Author: John Carroll

Salesforce Summer ’23 Release: Service Cloud

The Salesforce Summer ’23 Release notes have arrived! The latest update for Service Cloud introduces many new features and improvements. From delivering products and services with Service Catalog to sending voice messages in enhanced messaging channels, this release is packed with updates designed to improve your customer service experience. Read on to learn more about the newest additions to Service Cloud and how they can help you better serve your customers.

Deliver Products and Services with Service Catalog (Generally Available)

Use Service Catalog, now generally available, to turn your customers’ requests for products and services into approved and documented orders. For example, automate frequent requests like resetting a password through Service Catalog. Previously, Service Catalog was available only as part of Work.com.

Open Your Service Catalog to Customers and Partners

Create a Service Catalog site that provides your customer and partners a self-service portal for the seamless browsing and requesting of items from your Service Catalog. Build, style, and launch your site effortlessly with point-and-click Aura components built for Service Catalog and with prebuilt Aura site templates from Experience Cloud.

Send Voice Messages in Enhanced Messaging Channels

Voice is the new text, so make sure your agents don’t miss out. Agents can now easily record and send voice messages up to one minute long to customers in enhanced WhatsApp and enhanced Facebook Messenger channels. Previously, agents had to use a separate app to record messages and then send the audio files as attachments.

Create Real-Time Keyword Alerts for Supervisors in Messaging Channels

If a customer or agent sends a high-stakes keyword or phrase, automatically raise the agent’s flag so their supervisor can help if needed.

Message Customers More Intuitively with the Redesigned Agent Conversation Window

You asked, and Salesforce listened. The Send-and-End Chat buttons are now separated in the agent conversation window. Additionally, the toolbar now lives above the message field. These subtle changes help agents click the correct button and find the tools they need during messaging sessions.

Resolve Setup Issues More Quickly with Self-Service Checks (Beta)

Get your contact center users up and running more quickly with on-demand diagnostics. No need to troubleshoot or contact Salesforce Customer Support. Run the Single Sign-On service checks to verify that Service Cloud Voice can authenticate all agents and supervisors in your contact center. Run the Contact Center User service checks to verify that every contact center agent and supervisor is assigned the right permission set license and permission set. Without them, the user can’t use Service Cloud Voice.

Check Voice Channel Performance with More Metrics (Pilot)

Evaluate the performance of your voice channel by adding two new Voice objects to your custom report types. Spot trends on disconnected calls, missed calls by agents, call error rates, and other call actions. Some metrics are only available for Service Cloud Voice with Amazon Connect. All data for the new Voice objects are deleted after 30 days.

Get the Enhanced Slack Conversations Experience

Collaborate on a Slack swarm from Lightning Experience with the enhanced Slack Conversations component that looks and feels more like Slack. To keep the experience consistent between Slack and Salesforce, Slack profile pictures now appear alongside the message, messages are left-aligned and timestamped, and users can see and send custom Slack emojis. Slack Conversations users can also view advanced Slack formats such as code and code blocks, easily identify attachments by a file emoji, send messages through Slack Connect, and even use the component on the go from a tablet.

Extend Swarming to Field Service Workers

Bring the power of Swarming and Expert Finder to Field Service with Service Appointments, now supported for Swarming. Field service workers can bring together cross-functional experts to quickly resolve tricky customer issues, even when onsite with a customer, helping reduce your cost to serve.

Monitor Contact Center Health in the Omni Supervisor Wallboard (Pilot)

Show supervisors real-time metrics to help them identify and resolve issues quickly. In this continuing pilot, the wallboard includes more charts. On the Omni Supervisor tab, supervisors can select a queue of interest to filter the metrics shown.

Get Supervisors Involved Fast with Conversation Intelligence

When conversation intelligence detects a key phrase in calls or messages, it raises a flag on the Agents tab in Omni Supervisor. Supervisors can then jump in and help agents resolve the issue quickly.

Surface Knowledge Articles Quickly

Help users self-serve and find solutions quickly with the new Knowledge Article page for LWR sites. Now you can add knowledge articles to your Self-Service portal’s Knowledge Article Details page.

