Category: Updates

Improving Forecasting Accuracy and Collaboration in Consumer Goods Companies with Salesforce CPF

In the world of consumer goods, companies are constantly striving to improve their forecasting accuracy, collaborate more effectively, and streamline their workflows. That’s where Salesforce Customer Planning & Forecasting (CPF) comes in – an all-in-one solution that helps consumer goods companies achieve these goals and more.

Benefits of Salesforce Customer Planning & Forecasting

One of the primary reasons that consumer goods companies are turning to Salesforce CPF is because of its advanced planning and forecasting capabilities. With Salesforce CPF, companies can create accurate sales forecasts based on historical data, current trends, and market analysis easier than ever before. These forecasts allow companies to anticipate demand more accurately, adjust inventory levels, and optimize their supply chain operations. This can help companies lower costs, reduce waste, and improve customer satisfaction.

Another key benefit of Salesforce CPF is its ability to improve team collaboration. Sales, marketing, and supply chain teams can collaborate in a single source of truth, sharing data and insights in real time. This breaks down silos and enables teams to make more informed decisions based on a comprehensive business view.

The ability to add new products to your sales forecast is critical for companies to remain competitive and stay ahead of market trends. Accurately forecasting the potential sales volume of a new product is essential to planning production, allocating resources, and making informed business decisions. Salesforce CPF allows companies to track new product launches, collect customer feedback, and add new products to their sales pipeline efficiently, delivering a comprehensive view of your sales strategy. Proper collaboration between the brand team and buyers is essential to anticipate sales ramp, and it requires close attention to customer business plans to accurately forecast and add new products to the sales pipeline.

Overall, Salesforce CPF provides consumer goods companies with advanced planning and forecasting capabilities, improved team collaboration, and the ability to add new products to their sales pipeline, enabling them to optimize their supply chain operations and remain competitive in the market.

Get Started with Salesforce CPF Today

Salesforce CPF is a powerful tool for consumer goods companies looking to improve their forecasting accuracy, collaborate more effectively, and streamline their workflows. By leveraging advanced analytics, real-time collaboration, and automation, Salesforce CPF can help companies drive revenue growth, reduce costs, and improve customer satisfaction. As competition in the consumer goods industry continues to intensify, companies that adopt Salesforce CPF are poised to gain a competitive advantage and thrive in the future. Learn more about Salesforce Customer Planning & Forecasting.

About Corrao Group

As everyday Salesforce power users, Corrao Group understands how flexible the Salesforce platform is to support every business department. Since 2002, we have been helping B2B organizations of all sizes optimize their business processes with Salesforce and their third-party applications. 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 want to learn more about how Corrao Group can help your company, read our reviews on G2!

Challenges for Maintaining Accurate Forecasts for Consumer Goods

Forecasting for consumer goods firms can be incredibly challenging to manage throughout the year due to various factors impacting demand, production, and supply chain operations. These challenges can lead to significant losses and inefficiencies if not managed effectively. With the help of Salesforce Customer Planning & Forecasting (CPF), consumer goods companies can optimize their planning and forecasting activities to stay competitive and meet their business objectives.

Challenges with Forecasting for Consumer Goods Companies

One of the main challenges of forecasting for consumer goods firms is the unpredictable nature of consumer demand. Consumers’ purchasing behavior can be influenced by various factors, such as cultural trends, seasonal changes, economic conditions, and unanticipated events (COVID-19). These factors can lead to sudden shifts in demand that can be difficult to predict, resulting in overstocked or understocked inventory levels, leading to substantial inventory and monetary losses for the company.

In addition to demand volatility, forecasting can also be impacted by production challenges, such as unexpected delays, supply chain disruptions, or manufacturing issues. These challenges can lead to unexpected inventory shortages, production delays, and increased costs, all impacting the company’s bottom line.

