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Outdated ERPs and Forecasts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.
According to the Huffington Post, B2B companies who blog attract 67% more leads than those who don’t. If you haven’t already started blogging, consider repurposing your existing content to get started. While blogging is a great first step in the content development process, you should expand the scope of your content library with videos, white papers, and case studies. A fully-formed content library serves as the foundation of your marketing initiatives by providing value to your audience throughout each stage of the buyer’s journey.
Reference Your FAQ’S
When prospects visit your site, they reach your site seeking answers to one or many questions. If you can anticipate the questions your audience is hoping to resolve, you’ll provide the early value while also spending less time answering the same questions over and over again. Leverage your frequently asked questions in your content strategy to improve relationships with your web visitors and strengthen the quality of your leads.
Trail Blaze With Conversational Marketing
Conversational marketing is the future of successful inbound strategies. A tool like Qualified allows you to interact with your web visitors in real-time to start the nurture process as soon as these visitors hit your website. Qualified mixes automation features and direct chat to help you optimize the conversational process. To further streamline your conversions, Qualified connects to both Salesforce and Pardot to capture visitor information directly in your CRM.
Social media isn’t just for B2C. Social media continues to grow in value for B2B marketers as a content sharing platform attracting new leads, and nurturing existing ones. Just like any other content plan, your social media content plan should be structured, and this starts with a content calendar. Creating a content calendar will help you keep track of your social media presence by eliminating the chance of uncertainty halfway through the month.
Automate Your Marketing Initiatives
Gone are the days of tedious, manual marketing campaigns. Marketing automation platforms have taken over every industry and are built to grow with your business. At Corrao Group, we use Pardot as the foundation for our marketing programs and leverage the tool for internal onboarding too! Pardot offers a multitude of features that can save your team time, minimize mistakes, and align your sales and marketing teams. List segmentation, drip programs, email templates, A/B testing, content calendars, and autoresponders are all at features included in Pardot’s user-friendly interface. Need proof?
Imagine the value of being recognized as a reliable resource by the leaders of influence within your industry. Interacting on social media posts on LinkedIn or quoting tweets from influencers on Twitter helps you get started. Other businesses follow and trust these leaders and therefore would be more likely to value an interaction or observation of yours involving their trusted content. Connecting with them via social media is a quick and easy way to make yourself known.
Sharpen Your Titles
Despite its lengthy implementation, SEO continues to make or break the success of B2B digital marketing initiatives. When searching for information on Google, title tags inform the search algorithm that your content exists as a results option. This simple adjustment to the back-end of your website and your blog has the ability to make a huge, low-cost difference when it comes to driving traffic to your site. However, be sure your text titles correspond with what readers expect to find on your page or you may face Google’s penalties.
Optimize Your Web Pages
B2B audiences don’t have time to wait around and are often web-browsing from their mobile phones. Don’t let a slow website be the reason you lose impressions. A combination of issues could be slowing down your site from the size of your images to the location, arrangement, and type of code being used.
Salesforce has scheduled to enable the Lightning interface for all Salesforce users that have not yet migrated in January 2020. Salesforce users will still be able to access the classic interface, but there are many reasons why users should make the switch to Lightning. Customers on Salesforce’s new UI interface have increased their productivity by nearly 25%.
Corrao Group recommends all classic users to plan for the switch in 2020. You can start by turning Lightning on per user per department. Try Lightning out with the Sales or Service teams to get them trained, and when they feel comfortable, start with the next department. Your employees will become much more productive and find better results once they make the move to Lightning.
What is Lightning?
The Lightning Experience is a new interface that helps users build apps faster, create custom business logic, customize your user interface, and more. With a complete redesign, Lightning is a modern-day interface that allows users to build Lightning pages without code, using custom-built Lightning Components. Corrao Group doesn’t see Lightning as just a new interface. The Lightning Experience allows you to improve your processes and do so much more with better user adoption. Today is the best time for your company to re-evaluate and re-optimize your Salesforce system based upon your unique business needs. Lightning is also integrated with Einstein, Salesforce’s automated intelligence platform. Einstein provides helpful insights to help make jobs easier and boost production.
How Is Lightning Better Than Classic?
Better User Interface
First of all, the Lightning experience looks and feels better than Classic. Your company can personalize Salesforce to fit your company’s brand logo and colors. Customized pages allow you to drag and drop different components on to your page so that every page can look different based upon the record type or app you find most relevant for your business.
