Is document chaos costing you time and money?

This article is part 1 of the “The past, present, and future of Salesforce document management and its impact on your business” series.

Introduction

Document management is the backbone of efficient business operations, yet it often remains overlooked in strategic discussions. In Salesforce, your CRM is the central hub for customer information, enabling teams to deliver a seamless and personalized experience. From sales to service and marketing to operations, Salesforce is the tool users rely on daily to gain a 360-degree view of the customer. However, documents must be integral to the ecosystem for this view to be complete.

Access to the correct documents—directly linked to relevant records such as accounts, opportunities, and cases—empowers users to work more efficiently, collaborate effectively, and make informed decisions. However, when document management exists outside of Salesforce or within its limited native tools, businesses often encounter inefficiencies, fragmented workflows, and missed opportunities.

Salesforce offers essential document management solutions, such as Salesforce Files, which function effectively as a foundational tool within the Salesforce ecosystem. However, they frequently fall short for organizations that need more scalable, robust, and user-friendly systems to accommodate the demands of growing and complex operations.

This article is the first of a three-part series exploring the challenges and future of Salesforce document management. In this post, we’ll uncover the hidden challenges of Salesforce’s native document management tools and their impact on business operations. Part 2 will focus on how Cartularius can transform document management, while Part 3 will explore the future of document management in Salesforce, including AI-driven advancements. By the end of this series, you’ll clearly understand where document management is today, where it’s going, and why it matters for your business.

The Impact of Disorganized File Systems on Your Business

Many organizations depend on various tools to store and manage their documents, such as Microsoft SharePoint, network drives, cloud storage solutions, or even personally created systems. These individual methods of organizing files, customized to a person’s work style, often result in silos that are hard to access and navigate for others. While these systems may benefit the individual user, the absence of a cohesive, collaborative structure has significant implications for business efficiency, teamwork, and compliance.

Let’s examine the key challenges scattered file systems present and their impact on your business.

Inefficiency and Lost Productivity

• Scattered files create silos, causing employees to waste valuable time searching through multiple systems to locate the correct document.
• Inconsistent file organization—optimized for personal use instead of team workflows—results in confusion, duplication, and errors.
• Disconnected systems require users to switch platforms, frequently disrupting focus and lowering productivity.

Collaboration Barriers

• Teams find collaborating challenging when files are locked on different platforms or inaccessible to specific users.
• Version control issues occur when multiple team members edit and save copies of the same document, often in various locations.

Business Continuity Risks

• Important documents stored in personal folders or difficult-to-access systems often become nearly impossible to retrieve when employees depart from the organization.
• Knowledge and files essential to operations or customer relationships can be lost, affecting continuity and leading to delays.

Compliance and Security Vulnerabilities

• Scattered file storage can make enforcing compliance with industry regulations or internal policies challenging.
•  Sensitive information stored in unsecured or untracked locations increases the risk of data breaches or regulatory violations.

Missed Opportunities for Integration

• A fragmented approach to document management often lacks integration with CRM workflows, such as Salesforce, making it challenging to link documents directly to relevant accounts, opportunities, or cases.
• This disconnect hampers current efficiency and jeopardizes future readiness. As AI-driven tools like AgentForce transform document management with intelligent categorization and predictive analytics, seamless integration with Salesforce is essential to keeping businesses competitive and future-proof.

The Limitations of Salesforce Files

General Constraints

While Salesforce Files provides a foundation for managing documents, several limitations can hinder its effectiveness for businesses with diverse and growing needs:

Maximum File Size (Source)

Files uploaded to Salesforce are limited to 2GB, which may not support more significant documents such as high-resolution media files, technical reports, or detailed design assets commonly used in specific industries.

Folder Management Limitations (Source)

Organizing files can become cumbersome as libraries expand. You can only create folders if your library has fewer than 5,000 files, making it challenging to maintain organization as the volume of your documents grows.

File Preview Restrictions (Source)

Although Salesforce provides file preview functionality, it supports only a limited range of file types.

