Category: Sales Cloud

Salesforce Winter ’24 Release Notes: Einstein Generative AI

Experience the future of Generative AI-powered interactions with the arrival of the Salesforce Winter ’24 Release Notes. From enriching product fields in commerce stores to providing AI-generated briefs for mobile workers, Einstein Generative AI ushers in a range of enhancements designed to revolutionize the way you do business. Learn more as we explore the transformative release of Einstein Generative AI.

Enhance Product Fields in Commerce Stores with Einstein Generative AI

Generate product text fields for multiple products in one step with Einstein Generative AI. Einstein uses your instructions and any linked reference fields to generate revised product text for the selected products. Product fields generated by Einstein support instructions in English only. You can generate product fields in languages in your B2B or B2C store Then, review the generated text and accept or discard the changes. You need the Einstein Generative AI license to use Einstein Generative AI. Contact your account executive for more information.

Show Frequently Bought Items to Customers

Increase average order value by recommending frequently bought items to customers. Add the Einstein Frequently Bought component to the product detail page to market similar items. Recommendations are generated based on shopper interactions with the storefront.

Get Your Mobile Workers Up to Speed with Mobile Work Briefing

Show mobile workers an AI-generated brief that tells them everything they need to know about their upcoming work orders. Previously, workers had to switch between the work order’s tabs to find the relevant information.

Create Call Summaries Powered by Einstein GPT

Want to harness the power of generative AI to create a snapshot of everything your teams need to know about a customer call? Einstein Conversation Insights users can create generative call summaries on voice and video calls. Powered by Einstein GPT, the new Summary tab on call records allows users to create editable summaries that include next steps and customer feedback, and share summaries for easier team collaborations in the flow of work.

Personalize Sales Emails with Einstein GPT for Sales

Sales Emails empowers busy sales reps to move quickly and expand deals through personalized and informed email content that buyers love. Einstein GPT uses your sales data to generate personalized emails for contacts and leads, a method known as grounding. Sales reps can draft common emails, like a follow-up or a meeting invite, by choosing from the preset email prompt types.

Optimize Agent Productivity and Response Quality with Einstein Service Replies (Generally Available)

Get real-time response recommendations for your agents. Now generally available, Einstein Generative AI follows a chat conversation as it unfolds, then drafts and recommends fluent, courteous, and relevant, replies for your agents to review, edit and post.

Close Cases Faster with Einstein Generative AI Work Summaries (Generally Available)

Save agents time with AI-generated case summaries, now generally available. Based on a Chat conversation between an agent and customer, Einstein predicts and fills a summary, issue, and resolution. Agents can then review, edit, and save these summaries.

Get Service Insights and Build Bot Intents with Einstein Conversation Mining (Generally Available)

Use Einstein Conversation Mining, now generally available, to transform conversation data into service insights and build bot intents. Einstein Conversation Mining replaces time-consuming transcript analysis that otherwise takes weeks.

If you would like to learn more about the Salesforce Winter ’24 Release Notes for Einstein GPT, please contact us.

About Corrao Group

For two decades, Corrao Group has stood as a pillar of expertise, assisting B2B organizations across various industries and sizes in implementing and optimizing their business processes through Salesforce and integrated third-party applications. With an unwavering dedication spanning 21 years, we have cultivated a deep knowledge and understanding of Salesforce as power users ourselves. This recognition of Salesforce’s flexibility empowers us to cater to various departments’ needs, ensuring seamless alignment. Our mission is to seamlessly translate your business processes into Salesforce, promoting not only successful integration but also widespread user adoption.

Sources

Salesforce Winter ’24 Release Notes Einstein Generative AI

Sell Smarter and Faster with Salesforce Sales Cloud

Salesforce Sales Cloud is the world’s leading customer relationship management (CRM) platform, designed to help companies sell smarter and faster by optimizing their business and sales process. When implemented correctly, Sales Cloud can put you in control of your sales process to boost productivity, increase efficiency, speed up timelines, and streamline your entire business. Additionally, Sales Cloud provides a centralized database for sales information, allowing sales teams to collaborate and engage with their customers. With Salesforce’s cloud-based technology, your team can access key data and information to be productive and effective in the field.