Another challenge with forecasting for consumer goods firms is the limitations of traditional forecasting methods, such as using Excel spreadsheets. Excel spreadsheets are time-consuming and inefficient to manage, especially for large-scale operations, and can also be prone to errors and inaccuracies. Learn more issues around forecasting and planning by visiting our recent blog: Overcoming the Obstacles of Consumer Goods Planning with Salesforce CPF

Overcome Planning & Forecasting Challenges with Salesforce CPF

To overcome these challenges, consumer goods firms can adopt advanced forecasting and planning tools that utilize machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data analytics. Salesforce CPF is one of these tools that help companies make more accurately forecasted demands, optimize production and inventory levels, and reduce the risk of stock-outs or overstocking. By leveraging Salesforce CPF, consumer goods firms can improve their forecasting accuracy, reduce inefficiencies, and minimize the risk of losses, ultimately leading to a more profitable and efficient business operation.

Learn more about Salesforce CPF.

About Corrao Group

As everyday Salesforce power users, Corrao Group understands how flexible the Salesforce platform is to support every business department. Since 2002, we have been helping B2B organizations of all sizes optimize their business processes with Salesforce and their third-party applications. 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 want to learn more about how Corrao Group can help your company, read our reviews on G2!

 

Overcoming the Obstacles of Consumer Goods Planning with Salesforce CPF

For years, Excel spreadsheets have been the go-to tool for many consumer goods businesses for customer planning and forecasting. As the consumer goods market becomes more complicated and dynamic, the limitations of using Excel are becoming increasingly evident.

Excel spreadsheets can be prone to errors and inaccuracies, which can have significant consequences for forecasting success. Additionally, Excel lacks the visibility and analytics capabilities that Consumer goods companies need to make informed decisions about sales strategies, production planning, and inventory levels. Siloed departments, ongoing forecast accuracy issues, and problems with tracking are also common challenges that companies face when using Excel for forecasting.

As such, the days of relying solely on Excel as a forecasting tool are over, and companies in the consumer goods industry must explore more comprehensive solutions to stay competitive. In this blog, we will discuss why the consumer goods industry needs to shift away from Excel spreadsheets and towards more sophisticated solutions, such as Salesforce Customer Planning & Forecasting (Salesforce CPF), to drive growth and success.

Pain Points of Excel Spreadsheet Planning & Forecasting

Excel is a powerful tool for managing and analyzing data, and it has been widely used for planning and forecasting for many years. As the market and business environment become more complicated, Excel may not be the best tool for planning and forecasting for several reasons:

Limited scalability: Excel has limitations in terms of handling large data sets, complex calculations, and multiple scenarios. As businesses grow and become more complex, Excel can’t keep up with the demands of planning and forecasting.

Lack of collaboration: Excel files are typically stored on local computers or shared drives, making it difficult for multiple people to work on the same document simultaneously. This can lead to version control issues and errors in data entry, which can impact the accuracy of the forecasts.

Difficulty in data integration: Excel can import and export data from various sources, but it may not be able to handle data from different systems or sources with different formats. This can make it difficult to integrate data from multiple sources and can impact the accuracy of the forecasts.

Limited automation: Excel requires manual input and updating of data, formulas, and charts. This can be time-consuming and can lead to errors if not managed carefully. In contrast, modern planning and forecasting tools have built-in automation capabilities that can reduce manual effort and improve accuracy.

Lack of advanced analytics: Excel has limitations regarding advanced analytics capabilities, such as machine learning and predictive modeling. These techniques are becoming increasingly important in forecasting and planning, particularly in today’s market, where businesses must adapt quickly to changing circumstances.

Lack of collaboration on new Products: Excel does not support collaboration with sales staff and buyers related to new item introduction into the forecast. Having to manage this process with alternative solutions tends to result in manual updates to forecasts that are prone to user errors and inaccurate forecasts.

Streamlining Forecasting and Planning with Salesforce CPF

Salesforce CPF is an advanced solution that enables consumer goods companies to move beyond Excel spreadsheets and achieve accurate forecasting and planning. Salesforce CPF can help companies leverage real-time data to make informed decisions about inventory levels, production planning, and sales strategies. It offers a range of benefits, including improved accuracy, access to real-time data from across the organization, streamlined workflows, better collaboration, and increased efficiency.

