Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud is a relatively new cloud designed specifically for businesses in the manufacturing sector. It enables your ops and sales team members to collaborate effectively with a centralised view of client requirements and the market. This, in turn, allows them to successfully plan, predict, and spearhead optimal business operations in a reliable manner. With Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud, organisations are more suitably equipped to fulfil service level agreements, ensuring that clients are happy as they implement more labour-saving workflows.

Common Issues in the Manufacturing Sector

Smart shopping has drastically changed the landscape of demand-driven supply chains. Trends in consumer favourites and demand are difficult to predict, as they are in a state of constant flux. Clients now expect a smooth and reliable transition over several mediums and hardware. That requires a powerful CRM that is capable of generating real-time insights from market data.

In the manufacturing industry, client data tends to be stored across different ERPs and separate spreadsheets. Inefficient communication among departments and siloed data can severely affect a company’s bottom-line performance. Issues such as overstocking, out-of-stock events, client dissatisfaction, and being unable to adhere to SLAs may occur.

As the manufacturing sector requires significant capital, any abrupt fluctuations in terms of demand tend to have a significant impact on operations. Thus, it is necessary for businesses in this industry to stay up-to-date at all times.

Using Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud to Resolve Industry Setbacks

Let us take a look at which specific features can be leveraged to resolve common industry problems.

Account-Based Forecasting Capabilities

This provides a business with a complete, 360-degree view of their customers. With this feature, manufacturing businesses are able to do away with limiting silos and reliably provides forecasts for every account. Any changes in client preferences and other trends are reflected in company data as they happen. This enables departments to stay on top of things and update their forecasts accordingly.

Sales Agreements

This allows businesses to blend the terms of contracts with forecasted business information, which is usually stored in OMSs and ERPs. In doing so, this helps manufacturers make sure that their proposed budgets and revenues are accurately documented. If any changes are made, they automatically show up in real-time. Sales teams also are now able to oversee the entire sales cycle, and have access to data on the number of orders sent and actually processed. Additionally, they have full visibility on the company’s performance in relation to their commitments and SLAs.

Einstein Analytics for Manufacturing

This provides manufacturers with insights out-of-the-box via crucial sources of data, including market demand, the health of the account, penetration of company products, and other KPIs. Account managers can also identify sales opportunities with these data points and proactively enhance business relationships with clients by making appropriate cross-sell and upsell suggestions. Everything has been rolled out on top of Einstein Analytics, which translates into a highly versatile platform that automatically adjusts to the needs of any manufacturing business.

 

 

Further Reading