Here’s how Salesforce Sales Cloud can help your business today:

    • Lead & Opportunity Management: Sales Cloud helps businesses manage and track their leads and opportunities, enabling them to prioritize and follow up on the most promising opportunities. With features like lead routing, lead scoring, and forecasting, Sales Cloud helps sales teams stay organized and focused on the right deals.
    • Task Automation: Speed up your sales process by having Salesforce automatically create tasks required for the next stage in your business process/sales cycle.
    • Workflow Development: Simplify and speed up your business processes through automation technology. Set up repeat task reminders or alerts when certain thresholds are reached and when deals progress down the pipeline.
    • Project Tracking: Collaborate in real-time, all the time. Immediately check into the live status of a project, email interactions, customers’ company info, and next steps from one single source of truth.
    • Advanced Quote Generation: Eliminate manual input and expensive errors to accelerate deal velocity, speed up payment collection, and improve cash flow with Salesforce CPQ.
    • Sales Pipeline Analytics: Ensure sales reach their goals via a real-time analytics dashboard of pipeline reports per team, service, conversion rate, average sales cycle, and more. These tools include performance metrics, pipeline analysis, and forecasting, enabling sales teams to make data-driven decisions and optimize their selling strategies.
    • Collaboration & Communication: Sales Cloud offers a range of tools for improving collaboration and communication within sales teams, including chat, email, and document sharing. These tools help teams work together more efficiently and effectively, enabling them to close deals faster.
    • Customization and Integration: Sales Cloud offers a range of customization and integration options, enabling businesses to tailor the platform to their specific needs and goals. With integrations to other Salesforce products, such as MCAE (Pardot) and Service Cloud, businesses can get a complete view of the customer journey and deliver personalized, seamless experiences.

Salesforce Sales Cloud Experience by Corrao Group

Whether you’re looking to understand your customers better or automate manual tasks, Sales Cloud has everything you need to boost productivity and increase efficiency. Investing in Salesforce Sales Cloud can also help companies stay ahead of the competition by leveraging 3 Salesforce releases per year to drive growth and achieve their goals. Make the switch today and see the difference that a powerful sales platform like Salesforce can make for your business. Learn more about Salesforce’s Sales Cloud.

Investment Protection With Salesforce Sales Cloud

Right now is the perfect time to make a digital transformation from homegrown systems or spreadsheets to Salesforce Sales Cloud. Investing in the right technology can save your company time and money in the short and long term. According to MuleSoft, the average enterprise company uses 976 applications. Consolidating numerous systems into one single source of truth will help simplify, streamline, and automate complex processes to become more efficient.

About Corrao Group

Since 2002, we have been helping B2B organizations of all sizes optimize their business processes with Salesforce and their third-party applications. As everyday Salesforce power users, Corrao Group understands how flexible the Salesforce platform is to support every business department. We’ve worked with nearly 1,100+ customers, implementing, customizing, and optimizing over 2,150+ Salesforce projects. We are proud to be on the Consumer Goods Cloud Partner Advisory Board and Salesforce Managed Service Board, in addition to being the exclusive US launch partner of the Salesforce Trade Promotion Management (TPM) Pilot. If you are interested in learning more about how Corrao Group can help your company, read our reviews on G2!

WFH? Invest in Salesforce

Successfully running a company from home requires the right culture, employees, procedures, and maybe most importantly, technology. Some businesses who haven’t invested in a cloud-computing software such as Salesforce have been having a hard time adjusting to working from home. Salesforce is a cloud-based software that provides customer relationship management (CRM) and a suite of apps that go along with sales, service, marketing automation, and more. Salesforce becomes your central location to store all your important data, accounts, and deals. With a newly designed mobile app, take work on the go and be just as productive as you were on your computer. This allows businesses to run their entire company within Salesforce, supporting all departments with real-time data.

Managing Your Sales Pipeline with Sales Cloud

Sales Cloud is a customer relationship platform (CRM) designed to support sales and marketing by bringing all your customer data into one central location. Leverage Sales Cloud to manage and automate day-to-day sales activities including lead assignments, quote generation, forecasting, Einstein Analytics, and more. Additionally, your sales staff will have full visibility into every deal, account, opportunity, customer, and lost deals. Sales Cloud workflows and task automation help you create tasks and a process to help speed up your sales cycle. When implemented correctly, Sales Cloud helps save you time and builds long-lasting customers.

Servicing Your Customers with Service Cloud

Service Cloud is a customer relationship service platform designed to help you manage customer support issues quicker and increase first-visit resolution. With historical data on every customer interaction, your team can personalize your service based on their problems and history. Additionally, Service Cloud offers a multitude of tools to help you meet the needs of your customers. Some extensions for Service Cloud include: Field Service Lightning (FSL), Knowledge Base, Web2Case, Email2Case, and Customer Analytics. When implemented correctly, Service Cloud can improve customer communication, enable team collaboration, and give you full visibility into the health of your customer base.

