Introduction to Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud

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The manufacturing industry is one of the oldest industries on the planet. The second industrial revolution that included transitioning to new manufacturing processes lasted from the mid-19th century until the early 20th century. The innovation of ‘assembly line’ in manufacturing was one of the industry marvels during the 20th century. Currently we are in the 4th industrial revolution where companies are striving to develop smart factories. They are amalgamating Industry 4.0 technologies into the existing manufacturing process such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IOT), Robotics, 3D Printing to name a few. On the technology and production front, the companies have undergone tremendous advancements since then. But, from the employee and customer experience perspective, many processes are still either manual or disconnected from each other. Companies must have consolidated information in one system to derive actionable insights to build deeper relationships with customers, distributors and partners.

How Manufacturing Sales Differs from Others?

In manufacturing and distribution space, sales is quite often not about the new customer acquisition. Rather, the major chunk of revenue often involves delivering a continuous supply of product to customers a.k.a Run-rate Business. In such a scenario, customers and manufacturers enter into long-term agreements that enable manufacturers to forecast product units and revenue.

Introducing Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud

Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud helps you increase transparency into your run-rate business and leverage the power of a complete CRM designed exclusively for Manufacturing industry. It is built on top of world’s number one CRM for Sales and Service i.e. Sales Cloud and for Service Cloud. Hence, it leverages the power of the most efficient Salesforce platform. Manufacturing Cloud offers following features

  • Sales Agreements – Drive account transparency with a consolidated view of every agreement
  • Account-based Forecasting – Create more accurate forecasts with a unified view
  • Complete CRM for Manufacturing – Extend the value of Sales Cloud and Service Cloud for a unified view of all customer activity
  • Community Cloud for Manufacturing – Accelerate planning with transparent, digital collaboration
  • Einstein Analytics for Manufacturing – Surface actionable business insights
  • Connect Front & Back Office – Ensure a real-time, accurate view of account activity

Sales Agreements in Manufacturing Cloud

Sales Agreement enables you to manage and negotiate purchase and sale of products over an elongated period of time. They address common challenges faced by manufacturing companies such as a single view of planned and actual product revenues and quantities, ability to make changes as per the production issues, etc. Use Sales Agreements to provide your sales teams with clear visibility into planned and actual order volumes in the process, make changes to planned quantities, sales prices, and discounts. It derives the actual quantity and actual amount for products from active Orders associated with a sales agreement to give you a holistic view of the state of an agreement.

 

What is the Difference Between an Opportunity and a Sales Agreement?

An Opportunity, as the name suggests, can be either won or lost. In other words, it may convert into an Order or may not. It is more relevant in terms of new business. Whereas, a Sales Agreement is like a promise or a contract that a customer will buy products from a manufacturer over a set duration of time. while a sales agreement can ensure that the customer keeps its promise.

 

Sales Agreement Features

  • Manage Lifecycle of a Sales Agreement
  • Easy Approvals
  • Track planned product quantities against actual fulfillment of orders
  • Mass Update Agreement Values
  • Recalculate Actuals for Product Schedules
  • Edit an Active Sales Agreement
  • Renew Sales Agreement in One Click

How to Setup Sales Agreements?

Setting up Sales Agreements in Manufacturing Cloud is quite straightforward, and declarative, but off course. Once you purchase the Manufacturing Cloud License, start by enabling the Sales Agreements feature in setup. This makes relevant objects available to use in the system. The Sales Agreements setup page allows you to have a granular control on various settings such as:

  • Sales Agreement Renewal Period
  • Actual Calculation Mode
  • Metrics Mapping
  • Agreement Terms Metrics etc.

Once done, assign pre built ‘Manufacturing Sales Agreements’ permission set to users. You can get hands-on experience by signing up for a special developer edition here.

Working with Sales Agreements

Create a Sales Agreement record like any other record, specify duration, start date etc. Then add products to it, define initial quantity. This quantity is equally distributed in all the product schedules as per the sales agreement duration. Now when you create Order records, the ‘Actual Quantity’ in Agreement Term reflects the Order Quantity. Going forward, you can modify the agreement if there are any changes in quantity or price.   

Sales Agreements Lifecycle

Any Sales Agreement goes through following stages in its lifecycle:

  • Draft – Initial stage
  • Approved – Self or manager approved
  • Activated – An approved sales agreement is automatically activated when it reaches its start date
  • Under Revision – Activated agreement, if further modified, then enters this stage
  • Renewed – Cloned the Agreement after it end date
  • Cancelled – Cancelled the agreement
  • Powerful Solution for Future of Manufacturing
  • Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud offers a complete CRM exclusively for companies who are in the manufacturing business. It is a go-to solution that offers powerful features to manage long-term and complex Sales Agreements, shows accurate Account wise Forecasts, allows to set Account managers’ targets, extends real-time visibility and collaboration to partners with Experience Cloud and offers intelligent insights, predictions, and recommendations when used with Einstein Analytics.

How Can You Get Started?

If you are in the manufacturing business and this solution sounds interesting to you, then you can get started right off the bat. If you are already using Sales Cloud then get in touch with your account executive and he/she will guide you on how to upgrade. Then your Salesforce administrator will configure the solution based on your requirements. If you are new to Salesforce then our Manufacturing Cloud expert team will help you along the way to get started on this journey and get the best ROI of your investment.

References

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