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The Salesforce Winter ’23 Release Notes are here! We’ve gone through every page and highlighted new features and enhancements from Account Engagement (Previously Pardot).
As part of extensibility enhancements, you can now take actions on prospects outside of Account Engagement. Supercharge Engagement Studio programs by automatically registering prospects for a webinar, sending them an SMS text, creating a new lead Salesforce, and more. External actions are built on invocable actions, so you can customize them to fit your business needs. Use external actions independently or in combination with external activities to close automation gaps across platforms.
The prospect Opted Out field now requires a designated system of record, giving you one place to check for a record’s opt-out status. Choose between Account Engagement or Salesforce as the primary value for the prospect Opted Out field. Previously, the Opted Out field inherited the value from the most recently updated record.
To protect the health of your business unit, Account Engagement can pause activity tracking for prospects with an excessive amount of activity. When a prospect’s activity tracking is paused, an icon appears on the prospect list view and an error appears on the prospect record. A prospect’s activity tracking is paused only if it impacts Account Engagement’s performance. Paused prospects who are opted in can still receive marketing emails.
A security update that better protects your forms and marketing content can affect forms served over the default go.pardot.com domain. For continuous form support, we recommend that you use a custom domain with forms or use them with Pardot landing pages. To find out where affected forms are being used, refer to the Content Served Using the Default Domain report in Pardot Settings.
To accommodate Account Engagement users who don’t require full access to Salesforce, you can now assign them the Account Engagement permission set license and Account Engagement User permission set. This permission set grants users access to most of the marketing tools available in the Account Engagement Lightning app. It doesn’t include full access to campaigns in Salesforce.
Use the Sync All Prospects option to sync prospect records with Salesforce. Previously, you needed to update a prospect field to trigger a full sync. Business units with fewer than 500,000 prospects can trigger a full sync every 7 days.
The Pardot Classic App is scheduled for retirement in all Salesforce orgs by October 17, 2022. To access Account Engagement in Salesforce and get access to the latest features, use the Account Engagement Lightning app (formerly the Pardot Lightning app). You can also continue to access the standalone legacy application at pi.pardot.com.
If you would like to learn more about the Salesforce Winter ’23 Release and Account Engagement, please contact us.
Successfully running a company from home requires the right culture, employees, procedures, and maybe most importantly, technology. Some businesses who haven’t invested in a cloud-computing software such as Salesforce have been having a hard time adjusting to working from home. Salesforce is a cloud-based software that provides customer relationship management (CRM) and a suite of apps that go along with sales, service, marketing automation, and more. Salesforce becomes your central location to store all your important data, accounts, and deals. With a newly designed mobile app, take work on the go and be just as productive as you were on your computer. This allows businesses to run their entire company within Salesforce, supporting all departments with real-time data.
Managing Your Sales Pipeline with Sales Cloud
Sales Cloud is a customer relationship platform (CRM) designed to support sales and marketing by bringing all your customer data into one central location. Leverage Sales Cloud to manage and automate day-to-day sales activities including lead assignments, quote generation, forecasting, Einstein Analytics, and more. Additionally, your sales staff will have full visibility into every deal, account, opportunity, customer, and lost deals. Sales Cloud workflows and task automation help you create tasks and a process to help speed up your sales cycle. When implemented correctly, Sales Cloud helps save you time and builds long-lasting customers.
Servicing Your Customers with Service Cloud
Service Cloud is a customer relationship service platform designed to help you manage customer support issues quicker and increase first-visit resolution. With historical data on every customer interaction, your team can personalize your service based on their problems and history. Additionally, Service Cloud offers a multitude of tools to help you meet the needs of your customers. Some extensions for Service Cloud include: Field Service Lightning (FSL), Knowledge Base, Web2Case, Email2Case, and Customer Analytics. When implemented correctly, Service Cloud can improve customer communication, enable team collaboration, and give you full visibility into the health of your customer base.
Automated Lead Nurturing with Pardot
Pardot is a marketing automation platform designed to help companies engage leads and customers, support sales with qualified leads, and grow relationships. According to Salesforce, “Customers have seen sales revenue increase by 34% and marketing effectiveness increase by 37%” with Pardot (Pardot.com). Pardot gives you the ability to personalize your customer’s journey wit automated campaigns, targeted messaging, and predictive intelligence. Additionally, design and create email templates, content, landing pages, and more inside of Pardot. If you would like to learn more about Pardot, please visit our blog.