Automated Lead Nurturing with Pardot

Pardot is a marketing automation platform designed to help companies engage leads and customers, support sales with qualified leads, and grow relationships. According to Salesforce, “Customers have seen sales revenue increase by 34% and marketing effectiveness increase by 37%” with Pardot (Pardot.com). Pardot gives you the ability to personalize your customer’s journey wit automated campaigns, targeted messaging, and predictive intelligence. Additionally, design and create email templates, content, landing pages, and more inside of Pardot. If you would like to learn more about Pardot, please visit our blog.

A Complete 360-View for Manufacturers with Manufacturing Cloud

Manufacturing Cloud gives manufacturers full visibility into their entire business operations. Manufacturing Cloud extends benefits to all your partners to collaborate across the same forecast order and demand data in one single source of truth. New features such as sales agreements gives manufacturers insights into committed and actual order volumes, performance against the forecast, and other time-phased metrics. Forecasting gives manufactures the ability to take control of their business with smarter business decisions based on analytics. If you would like to learn more about Manufacturing Cloud, please read the blogs below:

Virtual Collaboration with Quip

Quip provides your team with a messaging collaboration platform that helps transform productivity and resolves issues faster. Provide your team with the ability to create, discuss, and work faster with real-time documents, spreadsheets, and data that connects inside of Salesforce. With full integration, your employees will no longer have to work together in multiple systems. Quip becomes your central location to collaborate with other employees on deals, documents, and more. Furthermore, Quip has a mobile app to view, update, and work on the road.

Maximize your Salesforce Investment

Since 2002, our Salesforce experience has benefited thousands of clients and projects. We understand how flexible the Salesforce platform is and how it supports every department in your business. The key to maximizing your Salesforce investment is to implementing the platform company-wide. If your business is struggling to work from home without a cloud-based technology, it’s time to invest in a technology like Salesforce.

Why Salesforce Is the Ultimate Work From Home (WFH) Platform

When it comes to working, there’s nothing more relaxing than responding to emails, making phone calls, and reviewing reports all from the comfort of your home. Being a stay-at-home employee has its benefits, such as having more control over your schedule, fewer distractions and more productivity, and everyone’s favorite reason, no time spent in traffic! Working on the Salesforce platform since 2008 ourselves, we know how relaxing it is to work from home. There’s almost nothing you can’t do from home while working on Salesforce. You’re still working, but it’s tasks from the comfort of your own home without any office distractions. Here are a few benefits from working from home across Management, Marketing, Development, and Sales.

Management

Our Managing Partner, Jack Corrao, started by saying, “People working in the office is nice, but it’s not necessary in a lot of businesses. Many of my employees could work from home because Salesforce is a cloud-based system. No servers required, which means if something happens in the office, like the internet goes down, you can just head home and work. We think soon all businesses will have to evolve with the coming times, that means moving away from their multiple systems for each department and onto a software like Salesforce, which supports: Human Resources, Marketing, Sales, Support, Operational Linguistics with each having a customizable cloud.“ He finished off by saying this, “You shouldn’t be handcuffed to your building, having freedom will make you a better and harder worker.“

Salesforce allows managers to track and display all their KPIs within Dashboards. With the company updating Salesforce in real-time, reports aren’t only ready at the end of the day, or week – they’re available 24/7 with live stats. All the information and conversations regarding projects are tracked and recorded within Salesforce.

working from home with coffee and a laptop

Marketing

Our Marketing Specialist and Social Media Manager John Carroll said, “If everyone had to work from home tomorrow, we would still be a functional and successful company. We all have access to the same data in real-time, so we don’t have to wait for reports, documents, or files from co-workers.” He also brought up this tweet from Salesforce CEO, Marc Benioff, who said, “While we are all working from home during this time, we are using quip to help other remote teams across the globe collaborate.” He is talking about the documentation software, Quip, where documents, spreadsheets, slides, and chat are all combined and connected to Salesforce records. At Corrao Group, we use Quip to communicate with each other, even if it’s a few desks away or from one of our remote offices such as Seattle or Canada. 

We can create a campaign asset inventory for emails, landing pages, and more within Quip, where our entire team can collaborate in real-time, anytime. Quip should be in the everyday marketer’s toolbox, especially those already on the Salesforce platform. Fields in Salesforce can map to information in Quip, so when users update one piece of info, the other connected piece is automatically updated so there’s no discrepancy. It’s perfect for working from home because all the content is live, and team members can get notified when updates or tasks are assigned. 