With Salesforce CPF, companies can monitor progress against key performance indicators, plan for future sales and inventory needs, and adjust their strategies based on historical data and trends. Overall, Salesforce CPF is a powerful tool that can help consumer goods companies stay ahead of the curve in an increasingly complex and competitive market.

Learn More about Salesforce CPF

In summary, while Excel is a powerful tool for data management and analysis, it may not be the best option for planning and forecasting in today’s market due to its limitations in scalability, collaboration, data integration, automation, and advanced analytics. As such, businesses may need to consider a more modern planning and forecasting tool, such as Salesforce CPF, that can better support their needs in today’s market. Learn more about Salesforce CPF.

About Corrao Group

As everyday Salesforce power users, Corrao Group understands how flexible the Salesforce platform is to support every business department. Since 2002, we have been helping B2B organizations of all sizes optimize their business processes with Salesforce and their third-party applications. 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 want to learn more about how Corrao Group can help your company, read our reviews on G2!

Introducing Salesforce Customer Planning & Forecasting

As the consumer goods industry continues to grow and evolve, so does the complexity of customer planning and forecasting. Excel spreadsheets have been the go-to tool for many companies. Still, they come with several obstacles to planning success, including inaccuracies, lack of visibility and analytics, siloed departments, ongoing forecast accuracy, and problems with tracking. These challenges often result in reduced profitability, missed sales targets, and suboptimal decision-making.

Did you know?

    • 55% don’t trust their forecast (Gartner)
    • 53% Don’t believe they have the right details (Salesforce)
    • 75% Believe their data is too siloed (Gartner)
    • 80% lack analytics to identify issues and trends (McKinsey)

To address these challenges, Salesforce offers a comprehensive solution called Salesforce Customer Planning & Forecasting (CPF), which is part of the Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud.

Salesforce Customer Planning & Forecasting Benefits

Salesforce Customer Planning & Forecasting enables companies to make accurate sales forecasts, improve collaboration, and streamline workflows. It offers a range of benefits, including:

Improved Accuracy: With Salesforce CPF, companies can leverage real-time data to make informed decisions about inventory levels, production planning, and sales strategies. The platform’s algorithms can help identify trends and patterns that may have been missed using traditional forecasting methods.

Real-time Data: Access to data from across the organization, enabling teams to work together seamlessly and make informed decisions. Sales teams can quickly update the platform with the latest information on customer orders, inventory levels, and promotions, allowing everyone to stay on the same page.

Streamlined Workflows: Salesforce CPF offers a range of features that help streamline workflows and improve collaboration. Teams can share information easily, reduce manual data entry, and automate routine tasks, freeing up time for more strategic work.

Better Collaboration: Enables teams to work together more effectively by providing a centralized platform for data sharing, collaboration, and communication. Sales teams can work closely with supply chain, marketing, and finance teams to ensure that everyone is aligned and working towards the same goals.

Increased Efficiency: With Salesforce CPF, companies can streamline their forecasting and planning processes, reducing the time and effort required to make decisions. This allows teams to focus on more strategic work and helps to increase efficiency across the organization.

Get Started With Salesforce CPF

Corrao Group, a leading Salesforce implementation partner for Consumer Goods Cloud, offers a comprehensive CPF package for companies looking to improve their customer planning and forecasting processes. The package includes a Salesforce CPF license, a 2-3 month implementation timeline, and a range of features designed to help companies maximize their Salesforce CPF investment. Some of the key features of our CPF package include:

Customer Hierarchy: The CPF package includes a customer hierarchy feature that enables companies to view customer data at different levels, such as by region, store, or product category.

Product Hierarchy: The product hierarchy feature allows companies to view product data at different levels, such as by category, brand, or SKU.

Real-time Business Reporting: Configuration of real-time business reporting features that provide insights into sales performance, inventory levels, and other key metrics.

KPI Tracking: The package also includes KPI tracking features that enable companies to monitor progress against key performance indicators and adjust their strategies as needed.