In addition to the look of the instance, Lightning is easier to use than Classic. Everything on the Lightning platform from creating records to editing records is faster. For example, when you are on a record for a lead and you want to give them a call, Lightning allows you to call prospects directly from the lead page with a click of a button. If they don’t pick up the phone, use one of your pre-recorded voice mails, drop the message, and keep on working. A new feature, Salesforce’s Quick Actions, allow users to update records faster with the ability to log a call, send an email, or create a task from any page within Lightning.
New Features
All new features released by Salesforce going forward will be specific for Lightning. Classic users are missing out on tons of improvements to the Salesforce system that helps improve your employee’s productivity. Lightning is integrated with Einstein to look at your datato predict outcomes on your sales deals. Einstein now offers insights into whether deals are likely to get bigger, smaller, or get pushed out to the next month. In addition to Einstein, the list below contains new features released by Salesforce that Classic users are missing out on. You can see the full difference between the two orgs right here.
Pardot Einstein Campaign Insights
Einstein Activity Metrics and Pricing Guidance
Marketing Cloud Integration with Google Analytics 360
Advertising Studio
Mobile: Customized Mobile Experiences and the New Salesforce Mobile App
Salesforce Essentials
Salesforce Einstein: Quarterly Forecasting, Case Routing, and Code-Free Predictions on Records
Field Service: Time Sheets, Health Check, and Extended Match Work Rules
Knowledge: Expanded Channels, Flexible Styles, and Improved Article Management
Recycle Bin now in Lightning
Lightning Flows
Customized Reports and Dashboards
Kanban View
Quick Actions
Enhancements On Existing Features
Salesforce took the pain points that users had in classic and made improvements to make them better in Lightning. For example, there are added enhancements on existing features such as reports and dashboards. Lightning dashboards look much better in Lightning now that you are not limited to the 3 Column layout. Users can now customize dashboards to a specific size or style that best fits your interests. In addition to the look and feel of dashboards, Salesforce has added a Kanban view which has been a big hit for Salesforce users. The Kanban view allows users to take any list you want, and with a click of a button, users can see each record as a card with the ability to drag and drop the cards into different stages depending on where your deal is.
Corrao Group Can Help You Make The Switch
As a partner of Salesforce for over 11 years, Corrao Group can help your company make the transition from Classic to Lightning. We have grown up using Classic and have made the switch to Lightning over a year ago to find a new UI system that allows our business to run quicker, better, and faster. Lightning should not be considered as “something we will get to eventually.” Migrating to Lightning is something you will need to budget for, and eventually implement by the end of the year. Look at switching to Lightning as a move that will help your entire company in terms of use and ease. As a partner of Salesforce for 11 years, our recommendation would be to contact a professional who has been through this before and can help you through every step of your process.
Please visit our contact us page to get a quote or assessment before it is too late!
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 Salesforce’s new Manufacturing Cloud will help manufacturers gain access and visibility into their full business operations. Having one single source of truth is critical for collaboration on sale agreements, forecasting, and more. Salesforce solved major points for the manufacturing community by creating a new cloud for the next generation of manufacturers. Below is a list of our favorite Manufacturing Cloud features.
Sales Agreements
Manufacturers can unify their run-rate business with information housed on the Enterprise Resource Platform (ERP) and order management system. Both the account and operations teams will now have access to a single source of truth, continually updating in real-time as changes to the deals are made. Sales Agreements give users full visibility into committed and actual order volumes, the performance of the agreement against the forecast, and other time-phased metrics.
Account-Based Forecasting
Manufacturers can now gain insights into their current business as well as future opportunities. Leverage account-based forecasting to develop more accurate forecasts for your sales, finance, and operation teams. “Account teams can also add updates on changing customer needs or market demands, allowing the team to collaborate and adjust forecasts in real-time (Salesforce).”
Einstein Analytics
Automatically gain insight into your account health, demand insights, product penetration, and sales agreement process. According to Ashish Kofhani, the Senior Vice President of Products, Einstein Analytics is his favorite new feature. He says, “Of all the new features, my personal favorite is the Manufacturing Einstein Analytics Pack. Einstein analyzes all the data from net new business, run rate business, past orders, current orders, etc. and churns out insights and recommendations on which accounts to target, products to position, and prices to quote. It is AI in action.”
