Historically, people have thought of AWD as a workflow and imaging solution that revolutionises how work is processed in the back-office. With the launch of AWD10, we were able to change the paradigm, whereby in addition to our back-office processing success, we now have an application and integration platform that can be leveraged to create complete industry solutions.
This article demonstrates how the integration between AWD and Salesforce.com enabled a leading investment management services organisation to provide a better experience for its customers.
Continually looking to improve customer experience, its client relationship team decided to implement a new CRM solution, Salesforce.com. By creating a seamless integration between AWD and Salesforce.com, the following goals were achieved:
* The ability for our client to initiate work in Salesforce.com and complete the work in AWD.
* A two-way exchange of work between AWD and Salesforce.com.
* Full transparency of the customer service work in AWD, providing our client with a full view of customer engagements.
The implementation of the new CRM system required integration of many customer service processes and no less than 11 different legacy systems, each in need of seamless two-way communication. It was at this stage when Boston Financial Data Services (Boston Financial), which handles our client's transfer agency processing, and DST, partnered with the client to collaborate on the integration of Salesforce.com with AWD.
How was the integration achieved?
Architectural environment
In order for AWD to accept Internet-facing transactions, we began by developing the e-commerce infrastructure to accept these new types of requests. To do that safely, we had to ensure our security design was compliant with the policies of both the client and DST.
The value of integration
While Salesforce.com has traditionally been a solution for the sales team, the application additionally has offerings that provide solutions to service areas. In both sales and service instances, it is important to have visibility into the back-office servicing, direct from the Salesforce.com portal. This is where both solutions are able to complement one another. While Salesforce.com provides the customer service interface along with its customer profile and employee social network, AWD provides the transparency to the full inventory of customer service work.
Through continued collaboration with Salesforce.com, we recognised a common solution vocabulary, including case management, process and workflow. Below are some insights on key crossover areas between AWD and Salesforce.com:
* AWD offers business process automation across the enterprise, including the work that is in Salesforce.com.
* Salesforce.com has micro-flows that help improve the experience based on what is happening inside the system.
* Salesforce.com does not offer an end-to-end business process engine, and the visual workflow or process does not have built-in integration capabilities.
* Salesforce.com refers to event management as case management. From our discussions with the Saleforce.com sales team as well as research from leading industry analysts, we have learned that it is designed more for incident management rather than complex cases. The Salesforce.com case management offering is typically found in business-to-business service centres, whereby cases are typically closed within two weeks, rather than months or years.
As the market becomes more concerned about delivering a great customer experience, integration between AWD and CRM solutions enables organisations to achieve true process excellence. By continually trying to improve customer service processes, organisations will change the way customers engage with their business and how people engage in the workplace.
Share