Customer Planning Time Frames: The CPF package includes customer planning time frames (Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly), which help companies plan for future sales and inventory needs based on historical data and trends.

Walkthrough & Handoff: A comprehensive walkthrough and handoff process, ensuring that teams are fully trained and prepared to use the platform effectively.

In summary, the consumer goods industry faces many challenges regarding customer planning & forecasting. However, the Salesforce CPF package offers a comprehensive solution to help companies overcome these challenges and make more informed data-driven decisions. Our CPF package is an excellent option for companies looking to implement this solution quickly and effectively, with a range of features designed to improve accuracy, streamline workflows, and increase efficiency. Learn more by visiting our Salesforce Customer Planning & Forecasting page.

About Corrao Group

As everyday Salesforce power users, Corrao Group understands how flexible the Salesforce platform is to support every business department. Since 2002, we have been helping B2B organizations of all sizes optimize their business processes with Salesforce and their third-party applications. 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 want to learn more about how Corrao Group can help your company, read our reviews on G2!

Boost Customer Satisfaction With Salesforce Service Cloud

Salesforce Service Cloud is a robust customer service platform that helps organizations improve customer satisfaction. Service Cloud provides businesses with a centralized platform to manage customer interactions, case management, support operations, and more. Key features like a knowledge base, case management, and omnichannel routing help your service agents provide quick and efficient personalized support for every customer. Additionally, Service Cloud allows organizations to gain valuable insights into customers’ problems, preferences, and support needs to deliver fast and personalized service.

Here’s how Salesforce Service Cloud can boost customer satisfaction to achieve long-lasting customer relationships:

    • Case Management: Service Cloud provides a single source of truth for managing customer support cases in a more organized fashion. This help ensures that all customer interactions are tracked and resolved efficiently, improving response times and overall customer satisfaction.
    • Advanced Case Management: Make your service agents more productive and increase first-visit resolution by automating processes that assign the right agent and resolve support cases faster.
    • Fleet Management Logistics: Improve onsite job management using Salesforce Maps to optimize your fleet management logistics. Deliver real-time collaboration with access to job schedules, van inventory, vehicle location, mileage driven, knowledge articles, and more.
    • Knowledge Base (Self-Service Portal): Save time by maximizing agent productivity and first-visit resolution by letting your customers help themselves, so your agents don’t have to answer frequently asked questions. The Service Cloud knowledge base helps reduce customers’ need to contact support teams, improving their overall experience and satisfaction with the company.
    • Telephony & AI Voice: Telephony is a cloud-based contact center that allows businesses to communicate with their customers over email, chat, the phone, and other important channels. AI Voice is a feature of Service Cloud Telephony that uses AI to enhance customer interactions over the phone. With AI Voice, businesses can automate routine tasks and responses, such as scheduling appointments and verifying customer information. It can also give agents real-time insights into the customer, allowing them to tailor their responses better and improve the overall customer experience.
    • Customer Service Analytics: Create smarter managers, more productive agents, and happier customers through predictive CSAT technology to stay ahead of business concerns and drive service success. Service Cloud provides organizations with valuable insights into customer behavior and support needs. This helps businesses make informed decisions about improving customer satisfaction and support operations.
    • Customization and Integration: Service Cloud can be customized or integrated to meet the specific needs of each business. Integration of a company’s business processes and additional customization help ensure that operations are tailored to the unique process of each organization.
    • Mobile Access: Respond to customer inquiries and resolve issues quickly from anywhere. With mobile access, your service agents can always be available.
    • Collaboration Tools: Resolve customer issues more efficiently by working together and using Salesforce’s collaboration tools like Slack, Chatter, or Quip.
    • Web2Case & Email2Case: Respond to customers faster and improve your support team’s productivity by gathering support cases directly from your company’s website and customer emails.
    • Multi-channel support: Offer support through various channels, including email, chat, phone, and social media. Offering a range of varieties enables customers to choose the channel that best fits their needs.
    • Personalization: Service Cloud offers a variety of personalization features that allow businesses to deliver customized, relevant experiences to their customers. Utilize tools like segmentation lists or customer profiles to help understand your customer’s needs and preferences, enabling you to deliver personalized help and recommendations.

