How to manage documents in Salesforce in 2024

Determine how businesses manage their key documents using Salesforce, what this process looks like and how you can optimize it in 2024. 

What is Salesforce document management?

Salesforce document management describes how people create, store and organize documents within Salesforce. These are usually documents that share important information with prospects or customers and can be instrumental in closing more deals. 

Salesforce is an extremely popular customer relationship management tool (CRM) and is likely used across multiple departments within a business, which may track and manage their documents in different systems. Because of this, Salesforce has a range of document management features.

However, the platform can also be limited when it comes to document management. This article focuses on the ways you can plug these gaps and manage documents more effectively within Salesforce. Read on to find out more.  

Which documents can you manage in Salesforce

Salesforce is a CRM, which means a majority of its users are sales team members. Hence there are a few common types of documents that can be uploaded and stored within the tool, including: 

• Sales contracts 
• Invoices
• Sales scripts
• Quotes and proposal templates 
• Email marketing attachments 
• Product marketing materials

This article will zoom in on the documents used to capture revenue and close more deals, including sales agreements, invoices and proposals. 

Salesforce document management: how does it work?

Salesforce isn’t just a CRM, it can also be used for certain elements of the document management process.

Compared to other CRMs like HubSpot, Salesforce performs well when it comes to the document management process with many built-in features supporting this. Built-in features include storing, sharing, organizing and tracking documents.

1. Document storage and sharing 

Salesforce has an area named ‘Files Home’. This is where personal documents can be uploaded by a user and shared with the wider team for communal use. These files can be vired and customized from all devices. 

If you want to work more collaboratively on stored documents, then the ‘Salesforce CRM Content’ space is for you. The tool allows users to create a number of different document types, share them with team members, collaboratively edit them and share them with colleagues or external users via the online platform. 

Users can also create and add attachments from within Salesforce for various types of data records, such as contracts, invoices and quotes. 

2. Document organization

When it comes to organizing your documents, Salesforce Files is the tool to look out for. It allows you to share and collaborate on files uploaded into the platform, store files privately, manage version updates and follow files that are important to you. 

This is linked to ‘Files Connect’ which, as it says on the tin, allows you to connect external file systems to the Salesforce platform. With both options, you can move documents across folders easily and decide who can access key documents - an important feature for maintaining confidentiality. 

Although this is a fairly standard option for document organization, it does offer the functionality needed to sort and store documents securely and limit risk. 

3. Document tracking

Salesforce also can track when a lead opens or forwards a document, this can then be set up a as deal approval process within Salesforce.

This can provide insight into what a prospect's decision-making process looks like and how successful your outreach has been. 

Increased document visibility is integral to the success of the sales process, as you can decide when is best to contact them. For instance, if you see a lead keeps opening and closing a contract without signing, it may indicate that you need to contact them and check if they have questions regarding the contract's terms. 

This is a feature offered by Juro, where contract owners can see if a counterparty reviews or edits a contract. This can even be set up as a notification in Slack using Juro’s native integration.

Explore more about setting up contract notifications on Slack using this guide to Slack contract management. 

Limitations of Salesforce document management 

As useful as it can be for document management, it's important to remember that Salesforce is not a native document management platform. This means that it lacks some features and has several limitations. Below, we explore these limitations alongside some solutions and workarounds. 

1. Less useful for document creation

You can’t create files directly in the Salesforce platform. This means they need to be created and uploaded in a format that the platform can understand, this includes: 

• PDF (.pdf)
• Microsoft Office (Powerpoint.doc, .docx, .xls, .xlxs, and .ppx)
• Images (.jpg, .jpeg, .bmp, .gif, and .png)
• Rich text (.txt, .rtf)

The problem with this is that it can make the process of managing documents such as business contracts more complex. For congrats like this, speed and efficiency are key to closing the deal and more revenue. 

Switching between tools to create, redline and share legal contracts can create friction between teams, especially legal and sales. It can be frustrating for legal as they’re obliged to draft these contracts in Word, then pass them onto sales reps to upload - and that's before any negotiation can even take place. 

This issue is very solvable. Legal teams can enable sales to generate contracts without leaving their CRM, all they need to do is integrate Salesforce with a contract lifecycle management tool like Juro. 

Using an integration with a platform like Juro, you can automate contracts using pre-approved templates in just a few simple steps. To see this in practice, hit the button below to book a demo of Juro. 

2. Lack of search functionality for documents

The ability to track and store documents is one thing, but the capacity to find and access the right documents and data is more complicated. Salesforce has limited capabilities when it comes to search functionality. 

Salesforce users can search and filter documents using their name, but can’t filter through the data stored within the document itself. This means that users may need to read through the whole document in order to find one small data point. 

Integrating with Juro can solve this problem, as it uses OCR-enabled search to give users instant access to the data stored in their legal documents. 

Juro’s Salesforce integration combines a CRM tool's features with advanced contract management, making it a dream combination for sales and legal collaboration. Documents can be generated in Salesforce and then stored in Juro to make them fully searchable. 

This allows teams the flexibility to work from within their CRM but also gain greater visibility into contract data if and when they need it. 

Similar integrations will be available for various aspects of the contract process but Juro is a popular choice for sales teams as self-serve templates enable legal and sales to work in harmony. As one independent reviewer on G2 worded it: "Finally CLM Software Sales Can Use!"

Ready to step up your document management processes?

Salesforce is a useful tool for managing documents in business, particularly if your sales team spends a lot of time on the platform. However, it won't work as a standalone document management solution.

To speed up your sales processes and gain more visibility into documents, you should consider integrating Salesforce CRM with Juro's all-in-one contract management tool.

To find out more about how Juro’s integration with Salesforce can enable sales to agree contracts faster you can check out the following resources:

• How to manage and create contracts in Salesforce
• The 10 best Salesforce integrations for sales reps in 2024
• Salesforce electronic signatures: what you need to know

If you’re interested in finding out more, fill in the form below for a personalized demo.