Storage Allocation and Costs (Source)

Salesforce allocates 10 GB of base storage per organization (1GB for Essentials), with additional storage per user depending on the edition. Businesses handling high volumes of files can quickly exhaust these limits. Upgrading storage is not only expensive but also increases operational costs over time.

Scalability Challenges

These constraints create bottlenecks for rapidly scaling businesses or those generating significant data. They reduce operational efficiency and force teams to invest in external solutions or workarounds.

Limited Collaboration Features

Salesforce Files offers essential file-sharing capabilities but lacks the advanced collaboration tools modern businesses depend on to maintain seamless workflows.

No Real-Time Document Editing

Salesforce Files does not allow users to open, edit, or collaborate on Office 365 documents directly within the Salesforce platform. This forces users to download files, make local edits, and re-upload them, which creates inefficiencies and increases the risk of version conflicts or errors.

Limited Version Control

While Salesforce Files tracks changes and stores versions, it does not offer the robust version control features that tools like Office 365 or Google Workspace provide. Users often struggle to identify the most up-to-date version of a file or track who made specific edits, leading to confusion and potential miscommunication within teams.

Fragmented Workflows

Without the ability to edit files directly in Salesforce or collaborate in real-time, teams must rely on external tools, resulting in a fragmented workflow. This disconnect complicates process streamlining, especially for departments like sales or customer service, where quick access to and editing of documents is essential.

Limited Export Possibilities and Vendor Lock-In

Salesforce Files lacks strong export options, making it challenging to migrate files to a new document management system if you choose to switch vendors. This vendor lock-in can present a significant challenge for organizations seeking flexibility. Moreover, Salesforce Files does not provide the ability to export an entire library for sharing with external parties who are not connected to the Salesforce environment. This limitation hinders collaboration and adds inefficiency when engaging with external stakeholders.

Fragmented File Management

Salesforce’s native document management approach often results in files siloed across records, objects, and individual users. This lack of centralized organization makes it challenging for businesses to maintain efficiency, consistency, and accessibility.

Files Tied to Specific Records

Files in Salesforce are generally tied to specific records, such as accounts, opportunities, or cases. While this linkage is helpful for contextual reference, it restricts the ability to view or manage files across different records. Teams may find it challenging to locate files that are no longer associated with active records or need to access the same file from various contexts.

Organizational Challenges at Scale

As the volume of documents grows, organizing files becomes exponentially more difficult. Without robust folder management or tagging capabilities, businesses find enforcing consistent naming conventions or categorization practices challenging, leading to chaos over time.

Search Limitations

While Salesforce offers search functionality, it is not designed for advanced filtering, tagging, or comprehensive file searches across all records and objects. This compels users to sift through numerous records or depend on their memory to find the correct document, wasting valuable time and increasing frustration.

Salesforce’s file search capabilities are limited, which directly affects operational efficiency. Employees frequently waste valuable time searching for files or rely on workarounds, such as duplicating files or creating external repositories, which only exacerbate the issue. For businesses where quick access to documents is essential—such as sales, customer support, or compliance teams—these limitations can lead to missed opportunities, decreased productivity, and diminished user satisfaction.

Compliance and Security Challenges

For industries subject to strict regulatory requirements, such as finance, healthcare, and legal services, Salesforce’s default file management tools often do not meet the necessary standards for document storage, access tracking, and overall data governance. These shortcomings expose businesses to significant risks, including compliance violations, data breaches, and legal liabilities.

Limited Audit Trails

• Salesforce Files lacks robust, detailed audit trails for document access and edits. For regulatory compliance, organizations must be able to track who accessed a file, when it was accessed, and what changes were made. Without this level of transparency, it isn’t easy to demonstrate compliance during audits or investigations.
• For example, compliance standards like HIPAA (healthcare), GDPR (data privacy), or FINRA (financial services) often require meticulous documentation of file access history, which is not natively available in Salesforce Files.