Get a Quick Timeline View of Survey Responses

Use Timeline to monitor survey responses. View information related to responses and understand respondents’ interaction. You can enable a Timeline for both standard objects and custom objects.

Customize Knowledge Articles with the Knowledge Article Component

Site visitors can now view knowledge articles in LWR. Administrators can toggle between field labels and field sections and adjust the style of the knowledge article title. Mandatory field labels, such as URL Name, that your site visitors don’t need are also hidden. And employees can customize knowledge articles in an unauthenticated help center and via an authenticated portal. Previously, the Knowledge Article component was available only in Aura, making it inaccessible to LWR users.

Learn More about the Salesforce Summer ’23 Release Notes

If you want to learn more about the exciting new features of the Salesforce Summer ’23 Release for Service Cloud, don’t hesitate to contact us and we’ll be happy to provide you with all the information you need.

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!

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Salesforce Summer ’23 Release: Service Cloud

Salesforce Summer ’23 Release: Sales Cloud

The Salesforce Summer ’23 Release notes have arrived! The latest update for Sales Cloud introduces a plethora of new features and improvements that aim to streamline sales processes and enhance team collaboration. Among the highlights of this release, users can now split revenue by product mix with Opportunity Product Splits, create quotes without an opportunity, and quickly find specific items in the To-Do List with the new search field. Furthermore, the Revenue Intelligence Command Center and Sales Stage Analysis Dashboard offer deeper insights into sales performance and pipeline management. Let’s dive into the details and explore Salesforce’s new features for sales teams.

Split Revenue by Product Mix with Opportunity Product Splits (Generally Available)

Use opportunity product splits to allocate revenue at a more granular level to team members who collaborate on complex opportunities. Without leaving the opportunity record, teams can see how multiple products and each team member fit into a sales motion. And with opportunity product splits reports, team members can track all of the opportunities they contribute to.

Create Reports for Opportunities with Opportunity Product Splits

Sales teams can track product splits and rollups to opportunity split revenue with standard reports, giving them visibility to the contribution team members make to the deals they support. The reports also show how product splits’ data reflect on compensation for reps and on individual and team forecasts.

Create Quotes Without an Opportunity

Sales reps no longer have to follow the opportunity-to-quote flow. They can fast-track deals by creating quotes without first creating an opportunity, speeding up delivering quotes to their customers for review. Quotes must be related to an account when they’re converted to orders.

See Prospect Engagements for the Month at a Glance

Easily identify your most engaged prospects with the new Engagement History field. The field contains a chart showing all outbound activities and inbound engagement for the past 30 days. Reps can instantly see when and how often each lead, contact, or person account has been engaged so they can reach out at the right moment. Previously, users could see the number of recent engagements on prospect records, but not the timing.

Find Items Quickly in the To Do List with Search

Users can use the new search field to quickly find the specific items they’re looking for in the To-Do List. Users can act on the tasks that matter most, wherever those items are in the list. Previously, users could tag items and create lists, but not search.

Empower Sales Reps with the Revenue Intelligence Command Center

Get all the details you need for sales success from the Sales Rep Command Center. You can see whether you’re aligned to meet your quotas, which opportunities are stuck, and overdue activities. You can also see step progression and amount changes.

Understand Your Sales Pipeline with the Sales Stage Analysis Dashboard

Get a high-level view of the stages of your sales, identify bottlenecks and at-risk opportunities, and understand if deals are progressing smoothly. The new Sales Stage Analysis tab in Revenue Insights shows how long deals remain in each stage. You can see which deals are stalled, and which opportunities had amount changes or had deadlines pushed back.

Find Your Untapped Opportunities Using Product Whitespace

Identify potential sales in Einstein Account Management. In the Product Whitespace view, see which products your accounts purchased and identify gaps for upsell opportunities.

View Einstein Predictions in a Full-Length Panel

See more Einstein Prediction details at one time in a full, slide-out panel on the forecasts page. Previously, Einstein predictions were shown in a shortened panel with the introduction of forecast pages in the Lightning App Builder.

Simplify Reps’ Schedules by Eliminating Repeat Visits During Shifts

Help reps adhere to visit spacing requirements by ensuring they visit customers one time during their shift in Salesforce Maps Advanced. Preventing same-shift visits is especially helpful for large volumes of accounts that require frequent visits. For example, a customer requires daily visits, but the rep travels 2 days a week. This option schedules the rep to visit one time on each of those 2 days instead of scheduling multiple visits to that same customer on each of those 2 days.