Overall, Salesforce Service Cloud is a powerful platform that helps businesses deliver personalized, seamless customer service experiences, leading to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty. Investing in Salesforce Service Cloud can also help companies stay ahead of the competition by leveraging 3 Salesforce releases per year to drive growth and achieve new goals. Contact us today to learn more about the difference a robust service platform like Salesforce can make for your business.

Investment Protection With Salesforce Service Cloud

Right now is the perfect time to make a digital transformation from homegrown systems or spreadsheets to Salesforce Service 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

As everyday Salesforce power users, Corrao Group understands how flexible the Salesforce platform is to support every business department. Since 2002, we have been helping B2B organizations of all sizes optimize their business processes with Salesforce and their third-party applications. 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 want to learn more about how Corrao Group can help your company, read our reviews on G2!

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!

Top 15 Features of the Salesforce Spring ’23 Release Notes

The Salesforce Spring ’23 Release Notes are here! We’ve gone through every page (570 pages!) and highlighted our top 15 new features.

Top 15 Salesforce Spring ’23 Release Notes Features

Track Performance Using Analytics for Consumer Goods – Advanced Data Model App

Gain greater visibility into your business efficiency by analyzing the performance of your products, product categories, brands, and assortments. Using the new Analytics for Consumer Goods – Advanced Data Model app, identify the high-performers in each segment, compare the performance to the previous year, and track the performance of newly launched products. Evaluate the effectiveness of a specific promotion in improving the performance of a product, category, brand, and assortment.

Specific Cloud: Consumer Goods Cloud

Record Customer Tasks Accurately with the New Mobile App Domain

With the new mobile app domain, your sales reps can now capture customer-reported issues accurately and improve customer satisfaction. You can show the correct classification options for a customer task on the Task UI of the Consumer Goods Offline Mobile app.

Specific Cloud: Consumer Goods Cloud

Experience a Modern Forecasts Page

Design updates make forecast data easier to read, features on the page simpler to navigate, and data more readily available.

Specific Cloud: Sales Cloud

Let Customers Pick Their Own Meeting Times in Lightning Experience

When emailing customers, reps can now avoid the back-and-forth and include a link to their Outlook or Gmail calendar so that the customer can choose their own meeting time.

Specific Cloud: High-Velocity Sales, Sales Cloud Einstein, or Inbox License

Enhanced Case and Lead Record Pages with Dynamic Forms

Make your case and lead record pages more robust by configuring them with Dynamic Forms. Previously, this capability was available only for account, person account, contact, and opportunity record pages.

Specific Cloud: Lightning Experience

Create Personalized Report Filters

Set up a single dynamic report filter that displays personalized results for each user. For example, create an opportunity report for your sales team with a single Opportunity Owner filter that personalizes the results for each member of the team.

Specific Cloud: Lightning Experience

 

Improve Efficiency in Your Business Unit with Account Engagement Optimizer (Beta)

Get actionable recommendations to help you maximize efficiency and get ahead of issues in your business unit. The recommendations Optimizer gives can help you improve email send times, keep visitor tracking running smoothly, and more. You also get an overall status for your business unit so you know if something critical needs your attention. Plus, use Optimizer’s table action manager to pause and prioritize actions.

Specific Cloud: Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

Style Your Markers for Greater Visibility

Design marker layers that align with Salesforce accessibility standards to help your team meet their sales goals. When you build marker layers in Salesforce Maps, choose from standard, accessibility-compliant colors and shapes or from the classic ones that you’re familiar with. When you select a standard marker shape, its border, center, and shadow adjust for accessibility no matter what color you choose. When you select a standard marker color, markers have better visibility no matter what shape you choose.

