Since 2019, Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud has been a CRM built specifically for the needs of manufacturers.
This meant having a single view across the business, coupled with business agility and the ability to uncover value faster. New features released in Winter ‘22 will push the power of Manufacturing Cloud even further. Here’s what’s in store, and what we learned from Dreamforce.
The past 12 months have seen some of the most tumultuous disruptions to global supply chains in memory, which have proven able to derail manufacturing operations of any size. Despite the disruptions, some manufacturers have become more resilient through improved forecasting and real-time operational management.
Salesforce has responded to offer manufacturers a range of new features to help view their whole business, forecast more accurately, manage channel partners within Salesforce and provide differentiated service experiences for customers. Let’s take a look at the features that Salesforce laid out during the most recent Dreamforce.
Enterprise account forecasting
With the new release, you’ll have access to next-generation collaborative forecasting capabilities, all within Salesforce. You’ll be able to add multiple metrics beyond revenue and quantity, and even advanced capabilities like complex rollups and aggregates.
What does that mean for everyday work? Account executives can drill down into the B2B and B2C business. They can see regional adjustments from their leaders and update their own outlook if they agree that there’s an upwards trend. Executives can also create their own product categories, rather than just use an SKU, helping the business to stay more agile. They can now make an adjustment for seasonal demand for a product quickly and easily. Approvals for forecasts are simpler too, and can happen directly through the page or even by email.
Support for long term program-based businesses
You might already be using Salesforce to manage your leads and opportunities, aligning your sales and operations teams. For those of you with long term programs, such as components manufacturers in automotive, semiconductor, aerospace and defence, there are now forecast options specific to your needs. Salesforce can help with more accurate forecasting to support price downs, give backs, pay to plays and engineering change requests.
Better partner management from inside Salesforce
Salesforce has now introduced rebate management, an end-to-end incentive management that works seamlessly with Manufacturing Cloud. With rebate management, you can customise rebate tiers, thresholds, benefits and payout periods. There’s automated accrual and payout calculations, and you can share attainment visibility with partners directly. You can manage specific types of rebates like ship and debit, and even analyse all the data to do what if analyses. Eligibility criteria can be automatically managed and monitored.
With this new functionality, your team can monitor and support partner collaboration easily. If you can see that one partner is just shy of achieving a sizable rebate, you can proactively approach them. With accurate up-to-date information there’s no waiting on partner history to make decisions. You can access the information you need to keep your team and decision-making on the go.
Improved service experiences
The other major new feature to be added to Manufacturing Cloud is the ability to differentiate between service experiences within Salesforce. In general, servicing within a manufacturing context requires more than logging a ticket. You need to service products, understand the issues, forecast the parts needed and coordinate all stakeholders. There’s a lot of room for customer feedback to get lost, and the process can be quite disconnected.
That’s where companies that bring their customer, sales and service data together in Salesforce, are able to provide a connected and consistent experience all from a single interface. Service organisations can benefit from guided experiences that help them to provide the right information to the right person with the right actions, no matter where they are. This lets organisations resolve issues fast, drive predictive maintenance for connected products, and develop new service-based revenue streams.
This is the first time you’ll be able to use Salesforce to connect your customer experience, your product strategy and the voice of the customer all together.
You’ll be able to access all these new features in Manufacturing Cloud with this new release. These are some major updates for manufacturers, bringing critical new features at a time when the industry could use them most.
Sign in to Salesforce+ to see the new features in the Dreamforce Manufacturing session, or contact Simplus to find out how to implement these features.
