Salesforce Spring ’25 Release Notes for Consumer Goods Cloud

The Spring ’25 Release for Consumer Goods Cloud is here! Enhance Retail Execution with streamlined delivery tools, geofencing for accurate visits, and improved usability. Trade Promotion Management now features quicker workflows, simplified permissions, and smarter data retrieval. See the latest features to drive efficiency and maximize results!

Retail Execution

Streamline Delivery Execution and Efficiently Complete Tours

With convenient access to delivery documents, tour drivers can swiftly deliver preordered products, obtain signatures, generate invoices, and handle returns. After deliveries are done, tour drivers can complete end-of-tour tasks by easily checking in the remaining products and recording the vehicle’s mileage or status. After finishing the end-of-tour activities, drivers can complete the tour and track the time spent.

Ensure Visit Integrity with Geofencing and Time Tracking

Implement explicit start visit to make sure sales reps and tour drivers begin a visit before its execution in the Consumer Goods Cloud offline mobile app. By using geofencing and time tracking, oversee visits, reduce the risk of fraudulent visits, and make visit execution accurate and reliable. Make sure the sales reps or tour drivers are physically at the stores during the visit by letting them start or finish a visit only within the defined radius and by limiting the number of in-progress visits to one.

Boost Brand Visibility by Adding Your Company Logo on Consumer Goods Cloud Offline Mobile App

Make your brand more visible and meet the different needs of different markets, places, and business groups with company logos in the Consumer Goods Cloud offline mobile app. Showcase a unique logo for each sales organization on the Summary card of the Your Day page.

Share Visits Is Retired

Starting Spring ’25, you can no longer enable the Share visits setting under Retail Execution Settings and only the owner of the visit has access to the visit. For your users to share visits and access related records, implement custom sharing using any of Salesforce platform sharing capabilities. If you’re an existing customer and haven’t turned off the Share visits setting, you ‌must first implement platform-based visit sharing and then manually turn off the setting before upgrading to Consumer Goods Cloud Spring ’25. Complete this step to prevent unexpected results while sharing visits on the Consumer Goods Cloud Managed package.

Usability Improvements for Desktop Orders

Learn about the layout changes for desktop orders in Spring ’25.

  • Configurable default tab for Orders: By default, the All Items tab is shown as the default tab. Configure the default tab as Basket with the defaultTab attribute in Custom JSON for Order Items.
  • Easy management of product quantities: Starting Spring ’25
    • On the Add products page in Advanced Orders, you can now directly add products with quantities.
    • To add multiple products with the same quantities, change the quantity for a product. Use the context menu of the Quantity field to update the quantity for all products that are filtered and selected.
    • You can further modify the product quantities in the Basket or the Order Items tab.
    • The quantity is added to Custom JSON for Add Items by default. In existing projects and templates, for Quantity to be shown on the Product List grid, you must add the Quantity field to Custom JSON for Add Items on Order Template.
  • Layout improvements for the desktop order Lightning Web Component: Font size and padding for the product grids have been enhanced for readability. The tables now align with the Salesforce Lightning Design System.
  • Search bar for simplified search: Search for an assessment task definition by using the search bar in the Assessment Task Definitions list view.

Other Improvements in Retail Execution

Delete completed visits, add more promotions, customize the signature area, and ensure system compatibility with Consumer Goods Cloud.

  • Deletion of completed visits: Use the new Delete_Completed_Visit and Age_of_Visit custom system settings to turn on the deletion on the Consumer Goods Cloud desktop app or through the API. By default, the app prevents the deletion of completed visits.
  • Increased promotion limit: Add up to 49,000 accounts per promotion.
  • Consumer Goods Cloud batch process changes: Starting Spring ’25
    • In Progress visits are marked with Distribution Relevant as False when the start date isn’t between the current date (Today) and Distribution Relevant CutOff Date.
    • AggregatePromotionBatch considers only the promotions that are of the Sellable Promotion record type. To consider all types of promotions, use the PromotionAggregationForAllPromotions custom system setting.
  • Direct Store Delivery Sync Rule Change: Extension of sync rule to include assortments not only for customers whose orders are linked to tours but also for customers whose orders or visits are linked to tours.
  • Sharing for Substitution: Starting Spring ’25, if the OvrideSharingForSubstTeamMbr setting is enabled, a user can activate account substitution for a period, which is valid for the current date without sufficient privileges to add team members to the substituted account. Until Spring ’25, the activation of account substitution for a period which is valid for the current date fails if the user didn’t have sufficient privileges to add team members to the substituted account.
  • Granular versioning details for troubleshooting: Find your installed app version and Salesforce build number on the Consumer Goods Cloud offline mobile app. Use this information when you contact Salesforce to report an issue. This information is available on the Device Status Overview page in the Sync Management app.
  • Enhanced signing experience: Customize your signature area with the new buttons and labels that align with the Salesforce theme. To style the signature area, configure the default Salesforce mobile theme or implement a custom theme.
  • Package compatibility validation: Ensure compatibility of Consumer Goods Cloud with version validation checks for these components:
    • Consumer Goods Cloud offline mobile app, during the installation of deployment package
    • Consumer Goods Cloud managed package in Salesforce, during the assignment of deployment package
    • Deployment package, during the addition of a deployment package in the deployment package assignment process
    • Visual Studio Code based Modeler simulator app, during the implementation of a customization project

Trade Promotion Management

Reduce Time and Effort by Copying Manual Inputs for Tactics

Give key account managers (KAMs) the option to copy the manual inputs of a tactic when they copy a tactic. Previously, when KAMs copied a tactic, they couldn’t copy the tactic’s manual inputs.