Specific Cloud: Lightning Experience

Get to Know Einstein Conversation Mining (Beta)

Use your Service Cloud conversation data and the power of Einstein to discover your customers’ most common requests. With Einstein Conversation Mining, you can build reports based on specific audience details, using any field on your record. Einstein groups and ranks the requests, identifying the contact reasons that are most frequent and easiest to automate. Then, send the chat data from the contact reason over to Einstein Bots or into an intent set.

Specific Cloud: Lightning Experience

Customize the Field Service Mobile App with Offline Mobile UI Extensibility (Generally Available)

Build offline-capable experiences for your mobile app users with Lightning web components (LWCs). Use standard components to craft an interface suited to your company’s needs, and bring your brightest ideas to life by creating custom components to help your workers be more productive. This feature, now generally available, includes some changes since the last release.

Specific Cloud: Field Service Mobile App

Upload and Annotate Images in the Field Service Mobile App

Configure the Upload and Annotate Images Lightning web component (LWC) to let your mobile workers add images to their work orders or service appointments. Mobile workers can then crop or draw on the image to emphasize certain areas. For example, the mobile worker can add an image of a part that must be fixed and draw an arrow to emphasize the broken area. You can set the size of the images in your configuration.

Specific Cloud: Field Service Mobile App

Guide Your Mobile Workers at the Right Place and the Right Time (Pilot)

Give your mobile workers the best next step when they’re arriving or leaving the appointment site. For example, when the mobile worker arrives at the appointment, suggest that they fill out the site arrival checklist. That way they have all the information they need to get started.

Specific Cloud: Field Service Mobile App

Take Action More Quickly in the Dynamic Activity Composer

The dynamic activity composer gives reps activities at the click of a button and offers more choices than the tabbed activity composer.

Let Email Templates Suggest a Cadence for a Recipient

When your reps select an email template while writing an email, we check to see if a cadence uses that email template for its first step as a manual email. Reps are then prompted to add the primary email recipient to the matching cadence or to choose among other matching cadences. Your company can reuse existing cadences designed to guide reps through the prospecting and opportunity nurturing processes.

Specific Cloud: Sales Cloud

Get Account Health Details with Account Discovery

Account Discovery provides dashboards and Einstein Discovery models to help you see which of your accounts has potential for upside growth and which need attention.

Specific Cloud: Pipeline Inspection/Revenue Intelligence

If you would like to learn more about the Salesforce Spring ’23 Release Notes, please contact us!

From everyone at Corrao Group, we wish you happy holidays and hope you have a great new year!

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. If you are interested in learning more about how Corrao Group can help your company, read our reviews on G2!

Sources:

https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=release-notes.salesforce_release_notes.htm&type=5&release=242

 

 

 

 

Start using Salesforce TPM within 3 Months

Companies spend 20% of their annual revenue on trade spend (neal) and 72% of those companies located in the US end up losing money (mckinsey). Why? Products are going out of stock, poor setups of promotional materials, or inaccurate price labeling are just a few of the contributing reasons for these lackluster performances. There has been a drastic change in consumer behavior over the past few years and tools such as Microsoft Excel and homegrown ERPs aren’t able to help companies keep up anymore (23% of companies today manage trade promotions on Excel). Newer technology has made it easier to avoid these common issues, and the industry has been turning towards a massive digital transformation as the resolution. Software such as Salesforce Trade Promotion Management (TPM) helps companies optimize trade spending, invest in the right activations, and spend more time selling. The industry is turning towards a tool such as Salesforce TPM to ultimately maximize the ROI of their promotions.

Our Salesforce TPM Starter Package is a cost-effective package that helps companies get up and running within 3-4 months. Key Account Managers will be able to utilize the trade calendar, customer & product hierarchies, promotion & tactics templates, promotion and account P&L, and reports & dashboards. Please download our Salesforce TPM Starter Package data sheet to see all of the details and pricing.

Learn more about our Salesforce TPM for Consumer Goods Cloud services on our website.

