Category: CRM

Manufacturing Cloud: Reporting on Performance

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.

Manufacturing Cloud Reporting made easier with Einstein Analytics

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.

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Sources

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Manufacturing Cloud: No Longer Negotiating Blind

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.

The Importance of Manufacturing Cloud

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.

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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.

Sources

https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2019/09/introducing-manufacturing-cloud.html

All Photos can be found here: https://www.salesforce.com/products/manufacturing-cloud/overview/

Get the most out of Salesforce Workflows

Salesforce workflows

Every company has those tedious tasks that slow down their employees’ day. These tasks include high-priority case notification, updating shipment statuses if they’re delayed, and notifying an account owner of updates made by others. These are just some of the thousands of tedious processes that can be streamlined through Salesforce Process Builder. Ultimately, Salesforce workflows automate your business processes continuously in the background so your employees can work on other projects. We’re going to highlight some of the most widely-used processes below.

Business Processes

1. High-Priority Case Notification – Let’s use the example of your urgency scale ranging from 1 -3 with 1 being extremely urgent. Currently, a level 1 case is submitted and it takes hours, maybe even a day, for your team to reach out because they were sifting through level 2 and 3 cases. Set up these workflows to improve your customer service and receive instant notifications when urgent cases are submitted.

2. Delayed Shipment Status Update – In today’s world, people are tracking their packages from when they order it to when it’s delivery. Stay a step ahead with excellent communication to let the recipient know of a delay. No one enjoys their package being delayed, especially if they don’t receive a notification about it. Help alleviate this delayed shipment by being as proactive as possible.

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Building a Successful CRM with Salesforce Consultants

Imagine self-implementing a system as vast as Salesforce to find out 6-8 months later that you cannot prove its ROI. Meanwhile, you’ve already spent quite the investment already so that your budget is locked up for the rest of the year. For the past 10 years we’ve seen this all the time, and it is all caused by self-implementation.

Whether you have decided to pick Salesforce as your customer success platform or are strongly considering to do so, what usually follows is, “Can I self-implement? Why do I need to hire a consultant?” Yes, you can do implement Salesforce yourself, but it’s not recommended unless you have a Salesforce admin with over five years of hands-on experience. Although, we highly suggest against self-implementations as it usually does not lead to the proper transfer of business processes onto the platform. This comes from the Salesforce client not having the knowledge of what Salesforce can do as a platform when implemented company-wide.

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Boost ROI by 1,281% with a Business Process-Driven CRM

Yes, that number is actually 1,281%, and what’s even more shocking might be how this leading B2B telemarketing agency accomplished this ROI boost in just three months¹.

Studies predict that 70% of successful digital business models will be structured on unstable processes that should be shifting with the needs of their customers². The goal is to be in the 30% of businesses that are predicted to have stable processes and in order to do that, we must adapt to our customers’ needs.

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