Community Cloud
Extend pre-built sales agreement templates to your channel partners to collaborate on deals, leads, and opportunities. Leverage Community Cloud for company-wide visibility into all business processes to ensure all your partners are on the same page. Through integrating the Community Cloud platform, you can extend real-time transparency and collaboration capabilities in Manufacturing Cloud to your clients and partners.
Mulesoft AnyPoint Platform
The Mulesoft Anypoint Platform’s ERP plugins and templates make it easy to collect order information from your ERP or order management systems. By unifying your back office with your front office, you can reduce the complexity of integration. Mulesoft’s platform helps manufacturers maintain a real-time, accurate view of their account activity.
Forecasting
Manufacturing Cloud allows users to take control of their forecasts to have a more accurate description of their entire business. We talked more about how forecasting will impact manufacturers in our last blog, which you can find here.
Decades of Manufacturing Experience
Working with Salesforce since 2008, we’ve have seen the invaluable benefits that a CRM can have for companies, especially those in the manufacturing industry. Salesforce’s new Manufacturing Cloud will allow customers and their partners to have company-wide visibility into all business processes. With tools such as sales agreements and forecasting, data can be analyzed effortlessly. Salesforce consulting services have been just as important to us as business process optimization, and we strive to help businesses maximize their investments into their CRM and 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.
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.
In 2016, Corrao Group created a music playlist for the upcoming Dreamforce event in San Francisco. It quickly became our most popular blog because of its wide variety of genres and artists. It contains music from the early 2000’s to the hits of 2016. It was such a hit we thought we would try and recreate it but with my own twist, only the classics this time for Dreamforce 2019.
We designed this playlist to get you, the listener, to get pumped up for this event. Whether you’re packing for your trip or picking up your badge at Dreamforce, pop in your headphones and get ready for some nostalgia. If you’re on your way to listen to former President, Barack Obama speak or getting ready for the silent disco conga line, this playlist will give you the energy boost you’ll need after long days.
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.
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.
We’ve attended the webinars, read through the release notes, and used the features. With our customers in mind, we trained our team on these new features to improve our Salesforce consulting services. In addition to the full Salesforce Winter ’20 release notes found at the bottom of the blog, here are some of our favorites.
Sales Cloud
Einstein: Forecasting Enhancements
Description: Einstein forecasting allows users to conduct quarterly forecasting along with monthly forecasting.
Benefits: Receive better insights from AI to make better business decisions concerning the stages of your deals.
Sales Cadence Branching
Description: Branching, which looks and feels identical to the branching in Pardot’s Engagement Studio, allows you to create two different next best steps for your sales representatives.
Benefits: Sales Cadence Branching saves your sales reps time and moves their lead or contact to the next best step, whether that’s through an email or call.
Service Cloud
Einstein Case Routing
Description: Einstein Case Routing automatically classifies and routes support cases based on a range of criteria including qualifications, areas of expertise, and historical success rates.
Benefits: Service Agents don’t have to manually review cases and have more time to help customers.
Lightning Knowledge Enhancements
Description: Users now have the ability to send knowledge articles on any platform in real-time.
Benefits: Share a Knowledge Article with customers in conversations or with social posts when they are having issues.
Pardot
Snippets
Description: Creating snippets in Pardot allow companies who host webinars or other recurring events to reuse content without having to update the email and email templates themselves.
Benefits: Save your users more time and increase productivity with the ability to reuse content.
Marketing Cloud
Einstein Send Time Optimization
Description: Use Journey Builder activity to find the best time for each individual email subscriber based on their history of engagement.
Benefits: Helps improve your open rates by making sure your emails are sent at the most relevant time for your customers, leads, or contacts.
Platform, Productivity, and Integration
Real-Time Event Monitoring
Description: Use real-time event monitoring to detect and prevent risky events in Salesforce.
Benefits: Get greater insights into security concerns, performance metrics, and system usage.
New Salesforce Mobile App
Description: Rebuilt to bring a brand new experience. Completely personalized navigation allows users to customize their app to their own personal needs.
Benefits: Lightning helps unify the Salesforce desktop and mobile experience with power navigation and AI-powered out-of-the-box functionality that improves productivity.
Salesforce Data Integration Enhancements
Description: Users will be able to easily embed Salesforce reports and list views in Quip. Log calls in Quip and sync them back to Salesforce without having to leave Quip.