Retrieve and Audit Account Plan Manual Inputs

With the new Get Manual Inputs integration API, you can now retrieve the manual inputs for an account plan recorded as session data in Consumer Goods Processing Services. If multiple changes are made to the account plan, the changes made at different times and by different users are recorded as separate sessions. Use the Get Comparison integration API to retrieve the manual inputs recorded in two separate sessions.

Manage TPM Permission Sets Efficiently

The Consumer Goods managed package now has new permission sets, such as TPM Standard Object Admin and TPM Master Data Admin. These permission sets are automatically updated whenever the managed package is upgraded. Assign your users these permission sets to save the hassle of managing permission sets every time you upgrade to the latest version of the Consumer Goods managed package.

Preview Your Processing Service

Verify that a new version of the processing service is working seamlessly with the existing managed package. Test the new processing service version in your Sandbox early on to ensure that you don’t face any hiccups when your production org uses the latest processing service. The new processing service version is automatically available in Sandbox and Production org when the new version of Salesforce core is available per the release timelines.

New and Changed Objects for Trade Promotion Management

Do more with the new and updated Trade Promotion Management objects.

Copy manual inputs of a tactic when you copy the tactic

Use the new Duplicate_manual_inputs field on the tactic_template object.

If you would like to learn more about the Salesforce Spring ’25 Release Notes for Consumer Goods Cloud, please contact us.

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 1,250+ customers, implementing, customizing, and optimizing over 2,500+ Salesforce projects. If you are interested in learning more about how Corrao Group can help your company, read our reviews on G2!

Why Retail & Consumer Goods Companies are Investing in Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud

As 2024 comes to a close, retail and consumer goods companies are pressured to keep up with the evolving consumer market. Rising costs, changing consumer behaviors, and the need for more efficient operations are some of the challenges faced by the industry. Many companies are discovering that traditional and manual processes (via Excel) no longer work as effectively as they once were. Businesses are now confronted with the reality of investing in technology like Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud to drive growth and streamline their operations.

Challenges Facing the Consumer Goods Industry

The Consumer Goods industry faces many challenges in optimizing trade promotions, managing retail execution, and more. According to Salesforce, U.S. consumer goods companies spend about $200 billion annually on in-store merchandising and marketing. Still, consumer goods leaders say that 52% of their merchandising and marketing plans aren’t executed as intended within stores, leading to more than $100 billion in annual trade spend not being optimized. Additionally, only 36% of consumer goods companies report a high adoption of trade promotion software, with less than half of the respondents (46%) fully satisfied with their promotions’ returns. The stats reflected reveal the urgent need for better strategies and solutions to enhance trade promotion effectiveness and in-store execution.

Deliver Profitable Growth with Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud

Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud offers a solution tailored to the unique needs of consumer goods companies. Companies can accelerate growth and productivity by combining sales, trade promotion management, retail execution, and service on one unified platform. The platform empowers businesses to optimize customer planning and forecasting, improve trade promotion effectiveness, unlock perfect retail execution, and more.

Here’s how each Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud product can help you:

Consumer Goods for Sales

Accelerate account growth and drive sales productivity with tools to increase revenue, enhance collaboration, and maximize efficiency.

Grow Accounts: Manage accounts and opportunities, handle cases, and leverage detailed reports and dashboards/analytics.

Collaborate Efficiently: Utilize collaborative forecasting, omnichannel case routing, and Einstein Activity Capture.

Reduce Costs: Benefit from workflow automation, a data processing engine, and actionable segmentation.

Save Time: Access the Consumer Goods Cloud Data Model, Sales Console, and Omni-Studio for streamlined operations.

Consumer Goods for Service

Enhance customer satisfaction and revenue with intelligent, integrated service designed for consumer goods companies.

Improve the Resolution Experience: Use omnichannel routing and Einstein conversation insights.

Scale Service: Empower agents with generative AI-powered service replies and answers.

Increase Account Sales: Utilize telesales, penny-perfect pricing, and advanced order management.

Drive Operational Efficiency: Streamline operations with ID verification, einstein bots, and knowledge management.

Customer Planning & Forecasting

Develop a single source of truth for effective account planning, forecasting, and reporting to eliminate silos and improve data visibility.

Eliminate Silos and Improve Data: Utilize the Consumer Goods Cloud data model, customer product lists, and product hierarchies.

Develop Customer Plans: Enhance planning with data aggregation, manual input automation, and metric definition.

Simplify Account Planning: Leverage tools for customer business planning and managing long-term agreements.

Reporting and Analytics: Get detailed account reporting with powerful reports and dashboards.

Trade Promotion Management

Improve trade promotion effectiveness by empowering key account managers with promotion planning, managing budgets, and simplifying claims.

Eliminate silos and improve data visibility: Use the Consumer Goods Data Model, customer product lists, and product hierarchies.

Manage Funds and Budgets: Efficiently handle budgets, rate-based funding, and overspend management.

Simplify Claims Management: Manage claims and long-term agreements with ease.

Report in Real-Time: Get insights with promotion evaluation and account reporting.

Retail Execution

Unlock perfect retail execution, enabling field reps to maximize selling time, enhance strategy, and drive growth.