 Compliance Gaps in File Retention

• Many industries have specific requirements for document retention and deletion.
• Financial records might need to be retained for seven years.
• Customer data may need to be deleted upon request under GDPR.
• Salesforce Files lacks built-in features for automated file retention or deletion policies, making it more challenging for businesses to stay compliant without adopting external solutions.

Real-World Impact

The limitations of Salesforce Files affect various organizational roles in unique and significant ways. Let’s take a closer look at how these challenges impact different personas:

Frontline Users

• Lost Time and Frustration: Frontline users, such as sales representatives, customer service agents, and marketers, often spend valuable time searching for files scattered across records or external systems. This inefficiency delays their work and reduces their ability to respond quickly to customer needs.
• Duplicate Efforts: When files are hard to locate, users may inadvertently create duplicate documents, leading to confusion and misalignment within teams. This is especially problematic in fast-paced environments where accuracy and consistency are critical.
• Missed Opportunities: Delays in accessing documents such as contracts, proposals, or customer details can result in missed sales opportunities or diminished customer satisfaction.

Salesforce Admins

• Storage Management Challenges: Admins often struggle to monitor and manage file storage limits, primarily in organizations that generate large volumes of data. These organizations frequently need additional storage, creating unplanned costs and operational inefficiencies.
• Compliance Burdens: Ensuring that documents comply with industry regulations, such as GDPR or HIPAA, can be daunting. Without detailed audit trails or automated compliance tools, admins must manually track file access, retention, and deletion policies, which consumes significant time and resources.
• User Support Overload: Admins are often the first point of contact when users can’t find files or face issues with fragmented document management, which adds to their workload and distracts them from strategic initiatives.

Operations Managers

• Increased Inefficiencies: Operations managers ensure smooth processes across departments. Fragmented file systems disrupt workflows and create bottlenecks, making it more difficult to maintain operational efficiency.
• Data Fragmentation: Files stored in silos across various systems and users make it nearly impossible to gain a holistic view of organizational data. This fragmentation restricts their ability to analyze trends, assess performance, and make informed decisions.
• Higher Costs: The lack of a unified file management solution often forces operations managers to invest in additional tools or spend more on storage, increasing the total cost of ownership for document management.

Executives (CEOs, CFOs, COOs)

• Risk of Compliance Breaches: Executives ensure the organization adheres to regulatory requirements. Gaps in document management increase the likelihood of non-compliance, leading to fines, legal repercussions, and reputational damage.
• Reduced Productivity Affecting ROI: Ineffective document management directly influences employee productivity, causing project delays and decreasing overall output. This reduced efficiency adversely affects ROI and limits the organization’s capacity to scale effectively.
• Missed Strategic Opportunities: Without an effective document management system, executives lack the visibility necessary to identify growth opportunities or implement AI-driven innovations, putting the organization at a competitive disadvantage.

What’s next?

This article highlights a common challenge: disorganized file systems and fragmented workflows hinder business efficiency and collaboration. While Salesforce Files provides a foundational solution, its limitations in storage, collaboration, compliance, and scalability make it clear that businesses need more than a basic tool to manage documents effectively. 

Disorganized file systems outside of Salesforce disrupt workflows; however, relying solely on Salesforce Files introduces new challenges that impact users, admins, and executives alike. To truly harness the full potential of Salesforce as your central hub for customer information, document management must extend beyond the native capabilities of Salesforce Files.

This is where Cartularius comes in. By addressing Salesforce Files’ limitations and seamlessly integrating with your Salesforce ecosystem, Cartularius transforms how businesses manage their documents. It not only offers centralized file organization and advanced collaboration tools but also integrates directly with Office 365, enabling users to edit and collaborate on documents in real time—without leaving Salesforce.

Looking ahead, the future of document management lies in utilizing AI-powered tools to enhance efficiency, insights, and automation. Businesses that prepare for this AI-driven transformation will gain a competitive edge, and adopting a robust document management solution like Cartularius positions your organization to fully leverage these advancements as they emerge.

In our next article, we’ll demonstrate how Cartularius eliminates these challenges. It empowers businesses with streamlined document management that integrates seamlessly with Salesforce workflows.