Benefits: Increase user’s productivity by getting all your work done in Quip.
Einstein Analytics
Einstein Discovery: Automated Story Creation
Description: Create a story by selecting a data set in which Einstein Discovery intelligently determines which metrics to optimize and which fields to analyze to give you insights about your data.
Benefits: Einstein Discovery does all the work for you, which frees up more of your time to work on other tasks while getting the best trends and insights into the data you want to see.
Einstein Analytics in the New Salesforce Mobile App
Description: Access all your important data through search, favorites, chatter, and embedded dashboards.
Benefit: Have to work on the go? No problem. Salesforce’s new mobile app mixed with Einstein Analytics allows users to stay on the go while being able to harness the same power of Salesforce on a desktop.
The Salesforce Winter 20’ Release Notes does bring exciting new features for Salesforce employees and customers. However, customers still using classic will not be able to use these features.
Lightning does need to be activated to maximize the Winter Release Notes. Lightning will be enabled for all users coming this January. It’s important that you start thinking about making the transition if you haven’t yet. We have the tools and knowledge to help you with your transition.
The year was 2019 and on this particular foggy October morning, Mr. Joestar, the head of a large software company walked into his office to get his day started. He put down his mug next to the little pumpkin his son carved for him and logged onto his computer.
The day went on as normal, calls being made and emails being sent. Recently, two very intelligent sales representatives, Austin and Sandra, have been closing deals left and right. Neither of them ever asked for bonuses or even a raise, they always pulled their weight and always finished tasks before the deadline. In a nutshell, they were the ideal sales employees.
Mr. Joestar wanted to give them a little bonus. So he put it on his to-do list, in the meantime, there were major company updates past due that he had to send out to the staff. He wrote them back-to-back, both the bonuses and company updates.
Lunchtime was finally rolling around and all thoughts of work left his mind, all he thought of was the leftover barbeque he was about to have for lunch. He sent out the emails and left his office.
Mr. Joestar sat down for lunch in the outside patio, opening up his lunch bag and taking out the Tupperware, when Patrick from accounting walked by and said.
“Extremely generous of you, Sir.”
“Anytime, I care for each and every one of my employees!”
Mr. Joestar thought …
“There was nothing on that email about employees, just updating software and a big customer was coming to us… it’s probably nothing.”
He went on with his lunch, not knowing the grievous mistake he had made. Once lunch was over, he walked back into the lobby and told the receptionist.
“We should put fake cobwebs all around here, really get us in the Halloween mood.”
“Absolutely, sir. That’s a great idea.”
Once he got into the elevator and pushed his floor. Carl and Denise from the got on at the 3rd floor and rode up with him. Carl started up a conversation with the boss.
Carl:
“That email you sent us, I mean.. Wow, thank you, boss.”
Denise:
“Yeah, I can’t wait for it to go through!”
Mr: Joestar:
“It’s not really that big of a deal, I plan on sending more out like that, hopefully, every month.”
Carl and Denise looked at each other confused and started whispering to one another. Carl was about to tell the boss what he had done, but there was a sudden ding and the doors opened up, and the boss walked out. Everyone seemed to be in a fantastic mood, people were smiling and laughing. Nothing unusual for a Friday afternoon. Joestar walked around the desks of his employees like he always does.
“Hey, Thanks again, boss”
“You’re the best, boss”
“No one can top you, sir”
But one comment made my Sandra stood out to him.
“We really appreciate the bonus, boss, but why were Austin and I the only ones informed about the new company updates”?
Mr. Joestar stopped in his tracks.
“Excuse me? Can you please repeat that”?
“Well, we all got the email about the bonuses, but it seems that Austin and I were the only ones who got the update email.”
Joestar, pale in the face ran back to his office and logged onto his computer, he opened his email, hoping it wasn’t true.
He first clicked on the “Company Update” email and looked at the recipient’s, only Austin and Sandra were selected.
He knew what he had done, he clicked on his “You’ve earned this” while reading the recipient’s line he slumped in his chair. The only recipient tagged, was everyone.
At this moment, Mr. Joestar hears his phone ring, but it’s not his normal ringtone, it’s his morning alarm ringtone.
Mistakes like this happen quite a bit with Marketing Automation. Be sure this nightmare doesn’t happen to you by utilizing the Corrao Group to help set up, and run your marketing campaigns powered by Pardot.