Maximize Selling Time: Leverage the Consumer Goods Cloud data model, offline mobile app, and advanced order capture.

Drive Growth: Use Einstein Visit recommendations and penny-perfect pricing to boost sales.

Improve Strategy: Optimize operations with real-time reporting, customer segmentation, and routing.

Perfect Store Execution: Conduct store audits, surveys, and ensure planogram compliance.

Staying Competitive with Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud

The consumer goods industry is at a pivotal point where a digital transformation is no longer optional but necessary for staying competitive. Salesforce is leading the way with Consumer Goods Cloud, providing customizable solutions that address the industry’s unique challenges. Whether you’re looking to drive sales, improve promotion effectiveness, or enhance in-store execution, Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud offers the tools needed to stay ahead in a competitive market.

If you want to learn more about Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud, please contact us.

About Corrao Group

Corrao Group is a top Salesforce consulting partner in the retail, consumer goods, and professional service industries. Since 2002, we have helped organizations of all sizes and industries optimize and streamline their business processes with Salesforce. Our mission is to translate your business processes into Salesforce flawlessly, promoting successful integration and widespread user adoption.

Top Takeaways from Dreamforce 2024

Dreamforce 2024, the world’s largest software conference, delivered new innovations that are set to transform industries. Highlights include the launch of Agentforce, Salesforce’s autonomous AI suite, and major updates to Data Cloud and the Customer 360 platform. Powerful Retail & Consumer Goods sessions with McKee Foods, Republic National Distributing Company (RNDC), and Dole Fresh Fruit showcased how Consumer Goods Cloud is helping businesses optimize processes, strengthen relationships, and drive growth. Here are the top takeaways from Dreamforce 2024!

Agentforce

The biggest news coming from Dreamforce 2024 was, of course, Agentforce. Salesforce’s new Agentforce suite represents a major leap in the AI landscape, with CEO Marc Benioff claiming, “The Agentforce platform represented the third wave of the AI revolution.” The autonomous AI agents are designed to handle tasks independently across sales, marketing, service, consumer goods, commerce, and more. Unlike traditional chatbots or copilots, Agentforce analyzes data, makes decisions, and takes action autonomously. This significant breakthrough allows organizations to quickly scale their workforce, responding to business demands in real-time without requiring human input.

The true power of Agentforce is its ability to operate accurately and efficiently by integrating deeply with Salesforce’s Data Cloud. Whether resolving customer service inquiries, qualifying sales leads, or optimizing marketing campaigns, these agents can perform tasks that free up human employees to focus on more strategic and high-level activities. This will increase productivity and customer satisfaction, making Agentforce a game changer in AI.

With its bold vision of empowering one billion agents by 2025, Salesforce is not just advancing AI technology but redefining what’s possible in the workplace. As Marc Benioff says, “This is the biggest and most exciting piece of technology we have ever worked on, and we are just starting.” For businesses across industries, Agentforce offers the opportunity to enhance efficiency, improve customer relationships, and drive growth—all with a few clicks and without the complexity of traditional AI implementations.

Consumer Goods Cloud Customer Success Stories

Three leading consumer goods companies took the stage to share how they harness the power of Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud to transform their businesses.

Jack Corrao, Managing Partner of Corrao Group, highlighted McKee Foods’ success in optimizing trade promotions using Salesforce Trade Promotion Management. With trade spending being one of the biggest challenges in the Consumer Package Goods (CPG) industry, McKee Foods has found that the right tools can make a significant difference. By leveraging TPM, they have been able to navigate the complexities of trade promotions, maximize ROI, and enhance their overall business performance.

Republic National Distributing Company (RNDC) showcased how they use Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud and Data Cloud to unify B2B and B2C data on a single platform. The session focused on how integrated planning and new data sources are helping RNDC make smarter, more profitable decisions, ultimately transforming their route-to-market strategy.

Dole Fresh Fruit shared its success story of improving planning and forecasting with Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud Customer Planning & Forecasting (CPF). By utilizing Salesforce’s CPF capabilities, Dole has strengthened their relationships with retailers and boosted revenue through more accurate forecasts. Salesforce CPF has set a new standard for driving business growth and enhancing retailer partnerships.

All three of these sessions highlighted the transformative impact that Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud has across the consumer goods industry, empowering companies to make data-driven decisions, optimize processes, and achieve greater success. Corrao Group has been proud to partner with McKee Foods, RNDC, and Dole Fresh Fruit to ensure a seamless rollout and successful adoption of these cutting-edge solutions.

Data Cloud

Salesforce’s Data Cloud continues to show impressive growth and innovation, with a 130% year-over-year increase in customers and the capacity to process over 2.3 quadrillion records per quarter. Salesforce’s Data Cloud, the foundation of the Salesforce Platform, and Agentforce continue to drive innovation in unifying customer and business data to deliver personalized, contextually relevant experiences across Customer 360 applications, Flows, Analytics, and Agentforce. “In this new era of AI and Agents, customer data and metadata are the new gold for the enterprise,” said Rahul Auradkar, EVP and GM for Data Cloud at Salesforce. At Dreamforce 2024, Salesforce introduced several key innovations that enhance Data Cloud’s capabilities, cementing its role as the heartbeat of Salesforce’s AI ecosystem.

