In this blog post, Managing Director and founder of Laminin Solutions, Le Roux Cilliers, explains how the MFSQL Connector can benefit companies with managing their content. Laminin Solutions in an M-Files Partner offering a range of core services and specialize in development and implementation of selected business systems.
As organizations seek to operate more efficiently, they invest in deploying new systems, establishing integrations and in optimizing business processes. What’s remarkable is that for many, and I dare say, most, there exists no connection between the repositories where we store invoices, contracts, plans, designs, correspondence… i.e. our content, and the systems that provide the basis for executing our processes, like ERP and CRM. A recent study by AIIM revealed that 61% of organizations have no link between ERP and CRM and that for an additional 24% this link is one-way only!
The status quo for many information workers, therefore, comes down to being the middleman between the data in our business systems and the content in our repositories as much of the information we need to execute our processes is contained in our content. And that job is getting harder as the degree of content chaos is increasing with the proliferation of repositories such as network file shares, ECM systems, online file share and sync etc.
As M-Files is metadata-driven, it provides an excellent basis for organizing content in a manner that aligns superbly well with processes. You can classify and organize content by such attributes as a customer, a supplier, a project, a case number, a delivery batch ID and so on – and those are the same things we encounter and work within systems like ERP, CRM and so on. Being able to establish a connection between the two sides will make the work of the middle-man so much more efficient as we no longer need to seek the content that is related to the issue we are working on. Instead, it’s presented to us, in the context of the order, the customer, the project, the claim etc. that we are working on, helping us save considerable amounts of time with process cycles.
Build Integrations: The MFSQL Connector
It’s when trying to establish that connection between the metadata in M-Files and the data in your business systems that the MFSQL Connector that we at Laminin Solutions have developed comes in as a valuable solution. It enables users to rapidly build integrations between M-Files and other applications, such as SAGE, Epicor or any other application that use a Microsoft database.
Without venturing into too much technical jargon, the MFSQL Connector is a database connectivity tool that provides conditional connections to databases, meaning that these connections are triggered when certain M-Files user, workflow or Microsoft database events occur. This way, it allows for business data, files, and workflow intelligence to be synced 2-ways and in near real-time.
Bridging the gap between structured data and non-structured content presents most organizations with a formidable challenge. M-Files and its metadata-driven approach to managing content make that gap a lot easier to overcome, while the MFSQL Connector by Laminin Solutions adds the final piece of your process optimization puzzle.
Is your organization seeking to connect M-Files with a system that uses a Microsoft Database or do you have questions? I look forward to hearing them! Leave a comment or contact Laminin Solutions.
You can view a complete list of new features and capabilities of MFSQL Connector here.