A Complete 360-View for Manufacturers with Manufacturing Cloud
Manufacturing Cloud gives manufacturers full visibility into their entire business operations. Manufacturing Cloud extends benefits to all your partners to collaborate across the same forecast order and demand data in one single source of truth. New features such as sales agreements gives manufacturers insights into committed and actual order volumes, performance against the forecast, and other time-phased metrics. Forecasting gives manufactures the ability to take control of their business with smarter business decisions based on analytics. If you would like to learn more about Manufacturing Cloud, please read the blogs below:
Quip provides your team with a messaging collaboration platform that helps transform productivity and resolves issues faster. Provide your team with the ability to create, discuss, and work faster with real-time documents, spreadsheets, and data that connects inside of Salesforce. With full integration, your employees will no longer have to work together in multiple systems. Quip becomes your central location to collaborate with other employees on deals, documents, and more. Furthermore, Quip has a mobile app to view, update, and work on the road.
Maximize your Salesforce Investment
Since 2002, our Salesforce experience has benefited thousands of clients and projects. We understand how flexible the Salesforce platform is and how it supports every department in your business. The key to maximizing your Salesforce investment is to implementing the platform company-wide. If your business is struggling to work from home without a cloud-based technology, it’s time to invest in a technology like Salesforce.
Is your company struggling to find the benefits of a good manufacturing sampling or seeding program? Sampling programs allow your company to catch any discrepancies or feedback before your production is in full swing. Without a closed-loop strategy, your company might not be seeing the results you want or expected. Our sampling program helped Kensington™, a leader of desktop and mobile accessories, see a7,000% increase in ROI.
Program Pain Points
Sampling programs can make or breakyour product’s success. Companies tend to write off sampling programs without realizing the benefits a good program can bring in terms of end-user sales and customer feedback. Here are some pain points Corrao Group has found for manufacturing companies managing their sampling programs:
Trouble communicating the value of the samples
Missed feedback opportunities from potential customers about your product
No ability to track distributed samples
Samples are not personalized to the end-user
Difficulty collecting customer feedback during their unboxing to usage phases
Lack of auto-escalation to resolution as issues arise
Corrao Group’s Solution
Kensington™ partnered with the Corrao Group to develop an automated way of managing sample units. After optimizing their Salesforce instance, Corrao Group helped develop and implement a closed-loop strategy that involved sampling out new products to new or existing customers. The sampling program would require a streamlined distribution strategy, tracking capabilities, hands-off reporting, and clear ROI. The white-glove experience would become known as “ProConcierge” and would involve Corrao Group creating and assisting in:
Creating buyer personas to identify and prioritize qualified candidates
Building a content map for supporting marketing collateral
Creating weekly survey emails for the sampling program
Packages carrying docking stations were tracked through Salesforce, and Pardot was connected to ensure that the appropriate feedback requests were automatically delivered weekly
Customizing Salesforce reports to provide visibility into the leads generated weekly
Standardizing Kensington™’s Salesforce process and implementing data requirements throughout their sales process
Salesforce Products Used
Sales Cloud
Pardot
Einstein Analytics
Other Products Used
Form Assembly
The hand-off process included the creation of step-by-step demonstration videos by the team at Corrao Group to assist with training as new users joined the ProConceirge team at Kensington™. In total, Kensington™ saw a 7,000% increase in ROI, $3M in influenced sales, and over 1,000 units shipped. To learn more about our assistance in ProConceirge, download our white paper.
Salesforce’s Manufacturing Cloud
Our Sampling/Seeding program is exclusively built, configured, and optimized for Salesforce’s Manufacturing Cloud Platform. Manufacturing Cloud extends benefits to all your partners to collaborate across the same forecast order and demand data in one single source of truth. A new era is emerging for manufacturing, and it allows manufacturers to have complete control over the ability to operate their business in a much more profitable point of view.