One of the most notable additions is Data Cloud’s support for unstructured data, which can natively process audio and video content such as customer calls or webinars. This opens up new opportunities for deeper customer insights and enhances the accuracy of Agentforce’s agents. Data Cloud also features a standardized semantic data model, allowing AI and human users to interpret and use data consistently. With improved search capabilities, Data Cloud enables a quicker discovery of relevant information. Real-time data activations also enhance the ability to instantly respond to changing customer needs, providing organizations with more dynamic and timely customer interactions.

Finally, Salesforce has strengthened Data Cloud’s data security and governance features. New policy-based governance allows organizations to maintain strict control over how sensitive data is shared with AI agents. These innovations, combined with Data Cloud’s role as the foundation for Agentforce, enable businesses to harness the power of AI while safeguarding their crucial data and operations.

Customer 360 Platform Innovations

Salesforce unveiled a range of exciting new innovations within its Customer 360 platform, further enhancing AI-powered, personalized experiences across sales, service, marketing, and commerce. These innovations leverage shared data and services to deliver a seamless customer experience while integrating powerful analytics and collaboration tools such as Tableau and Slack. Built on the Salesforce Platform, Customer 360 ensures that every touchpoint is connected, enabling businesses to deliver customer interactions that are both efficient and impactful.

Among the standout innovations announced is Tableau Einstein, which opens up the power of business intelligence (BI) and analytics to everyone who wants to make data-driven work scalable, efficient, and more valuable. By bringing data and insights across workflows in Customer 360 apps, Agentforce, Pulse, and Slack, teams can make data-driven decisions faster and more effectively. Slack has also introduced a new user interface for agents, enabling users to interact directly with data, surface insights, and collaborate in real-time. This includes an integration with Agentforce agents, making it easier for teams to stay aligned and move work forward by connecting Salesforce CRM records with Slack channels. (More updates on Slack are below).

Salesforce has also enhanced its core products with AI innovations. Sales Cloud now features Agentforce SDR and Sales Coach and capabilities like account planning, forecasting, and compensation management. Similarly, Service Cloud’s new features provide service agents with step-by-step resolution plans, sentiment tracking, and AI-based recommendations to improve the customer experience. Agentforce’s Service Agent can autonomously handle customer cases 24/7, seamlessly escalating problematic cases to human representatives when needed. These innovations and the introduction of Agentforce agents tailored for commerce, field service, and marketing demonstrate Salesforce’s commitment to transforming every role and workflow across industries with AI.

Slack Innovations

Salesforce announced a new series of Slack innovations, transforming the platform into an agent-powered work operating system that unifies company knowledge, data, agents, apps, and automation in one seamless interface. Denise Dresser, CEO of Slack, mentioned, “We’ve moved beyond collaboration; every day, millions of teams are leveraging purpose-built AI, with customer data, automation, and now agents seamlessly integrated into the flow of work. This isn’t just about getting work done. It’s about unlocking new productivity levels to drive results and move business forward for every team and department.”

With an Agentforce integration, teams can now collaborate with AI-powered agents directly in Slack to surface insights, automate tasks, and access customer data from Salesforce. Additionally, third-party AI agents from partners like Adobe and Anthropic can be deployed securely within Slack, allowing users to work smarter and faster. New features like Slack AI huddle notes, automated workflows, and enhanced search capabilities further streamline productivity, while Salesforce channels bridge CRM data and Slack conversations to keep teams aligned. These innovations position Slack as a central hub for boosting department efficiency and collaboration.

Free AI-Training

Salesforce has announced a major initiative to offer free hands-on AI courses and certifications through 2025, investing over $50 million to help bridge the growing AI skills gap. Salesforce will provide premium AI training through Trailhead, making AI education accessible to everyone. Additionally, Salesforce plans to open AI centers at its San Francisco headquarters and global offices, providing community and employee training spaces. This initiative reflects Salesforce’s commitment to preparing the workforce for the future of AI, equipping individuals with the tools and skills needed to succeed in an AI-driven world.

Dreamforce 2024 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. The energy around San Francisco was electric as attendees gathered to witness and learn what new features Salesforce would release next. We are already getting excited for Dreamforce 2025!

If you would like to learn more about any of the new features from Dreamforce 2024 and how it can relate to your business, please contact us.

About Corrao Group

Corrao Group is a top Salesforce consulting partner in the retail, consumer goods, and professional service industries. Since 2002, we have helped organizations of all sizes and industries optimize and streamline their business processes with Salesforce. Our mission is to flawlessly translate your business processes into Salesforce, promoting successful integration and widespread user adoption.

Top Salesforce Retail & Consumer Goods Dreamforce 2024 Sessions Not to Miss

Dreamforce 2024 is just around the corner, and it’s shaping up to be an incredible event for anyone in the retail and consumer goods sectors. As Salesforce continues to push the boundaries of innovation with AI, data, and cloud technologies, this year’s sessions promise to deliver insights and strategies that will empower businesses to thrive in an ever-evolving marketplace. From enhancing trade promotion management and retail execution to driving growth through AI-powered customer experiences, these top sessions will provide the tools and knowledge to stay ahead of the curve and ensure your business is ready for the future.


