Tag: Manufacturers

Frustrated With Your Manufacturing Sampling Program?

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 a 7,000% increase in ROI.

Program Pain Points

Sampling programs can make or break your 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.

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/