”) features that SharePoint Online offers out of the box are “have to have’s”. 

Microsoft PII Warning when Sensitive Data is Detected in a Document

Seamless Integration with our Salesforce App

The application we helped build provides a seamless interface to all of your SharePoint Document Libraries and Files inside the Salesforce Lightning User Interface. The benefits of this application mean that your users will save hundreds of hours they used to spend searching through inconsistent folder structures and names or wading through multiple versions of a file to try to figure out which is the latest version of the file. By automatically linking the Files and Folders to your Salesforce records, you get your data and your files in one combined place to provide optimal efficiency for your team.

Through the application interface you get:

• 1-click to Open just about any kind of file so your team never wastes time with multiple clicks or waiting for a file to download before you can open it
• For Microsoft Office files where you have editor access, it will open up in the Office app in Editor mode
• You can upload files into the document library with 1-click as well
• You can also delete files if you have the correct access with 1-click
• Embedded search available right within the Lightning Component

Investor Relations Use Case

For our Alternative Asset Management clients, we offer the case study of the Investor Relations associate who often spends their day working with investors on questions. The ability to view the investor’s contact record while also looking at the investor’s latest NAV statement or recently updated subscription documents provides a level of efficiency that makes their day-to-day work much easier.

example of Investor Contact record with right sidebar of SharePoint Online Files

How the App Works

Putting the automated component into place is as simple as adding any Lightning Web Component; the interface offers quick and easy checkboxes to turn off and on key features in the application. Once added to any Object Type in Salesforce (standard objects or custom objects are all supported), the interface makes it simple and user-friendly to access your files and folders in seconds.

The quick and easy way to open SharePoint files right in Salesforce!

The application leverages advanced Microsoft technology to provide:

• Automatic creation of preset Folder and Subfolders that are automatically linked to the Salesforce record you just created or updated
• You can use the data in Salesforce to automatically name the Folder; this ensures a consistent naming scheme which will make it easy to find files
• For historical records, we offer automated scripts to create the Folder and Subfolders for all of your existing Salesforce records

Automatically Create a new set of SharePoint Online Folders and Link to your Salesforce Record with no Clicks when you create a New Salesforce Opportunity!

Conclusion

Using an Enterprise-Level Document Management system is a must-have for any company working in a regulated industry like Financial Services or Healthcare. SharePoint Online from Microsoft provides the most cost-effective and robust system in the marketplace. When you combine that with the Salesforce CRM system, you provide your users with a seamless and secure platform to work with customers while ensuring your company’s and your clients documents and data, including PII, remain secure.

The application FinServ has created with our partner provides the level of automation and seamless integration that your users demand and will also ensure they embrace the use of a Document Management system like SharePoint Online.

If you are interested in a demo or would like to purchase the application, please contact us here or by email at info@finservconsulting.com and we would be happy to help.