Consumer Goods Cloud Roadmap

  • Hear the latest innovations for Consumer Goods Cloud across data, AI, and planning and execution.
    • Objective 1: Learn about the latest innovations from Consumer Goods Cloud.
    • Objective 2: Understand the focused investments driving Consumer Goods Cloud vision and preview the next three releases in our roadmap.
    • Objective 3: Discover how Data Cloud and generative AI create a seamless planning and execution solution for consumer goods companies.
  • When: Tuesday, September 17
  • Time: 3:45 PM – 4:05 PM PDT
  • Where: Intercontinental, L5, Intercontinental Ballroom A

And

  • When: Thursday, September 17
  • Time: 12:45 PM – 1:055 PM PDT
  • Where: Intercontinental, L5, Intercontinental Ballroom A


Consumer Goods: Improve Planning and Execution with Data

  • Intelligent, integrated planning and execution are critical to success. Hear about innovations improving the route to market and how incorporating new data sources makes this even more powerful.
    • Objective 1: Understand how Data Cloud brings B2B and B2C data together in one platform.
    • Objective 2: Hear how RNDC is using data to improve the route-to-market with integrated planning and execution.
    • Objective 3: See how Salesforce’s new innovation makes planning more intelligent and profitable than ever.
  • When: Wednesday, September 18
  • Time: 2:00 PM – 2:45 PM PDT
  • Where: Moscone South, LL, Content Pavilion, Stage 6

And

  • When: Thursday, September 19
  • Time: 9:00 AM – 9:45 AM PDT
  • Where: Intercontinental, L5, Intercontinental Ballroom C


Consumer Goods Keynote: Profitable Growth with #1 AI CRM

  • AI + Data are changing consumer goods (CG) faster than ever. See how leading CG companies partner with Salesforce to deliver profitable growth through integrated, intelligent planning and execution.
    • Objective 1: Understand how consumer goods companies are uniting and activating data as a foundation for AI.
    • Objective 2: Learn how to improve your route-to-market with integrated planning and execution and new innovations.
    • Objective 3: See how embedded AI comes to life in the flow of work across integrated planning and execution.
  • When: Tuesday, September 17
  • Time: 1:45 PM – 2:35 PM PDT
  • Where: Intercontinental, L3, Grand Ballroom ABC


Deliver Perfect Retail Execution

  • Hear how Consumer Goods Cloud Retail Execution is improving productivity and efficiency for field reps, merchandisers, and now direct store delivery and van sales drivers.
    • Objective 1: Hear how the route-to-market is evolving in consumer goods, creating new challenges to perfect retail execution.
    • Objective 2: Hear how Pepsico’s uses Consumer Goods Cloud Retail Execution to deliver the perfect store.
  • When: Wednesday, September 18
  • Time: 12:15 PM – 12:35 PM PDT
  • Where: InterContinental, L5, InterContinental Ballroom A


Future of Data, AI, and Service for Apparel and Beauty

  • See how apparel, footwear, accessories, and beauty companies are using data, AI, and service to create new experiences and increase brand relevance.
    • When: Tuesday, September 17
    • Time: 4:00 PM – 5 PM PDT
    • Where: Intercontinental, L5, Stockton


Empowering the Retail Store of the Future with Salesforce

  • The retail store is not dead and is actually more important than ever. Learn how to harness the full power of Salesforce within the physical store to deliver next-generation omni-channel experiences.
    • Objective 1: Learn how to build long-lasting relationships with your customers and how to boost customer loyalty.
    • Objective 2: Learn how to modernize your loyalty program, optimize member engagement, and transform your program into a value advantage.
    • Objective 3: Learn how to effectively use technology to help modernize your loyalty programs.
  • When: Thursday, September 19
  • Time: 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM PDT
  • Where: Intercontinental, L4, Cathedral Hill


Get Started with AI for Consumer Goods

  • See how you can get started with AI for Consumer Goods to grow customer satisfaction and revenue. Learn how to utilize predictive and generative AI to deliver service excellence to customers at scale.
    • Objective 1: Discover Large Action Models and how LLMs are evolving to take action, driving the future of AI agents and multi-agent systems.
    • Objective 2: Get acquainted with our industry-leading xLAM family, including the acclaimed “Tiny Giant,” as featured in VentureBeat.
    • Objective 3: Watch a demo of multiple xLAM-powered agents working autonomously to solve real customer challenges.
  • When: Wednesday, September 18
  • Time: 3:30 PM – 4:30 PM PDT
  • Where: Intercontinental, L3, Marina


Improve Trade Promotion Effectiveness

  • Trade spend remains one of the largest categories for consumer packaged goods. Hear how you can manage, optimize, and win in trade promotion planning with Consumer Goods Cloud.
    • Objective 1: Understand the main challenges to trade promotion in the consumer goods industry.
    • Objective 2: Hear how McKee Foods is using Consumer Goods Cloud Trade Promotion Management to improve the bottom line of their programs.
  • When: Wednesday, September 18
  • Time: 12:15 PM – 12:35 PM PDT
  • Where: InterContinental, L5, InterContinental Ballroom A


Modernize Productivity for Retail Front-Line Workers

  • Join retail peers for a discussion about the challenges facing retail store managers and associates. Hear how Slack is innovating to keep work flowing from headquarters to the point of sale.
    • Objective 1: How H-E-B uses Slack across hundreds of storefronts.
    • Objective 2: Why Slack is an ideal solution for retail frontline productivity.
    • Objective 3: How we’re innovating to solve unique frontline challenges.
  • When: Wednesday, September 18
  • Time: 3:00 PM – 3:45 PM PDT
  • Where: Intercontinental, L5, Stockton