Salesforce’s new Manufacturing Cloud will allow customers and their partners to have company-wide visibility into all their business processes. We understand that optimizing your Salesforce starts with optimizing your business processes. We’ve worked with nearly 1,000 customers; implementing, customizing, and optimizing Salesforce and have been everyday power users ourselves since 2008. Corrao Group can help you maximize your investments in Salesforce and Manufacturing Cloud. For more information, please visit our Salesforce page.
When it comes to working, there’s nothing more relaxing than responding to emails, making phone calls, and reviewing reports all from the comfort of your home. Being a stay-at-home employee has its benefits, such as having more control over your schedule, fewer distractions and more productivity, and everyone’s favorite reason, no time spent in traffic! Working on the Salesforce platform since 2008 ourselves, we know how relaxing it is to work from home. There’s almost nothing you can’t do from home while working on Salesforce. You’re still working, but it’s tasks from the comfort of your own home without any office distractions. Here are a few benefits from working from home across Management, Marketing, Development, and Sales.
Management
Our Managing Partner, Jack Corrao, started by saying, “People working in the office is nice, but it’s not necessary in a lot of businesses. Many of my employees could work from home because Salesforce is a cloud-based system. No servers required, which means if something happens in the office, like the internet goes down, you can just head home and work. We think soon all businesses will have to evolve with the coming times, that means moving away from their multiple systems for each department and onto a software like Salesforce, which supports: Human Resources, Marketing, Sales, Support, Operational Linguistics with each having a customizable cloud.“ He finished off by saying this, “You shouldn’t be handcuffed to your building, having freedom will make you a better and harder worker.“
Salesforce allows managers to track and display all their KPIs within Dashboards. With the company updating Salesforce in real-time, reports aren’t only ready at the end of the day, or week – they’re available 24/7 with live stats. All the information and conversations regarding projects are tracked and recorded within Salesforce.
Marketing
Our Marketing Specialist and Social Media Manager John Carroll said, “If everyone had to work from home tomorrow, we would still be a functional and successful company. We all have access to the same data in real-time, so we don’t have to wait for reports, documents, or files from co-workers.” He also brought up this tweet from Salesforce CEO, Marc Benioff, who said, “While we are all working from home during this time, we are using quip to help other remote teams across the globe collaborate.” He is talking about the documentation software, Quip, where documents, spreadsheets, slides, and chat are all combined and connected to Salesforce records. At Corrao Group, we use Quip to communicate with each other, even if it’s a few desks away or from one of our remote offices such as Seattle or Canada.
We can create a campaign asset inventory for emails, landing pages, and more within Quip, where our entire team can collaborate in real-time, anytime. Quip should be in the everyday marketer’s toolbox, especially those already on the Salesforce platform. Fields in Salesforce can map to information in Quip, so when users update one piece of info, the other connected piece is automatically updated so there’s no discrepancy. It’s perfect for working from home because all the content is live, and team members can get notified when updates or tasks are assigned.
Sales
“With Salesforce, working from home is as easy as it gets”, Ellis Davis, Sales Operations at Corrao Group. All the information and tasks are inside Salesforce so forgetting any notes at the office are a thing of the past. It’s all inside of Salesforce and easy for the whole company to access in real-time. With Chatter being the main communication on projects, she and everyone else can jump into the conversation and catch up or give updates with everything being in one place. “We’ve always known how to work from home because we’ve always had Salesforce, so it’s easy to hop on during a weekend and home and work like you were in the office”, she ended with. Tyler Keil, Sales Operations, has always lived by the phrase, “If it’s not in Salesforce, it doesn’t exist.” All notes are put into Salesforce and associated with the appropriate location, whether that’s a Lead, Contact, Account, Opportunity record, or something else. Having instant alerts when someone updates one of your records or tasks that you’re working on helps speed up everyday processes while working from home. “Salesforce is much more than a virtual Rolodex, it tracks conversations, the entire pipeline, historic deals and much, much more.”
When working from home, sales reps can’t quickly ask if a co-worker spoke with, or emailed a new lead. With Salesforce, all calls and emails are logged right on the contact record as they happen, so there’s no confusion. This way, reps can catch up if they need to without having to wait for someone to explain the updates themselves. Salesforce eliminates the need for unnecessary meetings and allows users to continue being productive at home.