Sales

“With Salesforce, working from home is as easy as it gets”, Ellis Davis, Sales Operations at Corrao Group. All the information and tasks are inside Salesforce so forgetting any notes at the office are a thing of the past. It’s all inside of Salesforce and easy for the whole company to access in real-time. With Chatter being the main communication on projects, she and everyone else can jump into the conversation and catch up or give updates with everything being in one place. “We’ve always known how to work from home because we’ve always had Salesforce, so it’s easy to hop on during a weekend and home and work like you were in the office”, she ended with. Tyler Keil, Sales Operations, has always lived by the phrase, “If it’s not in Salesforce, it doesn’t exist.” All notes are put into Salesforce and associated with the appropriate location, whether that’s a Lead, Contact, Account, Opportunity record, or something else. Having instant alerts when someone updates one of your records or tasks that you’re working on helps speed up everyday processes while working from home. “Salesforce is much more than a virtual Rolodex, it tracks conversations, the entire pipeline, historic deals and much, much more.”

When working from home, sales reps can’t quickly ask if a co-worker spoke with, or emailed a new lead. With Salesforce, all calls and emails are logged right on the contact record as they happen, so there’s no confusion. This way, reps can catch up if they need to without having to wait for someone to explain the updates themselves. Salesforce eliminates the need for unnecessary meetings and allows users to continue being productive at home.

Salesforce - the ultimate work from home platform

Salesforce: The Ultimate Work From Home Platform

We’ve had the ability to offer the option for our employees to work from home since we started using cloud-based solutions in 2002. Since then, we’ve adjusted and created an infrastructure within Salesforce so our team can work from home and not skip a beat. While Salesforce isn’t required in order to run a business from home, it can incredibly boost the progress and success of each department, all while making your employees’ jobs easier. We understand how flexible the Salesforce platform is and how it supports every department in your business. If you’re struggling to run your company from home, please email us at wfh@corraogroup.com. We can jump on a call to discuss your current and projected business situations and suggest assistance.

Dreamforce 2019: Top 5 Announcements

Dreamforce, the world’s largest software conference, had another fantastic event filled with incredible speakers, new features, and lots of customer success stories. The four-day event held the attention of the business world as Salesforce hosted more than 170,000 attendees and over 13 million online viewers. Dreamforce 2019 brought together thought leaders, industry pioneers, and Trailblazers from all over the world. With over 2,700 sessions, the Corrao Group team was active to ensure we captured the important announcements and partnerships. Here are our top 5 takeaways from Dreamforce 2019.

1. Apple Partnership

Continuing their ongoing partnership with Apple has given Salesforce an all-new mobile app that is both conversational and smart. In addition, Apple has helped Salesforce with the ability to build mobile apps tailored to address unique user needs, and the ability to learn on the go with the new app Trailhead GO. Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, joined Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, for a fireside chat where they both expressed the future of productivity is mobile. Benioff told Cook during the conversation that he runs his $143 billion company from an iPhone, “I don’t even own a computer anymore. The phone has become an extension of my office. Where ever I am, if I have a phone, I can work.”

The fireside chat involved some exciting dialogue between the two business leaders as they discussed the future of productivity on a mobile device, artificial intelligence, Steve Jobs, values, and more. Benioff asked Cook the most important value in his life, in which Cook answered, “In my upper thirties, it became clear to me that we’re almost searching your whole lifetime for your purpose. I’m sure some people in the audience have done this too… and, you are almost convinced early in life about your purpose in life is this and that… but it keeps changing as you move ahead in life. Soon you realize that the purpose of life is to help somebody else. That is the sole reason that we’re here. Life gets so much simpler once you get that in your head…That’s my North Star.”

We are excited to see the partnership that will unfold over the next couple of years between Apple and Salesforce. Cook believes there is a tremendous growth trajectory for enterprise apps specifically built for the Apple and Salesforce partnership to help users improve productivity. We will have to wait and see what Salesforce and Apple do next; for now, we have a new Salesforce Mobile App that can host your entire business on a mobile device that is conversational, and smart.

dreamforce 2019 fireside chat
Tim Cook with Marc Benioff at Dreamforce 2019

2. AWS Partnership

Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company, announced an expansion of their global strategic partnership with Salesforce, the global leader in Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Salesforce introduced their new Einstein Voice, which seamlessly integrates with Amazon Connect to provide service agents with a complete set of tools to deliver the best quality service to their customers. Salesforce is offering AWS content available on Trailhead to train anyone who wants to become proficient in the cloud.