Plan and Forecast More Effectively with Consumer Goods Cloud

  • Strong relationships with retailers start with strong forecasts and plans. Hear how a leading Trailblazer is leaning into customer planning to improve revenue.
    • When: Thursday, September 19
    • Time: 1:45 PM – 2:05 PM PDT
    • Where: Moscone South, ILL, Content Pavilion, Stage 8


Retail and Service: Preparing for the Future of AI

  • Join us for a discussion on the emerging AI technologies and future trends that will have the biggest impact on customer service in the retail industry.
    • When: Wednesday, September 18
    • Time: 8:30 AM – 9:30 AM PDT
    • Where: Moscone West, L2, Service Lodge Roundtable 3


Retail: Finding Retail Holiday Success in 2024 and Beyond

  • With growing complexities, costs, and evolving expectations, retailing is not easy. Come learn about the top challenges and priorities in modern retailing, and how Salesforce can help.
    • Objective 1: Learn about the top challenges and priorities in modern retailing.
    • Objective 2: Learn how Salesforce can help you succeed during the holiday shopping season.
  • When: Wednesday, September 18
  • Time: 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM PDT
  • Where: Intercontinental, L3, Marina


Retail: Drive Faster Retail Media Revenue Growth

  • Learn how one Trailblazer grew revenue by launching and monetizing retail media experiences.
    • Objective 1: Learn how one Trailblazer grew revenue by launching and monetizing retail media experiences.
    • Objective 2: Learn how to run your retail media network from one connected platform.
  • When: Tuesday, September 17
  • Time: 12:30 PM – 1:15 PM PDT
  • Where: Metreon AMC, L2, Theater 11


Secrets to Digital Customer Service Success in Retail

  • Say goodbye to abandoned carts and hello to growth. Learn how to create personalized end-to-end shopper experiences from discovery to post-purchase with an effective digital channel and AI strategy.
    • When: Wednesday, September 18
    • Time: 12:30 PM – 12:50 PM PDT
    • Where: Moscone West, L3, Cloudy Theater


Slack: Where Work Happens for Retail and Consumer Goods

  • Through industry use cases and customer stories, learn how Slack is helping the world’s top brands and retailers improve customer experiences and deliver new products to market faster than before.
    • Objective 1: Learn what Slack is and why it’s the ideal work operating system.
    • Objective 2: Learn why Slack is a powerful tool for brands and retailers.
    • Objective 3: Discover real-world demos and customer use cases.
  • When: Thursday, September 19
  • Time: 1:30 PM – 1:50 PM PDT
  • Where: Moscone West, L3, Slack Theater


Unlock Efficiencies and New Shopper Experiences with AI

  • The possibilities of generative AI in omni-channel retailing are endless. Join us as we unpack the best practices and use cases of where to start and how Salesforce helps retailers get there faster.
    • When: Thursday, September 19
    • Time: 8:30 AM – 9:30 AM PDT
    • Where: Intercontinental, L4, Twin Peaks

If you would like to learn more about the Dreamforce 2024 Sessions, please contact us.

About Corrao Group

Corrao Group is a top Salesforce consulting partner in the retail, consumer goods, and professional service industries. Since 2002, we have helped organizations of all sizes and industries optimize and streamline their business processes with Salesforce. Our mission is to flawlessly translate your business processes into Salesforce, promoting successful integration and widespread user adoption.

Streamlining Planning & Forecasting with Salesforce CPF

Sales planning and forecasting is a crucial aspect of any business, as it helps organizations anticipate their future sales and align their resources accordingly. However, the traditional approach to this process can be tedious, time-consuming, and error-prone, leading to frustration for CEOs, marketing teams, sales managers, product managers, and financial teams. Fortunately, with advancements in technology, there is a more efficient and accurate solution. In this blog, we will explore the pain points of the sales planning and forecasting process and how Salesforce customer planning and forecasting (CPF) can streamline the entire process, saving time and providing more accurate predictions for all involved parties.

CEO
The CEO is typically responsible for setting the overall strategy of the company, including sales and marketing goals. They may have final approval on all major decisions related to customer planning and forecasting. Even though they’re not as hands-on in the planning and forecasting process as Sales Managers and Product Managers are, they still have issues that can be solved with an enhanced customer planning and forecasting tool.

    • Lack of visibility into departmental progress: Since they’re not as involved in the process, CEOs need to be able to review the progress of each department when it’s convenient for them. Due to running the company, sometimes that review time comes at 8 pm or other times when their employees aren’t working. They can’t afford to wait for department heads to both collect and then send the necessary information. At that point, the data is already outdated and could be filled with manual errors.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Salesforce CPF provides a platform where CEOs can check in on the progress of each department at any time of the day with confidence that the data is in real-time. This helps them know which delegation activities work best for certain department heads, and reveal those that need improvement.
    • Outdated Technology: Unbeknownst to most CEOs, the planning and forecasting technology their company uses is hindering their team’s performance and costing them revenue. Spreadsheets continue to become outdated as consumer behavior has drastically changed since 2019. This technology can’t support the thousands of equations required within the forecasting process. And using multiple, disconnected systems to accomplish this entire process is too time-consuming and error-prone.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Salesforce CPF is the ultimate tool to run every step of the sales planning and forecasting process in today’s world. With three major updates per year, CEOs can be confident that the tool is always staying up to date with the consumers constantly changing behavior. Salesforce also does a great job of listening to their customer’s requests so these system updates contain requests from people actually using the tool. Salesforce CPF provides companies with one centralized area for both internal and external teams to collaborate on and view their KPIs in real time. CEOs can jump in at any time to see the ongoing process and comment if they need to. The advanced tool can also support custom equations required in the planning and forecasting process. This information can automatically be analyzed and displayed in reports & dashboards so CEOs can review them at any time of the day without needing to wait.
    • KPI Reports and Dashboards: Typically, CEOs need to wait for meetings with department heads to view sales planning and forecasting KPIs. It takes time to gather this information, and then even more time to prepare it for a presentation.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Salesforce CPF provides one dashboard for CEOs to view all KPIs in real time. Comprised of multiple reports, this dashboard can be modified exactly how the viewer would like. It can contain out-of-the-box reports as well as the company’s custom KPIs.