Maximizing Your Salesforce Investment With Managed Services

 

Salesforce Managed Services are a set of services offered by a certified managed service provider (MSP) to manage and run your org. These services help with various tasks, such as setting up and configuring Salesforce, providing ongoing support and maintenance, and training users on how to use the platform. Companies must ensure that their investments are cost-effective and efficient in today’s economic uncertainty. Salesforce Managed Services provide an ideal way for companies to maximize their Salesforce investment. In terms of cost-savings, Salesforce managed services help businesses reduce the need for in-house expertise by providing access to a group of experienced professionals who can help manage and optimize their multi-cloud Salesforce org. By outsourcing key Salesforce tasks/issues to an experienced partner, companies can save on costs and instead focus their time and resources on other business areas to drive growth.

What’s included in Salesforce Managed Services?

Managing a Salesforce platform is a complex and time-consuming process, especially for companies that don’t have in-house expertise with years of experience. In the past, Salesforce has typically been managed by one or two administrators at an organization. However, the growing number of supporting Salesforce products and features has made it nearly impossible for one or two admins to manage the multi-cloud system. Trusted Salesforce MSPs have the knowledge, experience, and bandwidth to help you manage, optimize, and innovate Salesforce to power your business. The Salesforce platform is constantly evolving, and managed services assist organizations in staying up to date on releases to take advantage of the latest features and tools. Salesforce managed services offer a wide range of services to help companies get the most out of their Salesforce platform:

    • Setup and configuration: Set up and configure their Salesforce platform or additional clouds. Salesforce must be configured and customized to meet their specific business needs. Setup and configuration can also include automating your business processes with Salesforce.
    • User training and Adoption: Provide training sessions to ensure Salesforce users understand the system and get the most out of it. This can include training on how to use specific features and functions, best practices for using Salesforce to manage their business, customer relationships, How to’s, and more.
    • Ongoing support and maintenance: Continuous support and maintenance to help organizations ensure that their Salesforce system is running efficiently. This can include troubleshooting and problem-solving issues within Salesforce and regular updates and maintenance to keep the system up-to-date. Salesforce has three major releases per year, and it’s important to identify necessary updates to support each new release. Data management, optimization, and org reviews are also a focus through ongoing support and maintenance.
    • Integration with 3rd Party Systems (Continued Innovation): Integrate the Salesforce platform with other systems, such as accounting and marketing automation, to provide a seamless and efficient workflow. Over 2,500+ applications are available to build upon the existing functionality of your Salesforce org.

What are the Benefits of Managed Services?

There are several benefits to using Salesforce Managed Services, including:

    • Expert support and assistance: Experts with years of experience help organizations get the most out of their Salesforce investment. This can be particularly useful for organizations that do not have the in-house expertise or resources to manage their Salesforce system effectively.
    • Cost-effectiveness: A cost-effective solution for organizations looking to save time and resources on their Salesforce management tasks. By outsourcing major tasks to experienced professionals, organizations can save on the costs of hiring and training in-house staff.
    • Improved system performance: By providing ongoing support and maintenance, our managed services can help organizations ensure that their Salesforce system is running smoothly and efficiently. This can improve system performance and avoid downtime, allowing organizations to focus on their core business operations.
    • Increased productivity: By providing expert training, everyday users will be shown how to streamline their everyday tasks and avoid time-consuming mistakes within the system. This can help to increase productivity and improve overall business performance.

Salesforce Managed Services benefits include multi-cloud support, proactive approach, long-term success, increased productivity, and more.

Corrao Group’s Salesforce Managed Services

Corrao Group is proud to be a certified Salesforce Managed Service Provider, and be a part of the Salesforce Managed Service Advisory Board (PAB). Our team has managed Salesforce platforms for customers of all sizes, across all industries since 2008. Our Salesforce Managed Services have helped numerous companies save time and resources while ensuring their Salesforce org is successful and effective. By utilizing Corrao Group, companies can focus on their core business with the help of the Salesforce platform. Our services support most of the products offered by the Salesforce platform, including Sales, Service, Marketing & Consumer Goods Clouds, Tableau, Field Service Lightning, and more.

If you would like to learn more about Corrao Group’s Managed Services, please contact us.

