It’s no secret that we’re headed into some bleak economic conditions as the fed continues to hike interest rates and slow down growth for previously thriving industries like manufacturing. What is less apparent is the fact that even through slow business periods, innovation and process improvements remain just as (if not more) critical as ever. 

What happens when you come out the other side of the slowdown completely unchanged? Your customers leave by the masses. Continually improving internal processes with a focus on the customer keeps you relevant and prepared to continue business during good and bad times. And Salesforce’s latest release update is geared towards process improvements for manufacturers leveraging Manufacturing Cloud. 

The latest Salesforce release helps manufacturers be more efficient with forecasting and sales agreements with enhancements in Manufacturing for Sales and collaborate more intuitively with customers with enhancements in Manufacturing for Service. Let’s review the highlights of each update area:

 

Manufacturing for Sales

Enhancements for sales agreements

Efficiency is the name of the game for manufacturer sales, and this update includes enhancements designed to make selling easier and more accurate:

• Metrics support for up to five decimals: Revenue calculations (planned for actual) can now go up to dive decimal places, such as values of key revenue metrics attached to sales agreements and products with more than two decimals. 
• Metric groups for sales agreements: Metric groups allow you to show exactly what specific business metrics users need (with nothing else cluttering the view) in Agreement Terms. 
• Controlled access to mass update button: Decrease user error and corrupted data with newly tightened access capabilities on the mass update button for sales agreement terms. 

Enhancements for enterprise account forecasting

Accurate forecasting can make all the difference in your organization’s planning. This release comes with updates to make enterprise account demand forecasting more in line with actual forecasting needs. First of all, you can also control access to the mass update and import CSV functionalities within forecasting, minimizing errors and the buildup of technical debt. Secondly, the account is no longer a necessary field for running forecasts. Forecasts can now be generated based on other fields such as region, ship-to-location, etc., by changing the forecast context in settings. 

Manufacturing for Service

Enhancements for responding to customer requests

Two key enhancements for customer service agents in Manufacturing Cloud are included in this update. First, identity verification allows CSRs to now quickly verify customer identities over messaging. Second, the Action Launcher allows reps to add 10 frequently used actions for easy execution during a case. The Action Launcher has also been enhanced to launch flow orchestrations in addition to flow, OmniScript, or other quick actions. 

 

Enhancements for service process design

Users can now create a custom service process for Manufacturing Cloud within the Service Process Studio. This means customer service reps will be able to launch a service process while working on a customer request and follow that process throughout the entire case lifecycle. The Service Process Studio helps users define data attributes and inputs, add business logic, and configure any needed integrations to link with outside systems. 

If you’d like more support enhancing your Salesforce instance to drive greater operational efficiency and reach customers where they are, contact Simplus. Our proven experts can help and start talking today.