The biggest headline from all of Dreamforce 2019 was Salesforce releasing its new  Einstein Voice. Delivering excellent customer service over the phone is still a challenge for many companies, and that is where the new Service Cloud Voice can help out. Einstein Voice offers AI-driven insights on a call with a customer, integrates calls easily, and can boost productivity by closing cases faster with insights from Einstein. If your company is off business hours, let Einstein answer the phone for you to help quickly solve customer issues. Service Cloud Voice-enabled State Farm to provide a faster resolution for customers – 31% times faster.

The release of Einstein Voice will help service workers improve customer relationships. Having the ability to see real-time insights into what could potentially help solve customer issues faster is effective and exciting. Corrao Group is interested in how Einstein Voice will affect the field service workers. Could Einstein Voice help service technicians who are not hands-free report issues faster with the ability to speak directly to Einstein? We will have to wait and see for that answer. For now, the ability to have Einstein Voice will be beneficial to all service teams.

Einstein voice talking at Dreamforce
A Preview Shown of Einstein Voice at Dreamforce

3. Einstein Call Coaching

Einstein’s Call Coaching uses AI technology to analyze audio clips and present insights for your sales reps. It can help your sales manager understand what’s going on in the customer calls. Einstein Call Coaching empowers insides sales teams with management-level visibility into critical moments during a call, conversation trends, and a conversation library, which highlights the team’s best examples of successful calls. Einstein uses this information and gives insights to help your sales rep performance.

Sales Managers can utilize Einstein Call Coaching to give sales reps the information they need to become top performers, or informed decision-makers at the company. Sales managers have analysis and visibility into every single call with insights from Einstein. Insights for sales managers and reps can range from trends such as which competitors are being mentioned in conversation, how are we positioning different products, and how are we handling objections. We are interested to learn more information about Einstein Call Coaching as it is only still being piloted with a rollout plan to be made available to users in June 2020.

Call Coaching at Dreamforce 2019
Einstein Call Coaching Dashboard

4. Salesforce 360 Truth

Salesforce, the global leader in CRM, announced Customer 360 Truth, “a new set of data and identity services that enable companies to build a single source of truth across all of their customer relationships” (Salesforce). “Now, this is a computer science holy grail that we’ve been trying to put together for a long time,” added Benioff, the founder of Salesforce. Salesforce 360 Truth aims to let Salesforce users and clients achieve a clear understanding of their customers by managing data and prior interactions all in one single source of truth. In addition, Einstein can be paired with 360 truth, and can help “guide you and help you run your business and connect with your customers in a whole new way,” Benioff said.

Single source of truth at Dreamforce 2019

We’ve always believed that having a single source of truth is crucial to have an optimized Salesforce instance. Corrao Group lives by the motto, “If it’s not in Salesforce, it doesn’t exist.” Housing all your data in one system will improve your ability to have a clearer picture of customer data, reports, and more. Salesforce 360 Truth will help businesses provide better customer service, predict sales opportunities, and create a personalized marketing journey, all with the help of Einstein insights and recommendations.

5. Salesforce Mobile and Trailhead GO

A fully redesigned CRM app, Salesforce will add Einstein AI, analytics, and integration with iOS features such as Siri and Face ID to their new mobile app. In the mobile app, Siri and Einstein’s voice assistant can add tasks, update CRM records, and take notes. The new designed CRM app is all apart of Salesforce’s plan of moving the Customer 360 Platform onto the mobile device. In addition to the new CRM app, Salesforce is also launching a learning app called Trailhead GO with exclusive features and more than 700 training models available to Apple’s iOS and iPadOS. The release of the new mobile app and Trailhead GO signals a new era for productivity as Benioff believes the future of productivity involves a mobile device rather than a desktop or laptop.

Salesforce creating the new Salesforce app to boost productivity will undoubtedly help your mobile workforce. Your marketing, sales, and service teams can work on the go and use the CRM app as if they are on a desktop or laptop device. Einstein being integrated with the Salesforce app will have a profound impact. Bret Taylor, Chief Product Officer of Salesforce, explained, “With Salesforce Mobile, Salesforce and Apple are empowering sales, service and marketing professionals on the go to deliver game-changing customer experiences, powered by AI.” Salesforce creating Trailhead GO is also a significant accomplishment as users will be able to learn on the go anytime and anywhere. Marc Benioff and Tim Cook both believe that the future of productivity is using mobile devices, and Salesforce has created two powerful apps for trailblazers to work and learn wherever they are.

Salesforce and Apple Partnership at Dreamforce 2019
Announcing a New Global Partnership

Dreamforce 2019 Conclusion

Mark it down as another successful Dreamforce event by Salesforce. We want to give a big shout and thank you to Salesforce as they put on an extraordinary event that featured some incredible guest speakers like Barack Obama, Emilia Clarke, Tim Cook, and Stephen Curry. The energy around the city of San Francisco was electric, as more than 170,000 attendees gathered to witness and learn what new features Salesforce will release next. We are already getting excited for Dreamforce 2020!