Salesforce: The Ultimate Work From Home Platform
We’ve had the ability to offer the option for our employees to work from home since we started using cloud-based solutions in 2002. Since then, we’ve adjusted and created an infrastructure within Salesforce so our team can work from home and not skip a beat. While Salesforce isn’t required in order to run a business from home, it can incredibly boost the progress and success of each department, all while making your employees’ jobs easier. We understand how flexible the Salesforce platform is and how it supports every department in your business. If you’re struggling to run your company from home, please email us at wfh@corraogroup.com. We can jump on a call to discuss your current and projected business situations and suggest assistance.
Tracking the overall performance of your company is an essential component for a successful business. Full visibility into your reports can become arduous if your data is siloed across multiple spreadsheets or systems. Manufacturers should move to Salesforce’s Manufacturing Cloud for a “More predictive and transparent business” (Salesforce). Manufacturing Cloud becomes your central location to house all your data, KPIs, metrics, reports, and more.
Reports are Difficult to Create
It’s important to have a dashboard of reports that identify the business’s health, performance, and areas for improvement. Reports such as KPIs, run-rate, financial reports, forecasting, and sales pipeline are all critical to track in real-time. Reporting may seem impossible if you don’t have full visibility into your business’s data or metrics. Additionally, it can be frustrating for manufacturers if creating reports is difficult or demanding. Both pain points can lead to performance reports being indistinguishable from each other. For example, your run-rate reports may be mixed with your new logo reports, which results in you not being able to understand your actual business performance or sales costs. Manufacturing Cloud gives all your users a reporting vehicle that captures your entire business ecosystem.
A Solution Built for Manufacturers
Manufacturers now have the ability to operate in a much more profitable point of view as Manufacturing Cloud delivers efficiency, speed, accuracy, and consistency. Additionally, it integrates with your Salesforce and other users to have everyone on the same page. Manufacturing Cloud combined with Einstein Analytics gives your users a complete 360 view of your customers, data, and reports. Utilize Einstein Analytics to gain crucial insights into your account health, demand planning, product penetration, sales agreements, and your KPIs. Salesforce’s Manufacturing Cloud provides your company with the predictability and consistency that is needed in the manufacturing industry.
Working With Manufacturers Since 2002
Working with Salesforce since 2002, we’ve seen the invaluable benefits that a CRM can have for companies, especially those in the manufacturing industry. Salesforce’s new Manufacturing Cloud will allow customers and their partners to have company-wide visibility into all their business processes. With tools such as sales agreements and forecasting, data can be analyzed faster and effortlessly. Reporting on performance becomes easier with Salesforce’s Manufacturing Cloud. Salesforce consulting services have been just as important to us as business process optimization, and we strive to help businesses maximize their investments into their CRM and Manufacturing Cloud.
Salesforce’s announcement of Manufacturing Cloud has given manufacturers the tools needed to take control of their business. Before the release, it was difficult for manufacturers to have full visibility into sales agreements. Negotiating blind occurs for companies when their sales team doesn’t have what it needs to plan, sell, or close the right deal. As a result, negotiating blind was the first significant pain point that Salesforce solved for the manufacturing industry.
Outdated ERPs and Forecasts
Ongoing changes to sales orders that are not communicated back to the original sales agreement are a major challenge for manufacturers today. The changes to sales orders are not fully visible to manufacturers because the sales agreements are managed outside of the ERP, or the deals are across multiple ERPs. In addition, inaccurate forecasting becomes an issue when updated sales orders are not synced directly to the sales agreement. Without accurate data in real-time, manufacturers tend to create forecasts based on their own best interests rather than relying on accurate data from past or present performances.
Salesforce’s Solution: Manufacturing Cloud
Manufacturing Cloud provides a central location to surface orders from multiple systems. All your employees and partners have real-time visibility into planned orders that can be compared to actual orders. All of your important data housed under one single source of truth will help Manufacturers improve their forecasting as employees cans see changes made to sale orders in real-time. With the help of Salesforce Einstein, forecasted data on the agreement can outline the internal assumptions that went into the contract so that you never forget crucial insights from your previous deals. In addition, Einstein can generate insights automatically to help you plan, sell, or close a deal when you store all your customer data into Salesforce. Manufacturers should no longer have to negotiate blind with the ability to have one single source of truth.
