As an established business, you need to consider getting a secure, password-protected portal to store and access your important financial documents as well allow your clients to access the information relating to your business from anywhere at any time. Whether you're at work, home, or on vacation you will be able to always have access to your tax returns, financial statements, or accounting database. This portal will also allow your team to work together efficiently by securely exchanging working documents, scanned receipts and even very large QuickBooks files. 

What Exactly Is a Client Portal? 

A client portal is an electronic gateway to specified digital files that clients can access online via a web browser. It’s a sharing mechanism between a business and its clients. With a client portal, specified company information, data and applications are made available to clients, customers, and partners. For many years, businesses have not had the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of a company intranet in terms of improved internal and external communications, alongside joint workings. However, with client portals, that has been resolved. Organizations have now begun to enjoy the benefits gained from having one. With the use of a client portal, businesses can be enhanced by enabling external clients and partners to access parts of the company intranet.

Client portals allow for a greater flow of two-way information and collaboration for organizations looking to build stronger relationships with their clients, customers, investors or even partners. Client portals give companies a significant competitive edge by allowing them to save money through reduced overheads and streamlined business processes. In this article, we explore three compelling reasons why your business needs to introduce a client portal.

Client Portals Increase Productivity

Automating and streamlining business processes can increase your bottom line. Just as the intranet does for your internal business functions, that’s exactly what a client portal can do for your external ones. Vital information such as contracts, proposals, quotes or project plans can be accessed via the client portal by both internal staff and external partners and clients or customers, thereby providing a single source of information. Check out here for the most effective client portal solution. The headache of your documents getting lost in the mail or in the sea of email traffic will be gone with the use of a client portal. The margin of error will be reduced as the intranet will have the most up-to-date version of those important files or documents.

Every business wants an avenue to increase employee efficiency while maximizing customer satisfaction. Here Small Business Chron has some great notes where you can find a way to increase customer satisfaction. A client portal will do this. In addition, the company’s activities that were previously completed manually will now be automated. For example, placing orders with suppliers will be accomplished through the client portal rather than by phone or email.

Client Portals Increase Clients’ Responsiveness

Granting direct access to applications and information for customers and clients improves flexibility and responsiveness for you, your partners and your company in general. Your customers will be able to interact with you outside of standard business hours at any time that is suitable for them. Collaborative work with clients and partners will be made easier as everyone can operate when and where it’s most comfortable for them. Time and resources will be saved as there will no longer be the need for face-to-face meetings or numerous emails involving many personnel. Instead, personnel will be able to log on to the client portal and work in the collaborative workspace at a time that is best suited to them.

Portals give customers access to many basic tools used by agents. In the past, customers had to wait and rely on customer service agents in the company to answer any of their problems. With the use of a client portal, customers can chat with agents directly via the portal, engaging in real-time conversation over any question they have concerning the company’s product or service.

One very useful by-product of shared workspaces on the client portal is that improved oversight and visibility is provided for all involved. Given that many clients are often spread over large geographical areas and multiple time zones, this ability is a huge bonus. Key staff contact lists for both organizations and shared calendars for events, key milestones or deadlines are additional tools that will enhance flexibility and responsiveness in working relationships with customers and partners.

Client Portals Improve Clients’ Loyalty

The ability to make timely, accurate information available to your clients and being seen to be attentive to clients’ needs gives you an edge over your competitors and makes it more likely that you will retain the customer’s business. Centrally located online forms in the client portal such as about us, contact us, support requests, requests for quotes, acceptance of quotes or work orders and many more, make it much easier for your clients to perform transactions with you rather than your competitors.

We are very aware that the emailed newsletter is now an outdated mode of communication. Instead of that, you could make use of a shared news page on the client portal which allows for you to keep abreast of relevant news from your client and vice versa. Also, the client portal enables much quicker dissemination of information and news about your company’s new products or current projects to your clients and customers. Launching new products onto the market becomes a much more defined process. You could also invite your clients to propose product enhancements or amendments through the discussion forum available on the client portal, which in turn, will inform your research and development processes.

Because of the perceived costs of implementing a client portal, organizations have been put off setting it up for their companies. However, the value of a client portal can never be overemphasized as it brings all your self-service support options into one easy-to-use location. Because all clients want a self-service medium, a client portal will cause customers to promote your business among their peers through word-of-mouth referrals. Having a client portal with a tailor-made intranet and on-premises server will provide more opportunity for your company and lift you above the competition. So, for improved communication, customer collaboration and responsiveness as well as maintaining a cost-effective solution for your business, we highly recommend introducing a client portal for your business.