If you would like to learn more about any of the new features from Dreamforce 2019 and how it can relate to your business, please contact us.

The Importance of Manufacturing Cloud

The release of Manufacturing Cloud is a fantastic accomplishment for Salesforce. Manufacturing Cloud takes the current pain points of the industry and turns them into an experience that is flexible in reacting to the customer’s ever-changing demands. In this blog, we are going to share with you the importance of Salesforce’s latest release.

Forecasting

Salesforce knows that the manufacturing industry contains more than just customers. Suppliers, contractors, dealers, service technicians, distributors, and internal warehouse and factory all play a crucial role in the development of your product and the experiences of your customers. Manufacturing Cloud helps users collaborate in real-time across the ecosystem to ensure your forecasts are accurate and updates to your schedules are automatically communicated to warehouse and purchasing departments.

According to Salesforce, “Manufacturers need a clear understanding of all past shipments, current production plans, and future production forecasts.” Forecasting in Manufacturing Cloud is all about taking control and allowing flexible releases to your customers’ needs. Manufacturers often have very different sales and forecasting processes that your supply and chain teams must know when to deliver new items. Manufacturing Cloud gives users the upfront awareness of what you think you’re going to sell, and when you are going to sell it. Having critical insights into the timing of selling your product will make every part of your business sufficient.

Forecasting in Salesforce isn’t just about how you’re going to sell your product on your unique timeline. It’s about knowing how you need to staff your factory: Do I need a second shift, or can I get by with the first shift? Manufacturers always have absurd spikes where their employees are forced to work long hours to get their product out. Forecasting in Manufacturing Cloud gives manufacturers an overview of all their businesses, allowing them to take control and make smarter decisions.

ipad_forklift_v2

Partner Collaboration

Manufacturing Cloud extends benefits to all your partners to collaborate across the same forecast order and demand data in one single source of truth. For example, the Partner Community allows your vendors and partners to see and engage in real-time updates to your sales forecasts. Additionally, analytics will be tied directly to order data with additional information into the territory, customer, agreement, product line, or product performance. Improving inventory management allows manufacturers the chance to analyze their customer data, and gain insights into every product and territory performance.

A New Era

Manufacturers for far too long have used old proprietary systems that have never been scaled. In addition, these systems are not cloud friendly. Salesforce being able to tie manufacturing into the leader of the cloud is a big deal. The era of using and exporting spreadsheets or pivot tables is over. A new era is emerging for manufacturing, and it allows manufacturers to have complete control over the ability to operate their business in a much more profitable point of view.

Our experience with manufacturing dates back to our Managing Partner, Jack Corrao. Jack has developed numerous operational infrastructures to support hardware and software companies to deliver the best in breed solutions. As our #1 vertical, we are here to help you integrate and train you on best practices involving Manufacturing Cloud.

Over the next couple of weeks, we will be releasing a new blog related to Salesforce’s new Cloud. We’ll cover manufacturing pain points Salesforce solved, our favorite features, and how to integrate Manufacturing Cloud. If you would like to learn more, please contact us.

Sources

https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2019/09/introducing-manufacturing-cloud.html

All Photos can be found here: https://www.salesforce.com/products/manufacturing-cloud/overview/

Salesforce Releases Manufacturing Cloud

Salesforce, the global leader in CRM, recently announced a specialized solution for the manufacturing industry: Manufacturing Cloud. Manufacturers will now have the ability to streamline their entire business in one single platform.

Salesforce, the global leader in CRM, recently announced a specialized solution for the manufacturing industry: Manufacturing Cloud. Manufacturers will now have the ability to streamline their entire business in one single platform.

As a long-time manufacturing-focused partner, Corrao Group attended a Salesforce partner webinar: Manufacturing Cloud: Business / Go-to-Market on October 18th. We were blown away by the presentation and believe it will provide extreme value for our customers.

Manufacturers often have complex physical processes that are hard to modify quickly and efficiently to meet the customers changing demands. In order to know the customer’s feedback in real-time, your operation teams have to be aligned with Sales representatives to have one single source of truth. Manufacturing Cloud will, “Deliver a new level of business visibility and collaboration between the sales and operations organizations of a manufacturing company to give a more predictive and transparent business” (Salesforce).

