Manufacturing can be a cut-throat industry ripe with fierce competition, relentless M&A moves, and ongoing challenges from supply chain issues to labor shortages keeping decision-makers always on their toes for anything and everything that could alleviate pain points. Salesforce as a CRM foundation with many relevant ecosystem and industry-specific add-ons is a great way to transform for a long-term future agile enough for today’s market landscape. 

The latest update to Salesforce includes five key areas of enhancement manufacturers should note, including program-based business management, Tableau Accelerator, CRM Analytics, MuleSoft Accelerator, and Warranty Management for Products and Assets. 

 

Program-based business management

One of the most exciting new features in this release for manufacturers is program-based business management. This means managers can now have visibility into program forecasts, forecast variants, and the different components required for the production of long-term projects and programs within Manufacturing Cloud. With these additional insights, business leaders can create more reliable forecasting of some of their most strategic business.

Applicable product: Manufacturing Cloud – Sales

 

Tableau Accelerator for rebates

With new out-of-the-box Tableau dashboards built for rebate scenario planning, manufacturers can more quickly gather the estimates they need to visualize budget requirements and their impact on tier changes or rebate percentages. This way rebate program changes can be more effectively managed, compared against current scenarios, and integrated with cross-sell and upsell opportunities visualizations as well. 

Applicable product: Rebate Management, Tableau

 

CRM Analytics for Manufacturing Cloud

A pre-built analytics dashboard in Manufacturing Cloud delivers more actionable and accurate forecasting. Users can analyze variants, metrics, or time periods with the most red flags to take action fast. Business leaders can quickly determine the factors that are pushing business up or down with forecasted scenarios based on your existing metrics and campaigns, driving profitability through dynamic analysis. 

Applicable product: Manufacturing Cloud, CRM Analytics for Manufacturing

 

MuleSoft Accelerator

MuleSoft is the answer to eradicating technical debt, and the MuleSoft Accelerator can get the job done even faster. By providing best-in-class visibility into all sorts of data within Manufacturing Cloud—whether customer, product, price, sales contract, or order-related—the accelerator improves planning and alignment throughout the organization by pulling directly from the system of record to deliver insights. 

Applicable product: Manufacturing Cloud, MuleSoft

 

Warranty Management for Products and Assets

Better manage product and asset warranties by creating standard warranty term details and assigning them to products or product families. Included is the ability to enter additional or extended warranties along with exclusions and void terms.

Applicable product: Manufacturing Cloud for Service

 

To learn more about these enhancements and other ways Salesforce is perfect for manufacturing organizations seeking a platform for reliable digital transformation, connect with Simplus. We’d love to have a discussion about your goals and vision for the future.