Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Make Your Client's Life Easier With Extranet

By Benjamin Rowe


Extranets have become a popular tool used by service companies over the past several years in order to enhance their client relationships. Originally, they were implemented to overcome the time and cost barriers associated with a distance relationship. Today, service companies use extranets to serve clients who are right down the street because of the many ways they make the client's life easier.

What is an extranet?

A web-based tool called the extranet can allow a defined group of internal and client users to access projects as well as documents in a secure environment.

One way to think of an extranet is as a shared filing cabinet. With this, clients are allowed to access documents immediately and all organized by project. This is also useful when groups of people need everything organized in the same way and need to access the work at the same time.

Who uses extranets?

When it comes to using an extranet, any company that shares documents with clients can benefit from it. Real estate brokers, financial service companies, architectural firms, advertising agencies, law firms are just some of the examples as the list can go on.

How does an extranet enhance client relationships?

From the many benefits extranets offer to clients, enhanced relationships is the result. Considered as the most important is time savings. Everything is organized in one place to assure a quick review and response instead of searching emails or paper files. Assuring you that nothing is lost and that the correct version is being reviewed is a client extranet. Many extranets feature an alert system to assure that documents are posted and reviewed on a timely basis.

The documentation of all activities, a higher level of security than is offered by email, easy client access to past work through the use of an archive, and the ability to limit access to selected individuals when needed are included as other benefits.

The bottom-line

By enhancing client relationships, retention is supported and it also saves administrative time. Often allowing the extranet to pay for itself is this impact on both revenue and costs and there are many cases where it can result in increased profits.




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