How Forecasts Help You
Let’s say you’re the Managing Partner of a manufacturing company that makes reading glasses. In order to make the glasses, you need to engage with a metal company for the frames and a plastic company for the lens.
After reviewing your forecasts without using the insights from Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud, you estimate you will require 10,000 eyeglass units. With the ability to forecast accurately in real-time with Manufacturing Cloud, you’re alerted you have the potential to make more than 12,000 and save in costs. Manufacturing Cloud gives manufacturers better confidence in their actual production units because of the ability to have accurate forecasting that can be broken down per month.
Now, you’re able to circle back to your vendors and negotiate a better price for your company based on the volume of material that’s coming in. Manufacturing Cloud takes the guesswork out of forecasting.
Corrao Group Can Help You
Solving the first pain point of the current Manufacturing industry is a significant accomplishment for Salesforce. With the recent release of Customer 360 Truth, Salesforce is giving its customers a single source of truth that houses all your customer’s data. Much like Customer 360 Truth, Manufacturing Cloud gives Manufacturers a more precise picture of their entire business with additional features that will help improve their company. If you would like to learn more about Manufacturing Cloud’s capabilities or features, please reach out to the Corrao Group team. The Corrao Group team is here to help you integrate and advise you on the best practices involving Manufacturing Cloud.
Dreamforce, the world’s largest software conference, had another fantastic event filled with incredible speakers, new features, and lots of customer success stories. The four-day event held the attention of the business world as Salesforce hosted more than 170,000 attendees and over 13 million online viewers. Dreamforce 2019 brought together thought leaders, industry pioneers, and Trailblazers from all over the world. With over 2,700 sessions, the Corrao Group team was active to ensure we captured the important announcements and partnerships. Here are our top 5 takeaways from Dreamforce 2019.
1. Apple Partnership
Continuing their ongoing partnership with Apple has given Salesforce an all-new mobile app that is both conversational and smart. In addition, Apple has helped Salesforce with the ability to build mobile apps tailored to address unique user needs, and the ability to learn on the go with the new app Trailhead GO. Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, joined Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, for a fireside chat where they both expressed the future of productivity is mobile. Benioff told Cook during the conversation that he runs his $143 billion company from an iPhone, “I don’t even own a computer anymore. The phone has become an extension of my office. Where ever I am, if I have a phone, I can work.”
The fireside chat involved some exciting dialogue between the two business leaders as they discussed the future of productivity on a mobile device, artificial intelligence, Steve Jobs, values, and more. Benioff asked Cook the most important value in his life, in which Cook answered, “In my upper thirties, it became clear to me that we’re almost searching your whole lifetime for your purpose. I’m sure some people in the audience have done this too… and, you are almost convinced early in life about your purpose in life is this and that… but it keeps changing as you move ahead in life. Soon you realize that the purpose of life is to help somebody else. That is the sole reason that we’re here. Life gets so much simpler once you get that in your head…That’s my North Star.”
We are excited to see the partnership that will unfold over the next couple of years between Apple and Salesforce. Cook believes there is a tremendous growth trajectory for enterprise apps specifically built for the Apple and Salesforce partnership to help users improve productivity. We will have to wait and see what Salesforce and Apple do next; for now, we have a new Salesforce Mobile App that can host your entire business on a mobile device that is conversational, and smart.
Tim Cook with Marc Benioff at Dreamforce 2019
2. AWS Partnership
Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company, announced an expansion of their global strategic partnership with Salesforce, the global leader in Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Salesforce introduced their new Einstein Voice, which seamlessly integrates with Amazon Connect to provide service agents with a complete set of tools to deliver the best quality service to their customers. Salesforce is offering AWS content available on Trailhead to train anyone who wants to become proficient in the cloud.
The biggest headline from all of Dreamforce 2019 was Salesforce releasing its new Einstein Voice. Delivering excellent customer service over the phone is still a challenge for many companies, and that is where the new Service Cloud Voice can help out. Einstein Voice offers AI-driven insights on a call with a customer, integrates calls easily, and can boost productivity by closing cases faster with insights from Einstein. If your company is off business hours, let Einstein answer the phone for you to help quickly solve customer issues. Service Cloud Voice-enabled State Farm to provide a faster resolution for customers – 31% times faster.