New manufacturing specific tools and enhancements released by Salesforce includes:

  • Einstein Analytics for Manufacturing
  • Sales Agreements
  • Account-Based Forecasting
  • Mulesoft Anypoint Platform
  • Connected Sales and Distributions
  • Intelligent Service and Field Service
  • Personalized B2B and B2C Marketing
  • Real-time Business Insights
  • Channel Partner Management
  • Real-time Collaboration

Corrao Group’s experience and discipline with manufacturing dates back to 1982 with our Managing Partner. Jack Corrao has developed numerous operational infrastructures to support hardware and software companies to deliver the best in breed solutions. Since 2008, Corrao Group has been helping manufacturers utilize Salesforce to create an automated closed-loop system for channel-centric manufacturing.

As Dreamforce 2019 approaches, Corrao Group is excited to learn even more about the capabilities of Salesforce’s Manufacturing Cloud. We will be in attendance to meet with our customers and prospects in regards to the new releases.

To learn more information about Dreamforce 2019, please visit https://www.salesforce.com/dreamforce/.

Exciting times are coming for the Manufacturing industry!

References

https://www.salesforce.com/company/news-press/press-releases/2019/09/191609-vr/

https://www.salesforce.com/products/manufacturing-cloud/overview/

The Effects of Bad Data

Did you know poor data costs businesses on average around $700 billion annually, equivalent to 30% of the company’s revenue (Salesforce)? Having a powerful CRM platform like Salesforce doesn’t automatically ensure business success. Keeping data inside Salesforce healthy takes a lot of time and effort for your employees. Clean and quality data ensures that all high-level data related to marketing campaigns, sales forecasts, project management, pipeline reports, and dashboards are accurate.

But what happens when the data in the system is unreliable?

What is Bad Data Quality?

Unhealthy data is information in the system that can disrupt a company’s business process through missing, inaccurate, or duplicate data. A recent Salesforce study found, “The average contact database is composed of 90% incomplete contacts, with 20% of records being useless due to several factors, 74% of the records needing updates, and more than 25% of those being unintentional duplicates.” In essence, poor data includes:

    • Missing Data: Empty fields that data is required to be in.
      • Example: Missing phone/email, title.
    • Inaccurate Data: Wrong information put in the fields.
      • Example: Wrong address, phone numbers, emails, titles.
    • Duplicate Data: Contacts, accounts, or leads that show up more than once.
      • Example: Two leads with the same number or email.

IPad showcasing bad data

How Poor Data Effects You

According to RingLead, the 2nd largest issue among Salesforce customers is bad data. Companies start making poor business decisions because of inaccurate data producing misleading results. Here are just three ways that bad data can hurt a company:

    • Inaccurate Reports and Dashboards: Inaccurate data negatively impacts the sales or marketing teams to stay on top of qualified leads or opportunities. Employees could be wasting time on the wrong opportunities. False reports can lead to the company’s top decision-makers making choices based on inaccurate data.
    • Wasted Time and Money: Spending money on campaigns will be inefficient if the ROI reporting is incorrect. Bad data can report that your advertisement campaign only sourced $6k worth of deals when it could have actually been $80k. Not seeing that proper ROI could lead to missing out on the chance to rerun successful campaigns and efforts.
    • Decline in User Adoption: Users might use another system to keep track of their data if they have little to no confidence in the quality of data. Employees tracking data in another system is another example of time and money wasted on a powerful CRM system.

How to Improve Your Data Quality

According to Salesforce, “Because the quality of the data affects the entire organization, data quality metrics should be a company-wide responsibility.” Improving your data quality starts with training employees on the importance of data. The Corrao Group can help you standardize your Salesforce process and implement data requirements throughout your Salesforce sales process. Healthy data brings better results for the company in terms of customer experience, reports and dashboards, shorter sales cycles, and more. Your company can expect great results when employees start inserting data of high quality into your CRM system.

Bad Data across the world in different countries

Corrao Group x RingLead Data Solution

RingLead is the #1 data quality platform for sales and marketing, and has a suite of products dedicated to removing and preventing duplicates, improving data quality, and performing system-wide data scans. Partnering with RingLead has given Corrao Group an easy to use platform to consistently improve lead quality by providing tools to help prospect new leads, standardize records, and clean unhealthy data. Corrao Group ensures your sales and marketing efforts are reaching the right people with accurate information.

Corrao Group Health Check

One of the ways Corrao Group can help your company improve bad data is through a Health Check. A Health Check is a reverse Salesforce system demo to ensure you’re getting the most out of your current investment. Health Checks help ensure your system is up to date on the latest Salesforce release and enable you to learn best practices from a certified Salesforce implementation expert. Corrao Group can help standardize your Salesforce process and implement data requirements throughout your Salesforce Sales process.