How Salesforce Retail Execution Empowers Field Reps

Retail and consumer goods sales field reps often handle and monitor numerous stores across a city. Normally on the road, reps depend on their mobile phone or tablet to plan and lay out their day. Crippled by their company’s old-dated technology, field reps deal with disconnected labor-intensive processes with no visibility into key data. Consider the daily routine of field reps tasked with planning and executing store visits to multiple different retailers. They must not only plan how they will fit the visits into their day, but also manage in-store execution tasks like inventory checks, planogram compliance audits, selling new products, or delivering inventory.

Consumer Goods managers want field reps to spend less time on operational activities and more time building relationships with retailers to ensure customer satisfaction and sales. Brands spend millions of dollars branding and marketing their products to satisfy customers’ expectations. Fulfilling these customer expectations requires planning better visits and selling in retail stores. The ultimate goal is to put the right products with the right promotions on the right shelves at the right time. But the question remains: How do you connect your channels, departments, and data to produce the one-to-one journeys and experiences your customers expect? Today, consumer goods companies are turning to Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud Retail Execution to provide field reps with an effective planning mechanism to manage their stores, assortments, products, promotions, planograms, and more. According to Salesforce, companies using Salesforce’s Retail Execution saw:

    • 36% increase in field rep productivity.
    • 12% in saved time for sales reps.
    • 10% growth in perfect store performance.

How Salesforce Retail Execution Helps

Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud for Retail Execution provides brands with a single source of truth that empowers your field reps to manage and execute in-store tasks online or offline. Salesforce optimizes field execution by driving efficiency for your field reps and drivers with task management, mobile order capture capabilities, and optimized route plans. Here’s how Salesforce Retail Execution helps:

    • Access comprehensive data on key accounts with details on billing and shipping details, promotions, orders, and product assortments.
    • Use location details like Salesforce Maps to create an optimized route for field reps to prioritize their day and visits.
    • Lightning App Builder and Flows can extend the capabilities of triggering automated tasks, page customization, and more.
    • Optimize Sales agreements, order management, and action plans.
    • Gather data for specific store groups, in-store locations, and stores for product categories, products, and assortments to check for compliance and monitor the overall health of stores.
    • Monitor key processes such as promotion checks, planogram compliance, inventory audits, return order processing, and in-store surveys with predefined templates.
    • Einstein Object Detection helps audit shelves, manage stock, measure share and shelf, and optimize product mix and sales.
    • Advanced CRM Analytics dashboards provide insights.
    • Use various data types like decimal, boolean, number, perfect, text, date-time, and more to gather information on sales, effectiveness, and availability of products.

The Consumer Goods offline mobile app gives field reps an intuitive mobile solution that offers enhanced mobility with real-time visibility while offline. The offline mobile app can be used with Android and IOS tablets or phones. The Consumer Goods Cloud Mobile Offline App helps by:

    • Integrated route planning using map support and GPS.
    • Support for different service delivery models in different geographies.
    • Easy-to-use features including data entry and process-guided navigation.
    • Process-driven usability.
    • Laser-based barcode scanning.
    • Intelligent handling of high data volumes for offline devices.
    • Execution of complex business processes offline, supported by background sync and sophisticated trace and monitoring options.
    • Create custom themes that reflect your brand.
    • Cockpit-based UI: The Retail Store cockpit provides a 360° view of a store and visit-related information with live, in-store reporting.

Investment Protection With Salesforce

Right now is the perfect time to make a digital transformation from homegrown systems or spreadsheets to Salesforce. 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.

If you would like to learn more about Salesforce Retail Execution, please get in touch with us.

About Corrao Group

As everyday Salesforce power users, we understand how flexible the Salesforce platform is to support every business department. Since 2002, we have been helping B2B organizations of all sizes optimize their business processes with Salesforce and their third-party applications. We’ve worked with nearly 1,000 customers, implementing, customizing, and optimizing over 2,100 Salesforce projects. If you are interested in learning more about how we can help your company, read our reviews on G2 or contact us today!