The release of Einstein Voice will help service workers improve customer relationships. Having the ability to see real-time insights into what could potentially help solve customer issues faster is effective and exciting. Corrao Group is interested in how Einstein Voice will affect the field service workers. Could Einstein Voice help service technicians who are not hands-free report issues faster with the ability to speak directly to Einstein? We will have to wait and see for that answer. For now, the ability to have Einstein Voice will be beneficial to all service teams.
A Preview Shown of Einstein Voice at Dreamforce
3. Einstein Call Coaching
Einstein’s Call Coaching uses AI technology to analyze audio clips and present insights for your sales reps. It can help your sales manager understand what’s going on in the customer calls. Einstein Call Coaching empowers insides sales teams with management-level visibility into critical moments during a call, conversation trends, and a conversation library, which highlights the team’s best examples of successful calls. Einstein uses this information and gives insights to help your sales rep performance.
Sales Managers can utilize Einstein Call Coaching to give sales reps the information they need to become top performers, or informed decision-makers at the company. Sales managers have analysis and visibility into every single call with insights from Einstein. Insights for sales managers and reps can range from trends such as which competitors are being mentioned in conversation, how are we positioning different products, and how are we handling objections. We are interested to learn more information about Einstein Call Coaching as it is only still being piloted with a rollout plan to be made available to users in June 2020.
Einstein Call Coaching Dashboard
4. Salesforce 360 Truth
Salesforce, the global leader in CRM, announced Customer 360 Truth, “a new set of data and identity services that enable companies to build a single source of truth across all of their customer relationships” (Salesforce). “Now, this is a computer science holy grail that we’ve been trying to put together for a long time,” added Benioff, the founder of Salesforce. Salesforce 360 Truth aims to let Salesforce users and clients achieve a clear understanding of their customers by managing data and prior interactions all in one single source of truth. In addition, Einstein can be paired with 360 truth, and can help “guide you and help you run your business and connect with your customers in a whole new way,” Benioff said.
We’ve always believed that having a single source of truth is crucial to have an optimized Salesforce instance. Corrao Group lives by the motto, “If it’s not in Salesforce, it doesn’t exist.” Housing all your data in one system will improve your ability to have a clearer picture of customer data, reports, and more. Salesforce 360 Truth will help businesses provide better customer service, predict sales opportunities, and create a personalized marketing journey, all with the help of Einstein insights and recommendations.
5. Salesforce Mobile and Trailhead GO
A fully redesigned CRM app, Salesforce will add Einstein AI, analytics, and integration with iOS features such as Siri and Face ID to their new mobile app. In the mobile app, Siri and Einstein’s voice assistant can add tasks, update CRM records, and take notes. The new designed CRM app is all apart of Salesforce’s plan of moving the Customer 360 Platform onto the mobile device. In addition to the new CRM app, Salesforce is also launching a learning app called Trailhead GO with exclusive features and more than 700 training models available to Apple’s iOS and iPadOS. The release of the new mobile app and Trailhead GO signals a new era for productivity as Benioff believes the future of productivity involves a mobile device rather than a desktop or laptop.
Salesforce creating the new Salesforce app to boost productivity will undoubtedly help your mobile workforce. Your marketing, sales, and service teams can work on the go and use the CRM app as if they are on a desktop or laptop device. Einstein being integrated with the Salesforce app will have a profound impact. Bret Taylor, Chief Product Officer of Salesforce, explained, “With Salesforce Mobile, Salesforce and Apple are empowering sales, service and marketing professionals on the go to deliver game-changing customer experiences, powered by AI.” Salesforce creating Trailhead GO is also a significant accomplishment as users will be able to learn on the go anytime and anywhere. Marc Benioff and Tim Cook both believe that the future of productivity is using mobile devices, and Salesforce has created two powerful apps for trailblazers to work and learn wherever they are.
Announcing a New Global Partnership
Dreamforce 2019 Conclusion
Mark it down as another successful Dreamforce event by Salesforce. We want to give a big shout and thank you to Salesforce as they put on an extraordinary event that featured some incredible guest speakers like Barack Obama, Emilia Clarke, Tim Cook, and Stephen Curry. The energy around the city of San Francisco was electric, as more than 170,000 attendees gathered to witness and learn what new features Salesforce will release next. We are already getting excited for Dreamforce 2020!