Sales Manager
Sales managers are responsible for managing the sales team and ensuring that sales goals are met. They are heavily involved in creating and reviewing sales forecasts. The CSO oversees the sales team and is responsible for meeting revenue targets.

    • Inaccurate Data: Accurate data is always required to forecast sales but too often Sales Managers face challenges in obtaining access to this. Data is either already outdated by the time it reaches the Sales Manager, or there is simply not enough. Inaccurate or incomplete data leads to inaccurate sales forecasts, severely impacting the overall sales strategy.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Salesforce CPF provides a centralized platform for all customer data: purchase history, preferences, demographics, and much more. This reduces the likelihood of data errors caused by hosting this info across siloed systems. CPF provides real-time reports and dashboards to track the progress of each department and make data-driven decisions based on accurate data.
    • Inefficient & Manual Processes: The sales planning and forecasting process is extremely time-consuming and complex, which tends to lead to inefficiencies across the board. There are many players involved in the process, leading to additional errors. Sales managers often have to manually gather and consolidate data from multiple sources, a tedious and error-prone process.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Salesforce CPF speeds up manual tasks via automated data collection and analysis, real-time updates and alerts, forecasting accuracy, and enhanced collaboration and communication. It also gives clients AI-powered forecasting capabilities that use algorithms to analyze historical data, current trends, and additional critical info. This eliminates the need for error-prone manual data entry and saves Sales managers tons of time.
    • Poor Team Collaboration: Sales forecasts constantly need to be communicated to stakeholders but poor communication can lead to misunderstandings and misalignments. Departments need to be completely transparent as certain processes can’t be started until others are completed correctly. Constant communication helps fellow department heads with expectations so that they can hit the ground running when they need to contribute. Sales Managers need to ensure that all stakeholders are on the same page to execute sales forecasting quickly and accurately.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Email notifications containing the latest sales forecasting updates can automatically be scheduled to send to key members. These notifications can be customized to show the details each client prefers. The data is in real-time so that reports aren’t already outdated as they are with archaic systems such as Excel and others.
    • Limited Visibility: Sales Managers require visibility into the sales pipeline to accurately forecast future sales, but often, they may not have complete visibility. Some parts may require information to be sent from colleagues, slowing the process down. Not having access to all of the data makes it difficult to identify potential roadblocks and opportunities for improvement.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Salesforce CPF gives Sales Managers a comprehensive view of every detail across each department that is related to the planning and forecasting process and sales pipeline. Without the need to access different systems to view key data, this rapidly accelerates the planning process and reduces the manual time spent consolidating the data into one view.
    • Unforeseen Market Changes: Unforeseen market changes can drastically impact sales forecasts and catch everyone off guard. These changes include economic factors, changes in consumer behavior, and shifts in the competitive landscape. Sales Managers need to adapt quickly to these changes and adjust their forecasts accordingly. The problem is, no human can accurately predict what’s going to happen in the future.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Scenario Planning within CPF helps create different scenarios and models to simulate the impact of possible market changes on one’s sales performance. This helps Sales Managers understand the potential risks and opportunities associated with different market scenarios. If these market changes happen, Sales Managers are well prepared to adjust to “plan B” without major profit loss.

Financial Teams
Financial analysts may be involved in creating financial models and analyzing data to help inform sales forecasts.

    • Disconnected Systems and Processes: 77% of planning processes depend on having access to accurate data. As Excel spreadsheets quickly become outdated daily, finance teams need to ensure their data is always updated. Consolidating data from multiple sources is time-consuming and extremely error-prone. By the time the data is collected and consolidated, it can already be outdated upon sharing it with other teams. Forwarding inaccurate data to other departments only continues to decrease the accuracy of the overall sales forecast. Excel spreadsheets also can’t support the infinite number of calculations and macros that a professional planning and forecasting tool can.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Salesforce CPF gives companies one platform for all internal and external departments to run every step of the planning and forecasting process within. All data within the tool is up to date and accessible at any time of the day. So financial teams can access data after hours without needing to wait for other team members to provide them with the necessary info.
    • Time-Consuming Manual Tasks: Finance teams can’t afford any slow-downs within their processes. They need to generate timely insights, but many teams spend too much time sorting and organizing data instead of actually analyzing it.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: CPF provides financial teams with the power of bringing their own custom processes onto the Salesforce platform, streamlining it for maximum efficiency. This also keeps all members of the finance team on the same page, where other departments (heads) can also see how things are progressing in real-time. This allows them to get prepared to either act on the incoming data or provide whatever is needed to the finance team.
    • Lack of Team/Departmental Collaboration: Finance teams rely on information provided by other departments to do their job, and vice versa. When companies use multiple systems for planning and forecasting, info-sharing is slowed down tremendously.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Real-time data gives all departments insight into the information provided by their peers in separate departments. Finance doesn’t need to wait “X” days for a sales report to come in; they can simply grab this info within Salesforce at any time of the day. Collaborative forecasting enables companies to move away from disparate and isolated forecasting activities to a unified, real-time enterprise forecasting process.
    • Outdated Information: Finance needs up-to-the-minute information and they are under constant pressure to deliver these actionable insights to assist in decision-making. The lack of accurate, real-time data limits the level of detail that financial planning systems can provide.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Salesforce CPF helps with self-service analytics to enable real-time reporting, assisting finance teams in understanding which revenue sources are underperforming, how to improve operational efficiencies, analyze the company’s performance, and develop an achievable plan for driving growth.