Nail Your Meetings with Salesforce Meeting Digest

Meeting Digest is now available for all users automatically. And, it’s the default tab in Event record details for users with Einstein Activity Capture. Enable an activity sync solution, such as Einstein Activity Capture, to get the most out of Meeting Digest, including RSVPs, insights, and recommended actions.

Send a Meeting Request Quickly from the Dynamic Activity Composer

Are your reps in a hurry to set up meetings? Now they can start the process with one click. Previously, reps had to open an email and click twice to insert proposed meeting times.

Propose Three Future Meeting Times in Lightning Experience

Sales reps often have to email back and forth with customers to set up a meeting. Now reps can quickly add three upcoming meeting times as a suggestion and avoid negotiating. Previously, this feature was available only with Outlook and Gmail integrations.

Learn More about the Salesforce Summer ’23 Release Notes

If you want to learn more about the exciting new features of the Salesforce Summer ’23 Release for Sales Cloud, don’t hesitate to contact us and we’ll be happy to provide you with all the information you need.

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!

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Salesforce Summer ’23 Release: Sales Cloud 

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

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.

Dreamforce 2022: Top 5 Announcements

Dreamforce 2022 Takeaways: Innovation and Data

Dreamforce, the world’s largest software conference, had another fantastic event filled with incredible speakers, new features, and lots of customer success stories. The three-day event held the attention of the business world as Salesforce hosted more than 40,000 attendees and millions of online viewers. Dreamforce 2022 brought together thought leaders, industry pioneers, and Trailblazers from all over the world. With over 1,000 sessions, the Corrao Group team was active to ensure we captured the most important announcements and partnerships. Here are our top 5 takeaways from Dreamforce 2022.

1. Salesforce Genie

Salesforce has announced what they describe as its “biggest innovation” to its CRM platform in the last two decades. Salesforce Genie, a real-time hyper-scale data platform, unifies customer data across different applications and channels (mobile, web, APIs) into a single source of truth. With Genie, every company can turn data into customer magic, delivering seamless, highly personalized experiences across sales, service, marketing, and commerce that continuously adapts to changing customer information and needs in real time.

Brett Taylor, Co-CEO of Salesforce, stated in his main keynote, “With Genie, we’ve added a foundational new feature: a real-time hyper-scale data platform. It’s all about the data; you can inject real-time and historical data to create a single source of truth. This changes the game for CRMs. Salesforce Customer 360 is the world’s first real-time CRM.”

Learn how Salesforce Genie Works

How Does Salesforce Genie Work?

As the heart of real-time Customer 360, Salesforce Genie consumes and stores real-time data streams at a massive scale and connects it with Salesforce transactional data. Genie includes built-in connectors that bring in data from every channel, legacy data through MuleSoft, and historical data from proprietary data lakes. Genie transforms and harmonizes the data into a real-time customer graph – a unified customer profile record.

With Genie, Einstein AI and Flow automation services can harness the power of hyper-scale real-time data to enable more dynamic and responsive actions and engagement. Einstein, which generates over 175 billion predictions every day, can now deliver personalization and predictions based on real-time data. Flow automation, which saves customers over 100 billion hours every month, can now use real-time data to trigger actions automatically.

Salesforce Genie

2. Consumer Goods Cloud Innovation Continues

The Consumer Goods Cloud Keynote, Drive Profitable Growth, focused on industry challenges today and how Salesforce is being utilized by brands to operate faster across different teams with profitable growth. Industry and economic challenges mentioned included inflation, supply chain, changing consumer behaviors, the war for talent (Great Resignation), connected modern tools, disconnected systems, and lack of real-time data. During the keynote, Salesforce brought out Mondelēz Global LLC to demonstrate how they are using Consumer Goods Cloud to become more customer-centric and data-driven to drive more insights across the organization. Innovations in Retail Execution and Trade Promotion Management have allowed them to execute and grow, and deliver a consistent consumer experience on the shelf.