If you would like to learn more about any of the new features from Dreamforce 2019 and how it can relate to your business, please contact us.
The release of Manufacturing Cloud is a fantastic accomplishment for Salesforce. Manufacturing Cloud takes the current pain points of the industry and turns them into an experience that is flexible in reacting to the customer’s ever-changing demands. In this blog, we are going to share with you the importance of Salesforce’s latest release.
Forecasting
Salesforce knows that the manufacturing industry contains more than just customers. Suppliers, contractors, dealers, service technicians, distributors, and internal warehouse and factory all play a crucial role in the development of your product and the experiences of your customers. Manufacturing Cloud helps users collaborate in real-time across the ecosystem to ensure your forecasts are accurate and updates to your schedules are automatically communicated to warehouse and purchasing departments.
According to Salesforce, “Manufacturers need a clear understanding of all past shipments, current production plans, and future production forecasts.” Forecasting in Manufacturing Cloud is all about taking control and allowing flexible releases to your customers’ needs. Manufacturers often have very different sales and forecasting processes that your supply and chain teams must know when to deliver new items. Manufacturing Cloud gives users the upfront awareness of what you think you’re going to sell, and when you are going to sell it. Having critical insights into the timing of selling your product will make every part of your business sufficient.
Forecasting in Salesforce isn’t just about how you’re going to sell your product on your unique timeline. It’s about knowing how you need to staff your factory: Do I need a second shift, or can I get by with the first shift? Manufacturers always have absurd spikes where their employees are forced to work long hours to get their product out. Forecasting in Manufacturing Cloud gives manufacturers an overview of all their businesses, allowing them to take control and make smarter decisions.
Partner Collaboration
Manufacturing Cloud extends benefits to all your partners to collaborate across the same forecast order and demand data in one single source of truth. For example, the Partner Community allows your vendors and partners to see and engage in real-time updates to your sales forecasts. Additionally, analytics will be tied directly to order data with additional information into the territory, customer, agreement, product line, or product performance. Improving inventory management allows manufacturers the chance to analyze their customer data, and gain insights into every product and territory performance.
A New Era
Manufacturers for far too long have used old proprietary systems that have never been scaled. In addition, these systems are not cloud friendly. Salesforce being able to tie manufacturing into the leader of the cloud is a big deal. The era of using and exporting spreadsheets or pivot tables is over. A new era is emerging for manufacturing, and it allows manufacturers to have complete control over the ability to operate their business in a much more profitable point of view.
Our experience with manufacturing dates back to our Managing Partner, Jack Corrao. Jack has developed numerous operational infrastructures to support hardware and software companies to deliver the best in breed solutions. As our #1 vertical, we are here to help you integrate and train you on best practices involving Manufacturing Cloud.
Over the next couple of weeks, we will be releasing a new blog related to Salesforce’s new Cloud. We’ll cover manufacturing pain points Salesforce solved, our favorite features, and how to integrate Manufacturing Cloud. If you would like to learn more, please contact us.
Salesforce, the global leader in CRM, recently announced a specialized solution for the manufacturing industry: Manufacturing Cloud. Manufacturers will now have the ability to streamline their entire business in one single platform.
Estimated2min. read
Salesforce, the global leader in CRM, recently announced a specialized solution for the manufacturing industry: Manufacturing Cloud. Manufacturers will now have the ability to streamline their entire business in one single platform.
As a long-time manufacturing-focused partner, Corrao Group attended a Salesforce partner webinar: Manufacturing Cloud: Business / Go-to-Market on October 18th. We were blown away by the presentation and believe it will provide extreme value for our customers.
Manufacturers often have complex physical processes that are hard to modify quickly and efficiently to meet the customers changing demands. In order to know the customer’s feedback in real-time, your operation teams have to be aligned with Sales representatives to have one single source of truth. Manufacturing Cloud will, “Deliver a new level of business visibility and collaboration between the sales and operations organizations of a manufacturing company to give a more predictive and transparent business” (Salesforce).
