Many manufacturers don’t feel the need to have a CRM due to the fact that they are usually touted as being tools for sales and marketing teams. One of the great features of a CRM, such as Salesforce, is the ability to integrate all departments and vendors while creating a seamless connection between employees and customers. Salesforce goes beyond the sales department to streamline customer service, marketing, finance, partner management, logistics and everywhere in between. In order to keep up with the incredibly personal and attentive world that a flexible CRM creates, you must hop on the bandwagon! If you’re still unsure about how a CRM could benefit your team, keep reading to see the top reasons why every manufacturer needs one.

CRM Benefits for Manufacturers

• Inventory Management, E-commerce, Finance

A CRM is not only great for basic communications between a company and its customers, but it’s also an invaluable tool for managing your inventory, finances, and e-commerce processes throughout your company. Integrating your ERP with CRM allows for full-spectrum visibility across all valuable KPIs for your business. With insight on your finished inventory as well as your shop floor, a CRM provides invaluable information for field sales, manufacturer reps, vendors, order processing, and manufacturers to asses ways to improve the inventory turns and the net availability of products in stock.

• Customer Support

Since CRM provides data for all aspects of your business processes, it can be used as a tool to better support your customer’s needs while communicating with your sales staff. Your customer will be able to access knowledge based articles to self-diagnose resolutions as well as getting real-time status on open trouble tickets. Another way your CRM will transform your customer support is through the data regarding past purchases and interactions. From customer communication to product launches, your CRM will provide next-level engagement with your customer, enticing them to further support your business.

• Increased Sales Pipeline Visibility

A CRM such as Salesforce provides real-time information for availability and ship dates, as well as updates and alerts for problems that need resolution. Having visibility into your entire sales pipelines will allow your manufacturing team to work seamlessly with sales in order to resolve issues and predict trends for the future. Integration with ERPs will also tie the complete supply chain with the forecast and show actual sales in real-time.

• Company-wide Collaboration

Along with sales, your manufacturing team can benefit greatly from the collaboration across departments, whether that be with marketing or project management. Salesforce provides a tool named Chatter, which can provide a space for internal communication about new product releases for example, and other general conversations. Having a collaborative environment is beneficial for manufacturers as they now have insight into the way products are being sold, and are able to connect with teams across the company about data present within the CRM.

• Vendor Management

A CRM allows you to stay connected to your vendor to ensure the highest quality products and on-time delivery through real-time communication. In today’s business world, ensuring that your vendor supports your business needs requires an integrated solution to ensure an efficient process is in place. Allow a tool like Salesforce to schedule and grade your vendors for you, in order to allow your staff to be as efficient as possible.

• Customer Feedback

Ensuring your customer’s satisfaction is critical in today’s business world of social networking. As customers go through their evaluation, purchase, and receipt of products, you can capture and analyze areas for improvements, as well as using the feedback to socialize on your corporate channels.

How Corrao Group Can Help

We have been optimizing business processes since 2002 and have continued to work with numerous clients in fields from manufacturing to finance. We have worked with large and small companies, new and seasoned companies, and everywhere in between. We know how it feels to have a business process in disarray, and we strive to create customized plans for each company that allows them to grow.

Working with Salesforce since 2008, we’ve have seen the invaluable benefits that a CRM can have for companies, especially those in the manufacturing industry. Salesforce allows for streamlining and company-wide visibility into all business processes. With tools such as custom reporting and forecasting enablement, data can be analyzed effortlessly. Salesforce consulting services have been just as important to us as business process optimization, and we strive to help businesses maximize their investments into their CRM.

To learn more about our the benefits of Salesforce and our Salesforce consulting services, visit our Salesforce Services page.

When it comes to creating newsletters, you probably only think about the ones that go out to your clients. From product sales to social marketing updates, newsletters are a great way to keep customers engaged and coming back to your company for more. But, did you know that internal newsletters are just as important? We have compiled a list of the top 8 reasons why your company needs an internal newsletter so you can keep your employees as engaged as your clients!

Top 8 Reasons Your Company Needs an Internal Newsletter

1. Transparency across all departments

Employees don’t usually keep up with their coworker’s roles unless they happen to be working in the same department or team, which can lead to a lack of company knowledge. Having an internal newsletter is a great way to highlight important projects each department is working on and may encourage employees to reach out to one another for questions and collaborations based on personal experience.

2. Company & Industry News

It’s important that everyone in your company is up-to-date on the latest company endeavors, as well as the latest news about your industry. An internal newsletter is a perfect place to provide links to new company products/marketing services, as well as updates on competitors or changes within the industry so all employees can be informed.

3. Introducing New Employees

Whether you have a small company or are as big as Google, it’s important that new employees and clients are recognized company-wide. When there is a new addition to the company, many employees get caught up with work and don’t take the time to get to know the person or their role, so welcoming them through the newsletter is a great way to keep everyone in the loop and encourage a conversation!

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Corrao Group uses Salesforce for everything from client profiles, internal & external project management, and everything in between; we’ve deployed the Salesforce platform company wide. We implement Salesforce integration best practices in order to make sure we get the most out of our Salesforce organization. Our project management team utilizes Salesforce as a tool to track projects, assess our budgets, and bill employee time for maximum optimization of the platform.

Before Salesforce

Before using Salesforce, Corrao Group used to run on a lot of spreadsheets and constant overseeing. We had to set up our internal projects differently than external projects to bill time, and it was difficult to determine how much time was needed to complete each task in a project. When we adopted Salesforce in 2008, we became both a customer and a partner in the same day. Our mission with Salesforce was to maximize not only our investment with the platform, but our clients’ as well.

Once we switched to Salesforce for our project management, we had to evolve with our clients and learn how to utilize Salesforce integration best practices for our business consultations. Larger projects required more technical knowledge, and as power users of the platform, we took it into our own hands to figure out a way to make Salesforce work for us.

With Salesforce

Salesforce has provided visibility into our entire business process and has allowed our Project Management team to work more efficiently. We have tailored Salesforce to work with our own management tools from sales to kickoff, and now have both internal and external projects set up the same way. A popular feature we created was the automation of project communications to both the Salesforce Account Executive and the customer themselves. Without having to track down their Project Manager, automatic updates are sent out with timestamps regarding how the consulting project is tracking.

The customization of Salesforce is endless. We are able to add important details into each project such as files, quip documents, or even chatter threads. We have also implemented advanced dashboards such as Skuid in order to prioritize tasks and streamline management by utilizing Salesforce integration best practices. It is now easier to help project managers reassess how to work efficiently with the wide visibility into their projects, as well the ability to optimize Salesforce to see each individual’s skill-sets.

Moving over to Salesforce for project management did not come easily without the education about how Salesforce would work in our favor. Our whole company has to work together to learn how to manage our projects and prioritize the most important ones. From internal to external projects, we have been able to utilize Salesforce throughout all of our business processes, and with every new feature added is another way for us to maximize our investment with the platform.

Future of PM

The future of using Salesforce for our project management is ever-evolving. We have experienced the infinite customization of Salesforce, and the perks of better visibility so that we can spend less time overseeing, and more time helping our customers. We have ongoing conversations about ways we can continue to optimize our processes, as well as reassessing how we budget out our time.

With integration tools, we are not only able to streamline our own processes, but we can help our customers do the same. Our mission is to maximize our customers’ Salesforce investment, but in the process of doing so, we have continued to maximize ours. The advantages of Salesforce are endless, and we will continue to evolve our project management as Salesforce evolves with us.