Retail Execution

One connected offline and online view has helped Mondelēz unlock productivity and empower their field teams. With one single source of truth, Salesforce Retail Execution is helping Mondelēz prioritize and schedule store visits with the key tasks needed to complete in the field to optimize every visit. KPIs in real-time provide insights into how to make their shelf performance better. Learn more about Salesforce Retail Execution.

Trade Promotion Management

Originally running their trade promotion management on spreadsheets, Mondelēz was able to utilize Salesforce TPM to optimize their trade activity. With one single view truth, Mondelēz was able to invest in the right activations at the right time to build more effective promotions. Salesforce TPM helped Mondelēz improve revenue growth, maximize trade spend effectiveness, deepen trade promotion analytics, manage funds and claims, and more. FYI, we were honored to be selected as the exclusive US-based launch partner for Salesforce TPM. Learn more about Salesforce TPM.

Trade Calendar in Salesforce TPM

3. New Slack Innovations

Salesforce and Slack announced some major product innovations that will make it even more productive for teams to work together in Slack, pull actionable data from Salesforce, and get more out of their Digital HQ. The major announcement was Slack Canvas, a surface in slack that transforms how teams can organize and share important resources in real-time. Ali Rayl, SVP of Product at Slack, said “The new Slack canvas will complement the real-time collaboration experience in Slack today by offering a persistent, customizable place for files, multimedia, powerful integrations, and more. It will better empower teams to say organized, aligned, and productive in their digital HQ.”

Here are the new product innovations from Dreamforce and Salesforce:

    • Slack canvas is a new surface in the digital HQ that will transform how teams can share, curate, and organize essential resources. Paired with the Slack platform, anyone can customize a canvas with time-saving automation, plus pull in data from systems of record, like Customer 360. Canvas will be available next year.
    • Slack huddles now builds on its audio-first experience by offering teams lightweight video, multi-person screen sharing, message threads, and more to power live coworking sessions in their digital HQ. These features will be generally available to all users in the coming weeks.
    • The new Slack platform is available to developers. With a new set of developer tools and modular, reusable building blocks, it’s now faster and easier for them to create, customize, and share workflows that automate work for their teams. Developers can get started today.
    • Slack Partner Industry Solutions helps customers across industries navigate this new era of digital transformation. Slack-certified consulting partners — including Accenture, Atrium, Capgemini, Deloitte, Globant, IBM, KPMG, NeuraFlash, PwC, Silverline and Slalom — are launching the first wave of solutions for industries such as financial services, manufacturing, communications, retail, media, and technology.

4. WhatsApp Partnership

According to Salesforce, messaging is the next customer frontier and preferred customer engagement channel as 90% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products or services, with 66% of online adults globally preferring messaging as a way of communicating with a business. WhatsApp’s first business messaging brings the company’s in-class capabilities to deliver a convenient, integrated, personalized, and modern experience between businesses and people worldwide. Salesforce says the integration will transform how businesses connect with consumers through conversational engagement, marketing, service, and commerce interactions.

5. Net Zero Marketplace

Salesforce announced Net Zero Marketplace, a trusted platform that makes carbon credit purchases simple and transparent, allowing organizations to accelerate climate impact at scale. “The uptick in extreme weather events shows that no one is spared from climate change — we need smart climate solutions now,” said Suzanne DiBianca, EVP and Chief Impact Officer, Salesforce. “Businesses aiming to achieve long-term emission reductions can complement their efforts with high-quality carbon credits. Net Zero Marketplace brings together Salesforce’s values, technology, and commitment to ecopreneurs to accelerate climate action.”

Net Zero Marketplace, built on Salesforce’s Commerce Cloud, connects buyers and ecopreneurs by offering a catalog of third-party-rated carbon credits and a seamless eCommerce experience for purchasing them. Net Zero Marketplace also features a climate action hub where anyone can learn about climate issues.

Dreamforce 2022 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 Matthew McConaughey, Bono, Al Gore, and Jennifer Hudson. The energy around the city of San Francisco was electric, as more than 40,000 attendees gathered to witness and learn what new features Salesforce will release next. We are already getting excited for Dreamforce 2023!

If you would like to learn more about any of the new features from Dreamforce 2022 and how it can relate to your business, please contact us.