New manufacturing specific tools and enhancements released by Salesforce includes:
Einstein Analytics for Manufacturing
Sales Agreements
Account-Based Forecasting
Mulesoft Anypoint Platform
Connected Sales and Distributions
Intelligent Service and Field Service
Personalized B2B and B2C Marketing
Real-time Business Insights
Channel Partner Management
Real-time Collaboration
Corrao Group’s experience and discipline with manufacturing dates back to 1982 with our Managing Partner. Jack Corrao has developed numerous operational infrastructures to support hardware and software companies to deliver the best in breed solutions. Since 2008, Corrao Group has been helping manufacturers utilize Salesforce to create an automated closed-loop system for channel-centric manufacturing.
As Dreamforce 2019 approaches, Corrao Group is excited to learn even more about the capabilities of Salesforce’s Manufacturing Cloud. We will be in attendance to meet with our customers and prospects in regards to the new releases.
Did you know poor data costs businesses on average around $700 billion annually, equivalent to 30% of the company’s revenue (Salesforce)? Having a powerful CRM platform like Salesforce doesn’t automatically ensure business success. Keeping data inside Salesforce healthy takes a lot of time and effort for your employees. Clean and quality data ensures that all high-level data related to marketing campaigns, sales forecasts, project management, pipeline reports, and dashboards are accurate.
But what happens when the data in the system is unreliable?
What is Bad Data Quality?
Unhealthy data is information in the system that can disrupt a company’s business process through missing, inaccurate, or duplicate data. A recent Salesforce study found, “The average contact database is composed of 90% incomplete contacts, with 20% of records being useless due to several factors, 74% of the records needing updates, and more than 25% of those being unintentional duplicates.” In essence, poor data includes:
Missing Data: Empty fields that data is required to be in.
Example: Missing phone/email, title.
Inaccurate Data: Wrong information put in the fields.
Duplicate Data: Contacts, accounts, or leads that show up more than once.
Example: Two leads with the same number or email.
How Poor Data Effects You
According to RingLead, the 2nd largest issue among Salesforce customers is bad data. Companies start making poor business decisions because of inaccurate data producing misleading results. Here are just three ways that bad data can hurt a company:
Inaccurate Reports and Dashboards: Inaccurate data negatively impacts the sales or marketing teams to stay on top of qualified leads or opportunities. Employees could be wasting time on the wrong opportunities. False reports can lead to the company’s top decision-makers making choices based on inaccurate data.
Wasted Time and Money: Spending money on campaigns will be inefficient if the ROI reporting is incorrect. Bad data can report that your advertisement campaign only sourced $6k worth of deals when it could have actually been $80k. Not seeing that proper ROI could lead to missing out on the chance to rerun successful campaigns and efforts.
Decline in User Adoption: Users might use another system to keep track of their data if they have little to no confidence in the quality of data. Employees tracking data in another system is another example of time and money wasted on a powerful CRM system.
How to Improve Your Data Quality
According to Salesforce, “Because the quality of the data affects the entire organization, data quality metrics should be a company-wide responsibility.” Improving your data quality starts with training employees on the importance of data. The Corrao Group can help you standardize your Salesforce process and implement data requirements throughout your Salesforce sales process. Healthy data brings better results for the company in terms of customer experience, reports and dashboards, shorter sales cycles, and more. Your company can expect great results when employees start inserting data of high quality into your CRM system.
Corrao Group x RingLead Data Solution
RingLead is the #1 data quality platform for sales and marketing, and has a suite of products dedicated to removing and preventing duplicates, improving data quality, and performing system-wide data scans. Partnering with RingLead has given Corrao Group an easy to use platform to consistently improve lead quality by providing tools to help prospect new leads, standardize records, and clean unhealthy data. Corrao Group ensures your sales and marketing efforts are reaching the right people with accurate information.
Corrao Group Health Check
One of the ways Corrao Group can help your company improve bad data is through a Health Check. A Health Check is a reverse Salesforce system demo to ensure you’re getting the most out of your current investment. Health Checks help ensure your system is up to date on the latest Salesforce release and enable you to learn best practices from a certified Salesforce implementation expert. Corrao Group can help standardize your Salesforce process and implement data requirements throughout your Salesforce Sales process.