Product Managers
Product managers may be involved in forecasting demand for products or services to ensure that production and delivery processes run smoothly. Operations managers may be involved in forecasting demand for products or services to ensure that production and delivery processes run smoothly.

    • Inaccurate Data: Without accurate data, PMs are essentially working in the dark to develop and ship successful products. Bad data makes it difficult to make informed decisions, making it harder to move forward strategically and accurately. These manual efforts are typically error-prone.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Salesforce CPF provides one system to hold all key data: customer info, market research, user info, and product info. This ensures data is accurate and up to date. The tool also eliminates the constant human-caused errors and gives PMs extra time to focus on major tasks while Salesforce CPF takes care of the tedious, repetitive ones.
    • Forecasting Delivery & Timelines: There are too many variables that it’s nearly impossible to manually predict an accurate delivery timeline. Humans also tend to underestimate the time it takes to accomplish a task. This risks overpromising and under-delivering.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: CPF helps accurately build timelines based on historical data, and future predictions. These have already been shown to be more accurate than predictions made by humans. Timelines are shared in the system for quick adjustments that can be viewed and sent out immediately.
    • Aligning Teams and Getting Buy-In: All department leaders have different objectives and priorities, leading to competing visions for the product’s direction. PMs need to navigate these priorities and bridge the gap between teams, stakeholders, and leaders. Without a centralized hub, PMs and department leaders are disconnected and can’t execute what needs to be done through emails and spreadsheets.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Salesforce CPF provides a centralized platform for all key leaders and stakeholders to view both company-wide and departmental KPIs in real-time. No more waiting for spreadsheets to be built, cleaned up, and shared by each department, containing outdated info by the time it reaches the recipient.
    • Overwhelming Product Backlog: PMs need the entire product backlog to be visible, transparent, and clear to all stakeholders and developers. Without this, they risk misalignment of the entire team’s goals, accountabilities, and deadlines.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: The Product Roadmap provides companies with complete, real-time transparency throughout the entire process. This keeps everyone in the know, 24/7. Real-time updates can be scheduled to send automatically, or at the click of a button, alerting all appropriate teams of key updates.

CMO
The CMO is responsible for developing and implementing the company’s marketing strategy. They may be involved in market research and analysis to inform the customer planning and forecasting process. Marketing managers may be responsible for conducting market research and analyzing customer data to inform the customer planning and forecasting process.

    • Review Sales History and Make Predictions: Marketers need to utilize past sales data to help provide predictions to sales teams for the upcoming period. Having to wait for, and comb through multiple spreadsheets is too time-consuming and error-prone. Today’s marketers need a system that can streamline this process.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Salesforce CPF holds all historical sales data across different departments of the company that is available 24/7. Marketers no longer have to wait for sales teams to find and clean up their spreadsheets before sharing them. CPF’s platform provides a collaborative area where marketers can ask questions, and see other questions from all departments that may help them accomplish their goals.
    • Provide Historical Campaign Data: Which marketing campaigns had the highest ROI? Which ones underperformed? Marketers need to gather this data, run an analysis, and debrief sales on the findings. Without a centralized platform to hold these details, marketers are using outdated information in their process. This information is key in letting sales teams know which content pieces and marketing campaigns resonate best with customers.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: The Salesforce CPF platform provides one place to hold all key campaign data: internal/external costs, revenue, and any custom information. Advanced analytics can accomplish in just minutes what takes human marketers days, sometimes weeks to complete in regards to campaign analysis. Prediction models can provide accurate predictions on how proposed marketing campaigns will perform in the upcoming period(s).
    • Tracking Always-Changing Customer Data: Marketers are responsible for collecting historical customer behavior, analyzing it, and providing predictions for the upcoming period. They need to provide the optimal price for a product based on this market research combined with their competitive landscape. With customer behavior constantly changing, this is an extremely time-consuming effort.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: With CPF, marketers have all the historical customer data in one place. The tool can analyze the data, revealing certain trends and insights that the human eye may not catch. This is all done quicker and more accurately than any human can do. Salesforce CPF can take the analysis and provide marketers with predictions for the year which can then be shared with sales teams. This action saves days’ worth of time.

In conclusion, the sales planning and forecasting process can be a daunting task for businesses, but it is a necessary one to ensure success. The traditional approach can be archaic, time-consuming, and error-prone, leading to frustration and inefficiencies. By adopting Salesforce customer planning and forecasting, businesses can streamline the entire process, freeing up time for all department heads and providing more accurate predictions. With its advanced capabilities, businesses can make informed decisions, meet sales targets, and stay ahead of the competition. By embracing technology and innovation, businesses can take control of their sales planning and forecasting process and position themselves for growth and success.

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!