Please contact us to take your first step towards optimizing your data and maximizing your Salesforce investment!

Sources

Salesforce.com 

RingLead 

The Importance of Salesforce Training

Salesforce Training Clipboard Wouldn’t it be nice if all the employees at your company were Salesforce power users? Imagine the ROI your business would receive. None of this is possible without some kind of training. It’s a fundamental key to every business’s success. Yes, training means spending more time and resources; however, it’s required because Salesforce is a platform that is very complex and powerful. As a Salesforce Consultant, we view training as a big part of our success. It’s paramount that every single one of our employees are power users. The first question that might pop up in your mind is: How do I become a power user, or where do I even start with training?

Salesforce Training Basics

Because of how vast and intimidating Salesforce can be, it’s best to start with basics definitions in the system. Learning the basics of what accounts, contacts, or leads are can increase your team’s knowledge of the system right away. Give a value proposition of why it’s important to Salesforce, so the employees know the significance of each term. During these training sessions, it’s a good idea to physically walk-through what each definition is and to show them where they are in the system. You have to remember that every employee responds differently to training. Some might like visual presentations, while others may want more hands-on training. Find the right balance so that every employee has their best chance to learn. Our suggestion would be hands-on training because they can learn the basic key terms while physically engaging with the system.

After basic definitions are taken care of, give examples of how to navigate through apps and tabs in Salesforce, or show them how to make a new opportunity. Salesforce Training is something that will take time for employees to learn, but over time, these training sessions will become quite helpful for your company overall. If you don’t have the time or resources to do the training on your own, you should look into a reliable Salesforce consultant who is a power user.

Salesforce training session

Becoming Salesforce Power Users

Becoming a Salesforce power user is not something that will happen overnight. It takes years of training and implementing Salesforce systems to find what works and what doesn’t. We’ve worked with over 1000 customers, implementing, optimizing, and customizing their Salesforce system to fit their needs or goals. That’s why training is a fundamental key to our company. With over 2,050 successfully completed projects and 78,500 implementation hours, our development team can maximize your Salesforce investment to see higher ROI.

However, it’s not just our development team that makes a difference here at Corrao Group; it’s everyone in our company. It starts with our leadership. When the executives show interest in Salesforce training, everyone else at the company will as well. It is the follow-the-leader type of philosophy. Salesforce was purchased for a reason, so it should be imperative to the executives/leaders to maximize the investment they put in. The only way that happens is to learn and use Salesforce every day like power users.

Salesforce Training San Diego

Salesforce Training with Corrao Group

If your company wants to maximize the ROI on their Salesforce investment, we recommend hiring a Salesforce consultant. These experts become a part of your company by learning your current business processes and then create a personalized Salesforce strategy tailored toward your goals. At Corrao Group, we specialize in custom integrations that are based upon your unique needs and business requirements. We scope, deploy, and train to enhance your system. Secondly, we have 6 or 12-month agreements (Salesforce Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud) that provide guidance and support after projects are completed. We work with you and your team to ensure your system users adopt the system so your organization generates results.

Training with Corrao group is the first step towards maximizing your Salesforce investment. As Salesforce Consultants, we have vast experience in implementing and optimizing customers systems. When we complete a project, we offer Salesforce training that can benefit your company. These training sessions can take up to 8 hours as we physically walk you through everything we did to your system. These sessions allow time for you to ask us questions so that you can learn and transfer the information to your employees. If you would like to have your entire team on the call, that is fine with us as well. If you would like to learn more about our implementations and training, please visit our website.

Pardot Accelerates Everything

Pardot automation should no longer be known as solely a marketing automation system, because it’s an everything automation system.

“We didn’t purchase Pardot, we hired it. We pay a virtual assistant $.34 per hour.”

As certified Salesforce and Pardot partners, as well as everyday power users, Corrao Group has gained insight unlike anyone else in discovering how to use Pardot and Salesforce to their maximum potential across your complete company.

Our brand new product, EZ-AR, automates your entire Accounts Receivable process from invoice generation to track invoice deliveries, openings, and payments easily. The advanced reporting provides real time visibility to payment engagement and aging follow-up. EZ-AR has cut down DSO by 50%.

Pardot automation does not stop there.

Pardot automation can also be applied to  Project Management, Sales Automation, Sales Operations and more.

To learn how Pardot can automate everything, please visit the Customer Success Alliance.

pardot automationpardot automationpardot automationpardot automationpardot automation

Please let us know if you would like speak to a representative [pardot-form id=”9912″ title=”Wordpress Form”]