Integration - White Rock

Solve the Greatest Smart Manufacturing Challenges With the Power of Salesforce

Solve Smart Manufacturer Challenges With Salesforce

When it comes to today’s challenges, how can smart manufacturers overcome pain points and modernize their systems? How do you keep your automation top-notch and stay ahead of the competition?

Thankfully, Salesforce has provided the tools to achieve just this. With the right partner on your side to optimize your systems, you can master Industry 4.0 and beyond.

How can Salesforce impact my manufacturing company?

Manufacturing companies have some unique needs in order to stay up to date on projects, pricing, and other key data through several stages of the manufacturing and delivery process. With the right Salesforce setup, your team will be able to manage an end-to-end view of your supply chain in accordance with SIPOC (Supplier, Input, Process, Output, Customer). Unify all information in one place and stay ahead of processes and challenges.

Salesforce solutions can be tailored to your needs. Your entire manufacturing process can be streamlined from sales to production and delivery to billing. Optimizing digital transformation is key for your business to keep up with the ever-changing manufacturing industry and the times.

What is the Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud?

Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud powers customer-centric operations through a purpose-built manufacturing platform. This tool unifies opportunities with demand forecasting, serves customers and distributors faster, and brings AI insights into your day-to-day operations. As an end-to-end CRM system specific to the manufacturing industry, this tool gives a full view of customer activity that helps drive predictable business development. Forecasting capabilities take into account the changing needs of your customers and market demands.

Customer Experience is King

One thing is overwhelmingly certain: now more than ever, it is essential to keep customer experience exceptional across all touchpoints. Stand out from the crowd (and the competition) with a faster and smarter customer experience. With technology optimized to the inner workings of your unique business, you can ensure that customers remain the focus every step of the way.

The next-level customer experience that you deliver is your greatest competitive advantage. Delivering quick, smart service wins brownie points with customers and keeps them coming back. Today’s most successful smart manufacturers prioritize not only their deliverables, but their superior customer experience and engagement.

From Legacy to the 360 View

Many manufacturing companies were built using inflexible IT legacy architecture that was never designed for interconnection and transparency. By integrating all systems with Salesforce, your company will have access to a single source of truth, real-time data, and a holistic, 360-degree view of customers and processes. It’s not uncommon to have a mixed bag of old and new systems addressing different needs within the same organization. Salesforce’s prioritization of a single-source of truth is imperative for forward-thinking companies. Your CRM must be at the center of all your systems.

Integrating all systems into Salesforce as your single source of data truth results in increased productivity and maximized revenue. When set up properly, your CRM should provide predictability and transparency across your smart manufacturing organization. From access to real-time data and accurate forecasting to simply being able to pair down the number of tools needed to get the job done, having a 360 view is truly a game-changer for any company.

Truly Accurate Forecasting Capabilities

Accurate forecasting is essential to the flow of your business. With a single source of all data, you will be able to fully trust the accuracy of your data and know what to expect. There are few things as dangerous as an unreliable or overstated forecast.

Your revenue forecast is vital for predicting sales, budgeting operational support and planning cash flow so accuracy is essential.

No Siloes Here

Unite departments with visibility across the board into a single integrated solution. Siloed systems for sales and revenue management impact the bottom line. Keep your team on the same page and provide access to insights and accurate revenue information. Eliminate the need for manual data entry and avoid duplicate entries to save time and boost productivity for your team.

Sales Made Simple

With Salesforce’s help capturing essential sales data and providing timely insights to assist in boosting sales, your sales efforts see an increase in ROI. Enjoy high conversion rates, increased productivity, and shortened sales cycles.

Sales agreement functionality provides consolidated visibility into all terms negotiated with customers. This enables you to measure planned and actual revenue accordingly and verify inventory levels.

A well strategized and executed manufacturing CRM can easily provide insights into your customers and sales leads. This will help your company run more smoothly in the process.

Incorporating the Internet of Things

Integrating IoT with Salesforce allows you to keep a steady pulse on the machines at the heart of your operation. This integration allows you to optimize and plan for necessary maintenance needs.

Salesforce is even better with WhiteRock on your side

We bring our knowledge of marketing and sales flows, digital transformation, and what “parts to order” for your business into this partnership. WhiteRock is a team of Salesforce experts that you can trust and count on to get you running full-speed! We know the industry, take the time to understand your needs, and map out a plan to implement the right solution.

WhiteRock can optimize your CRM journey so that your team is unified through a standard KPI reporting schema. The reporting and dashboard setup is the output that helps with fast and accurate decision making. This is the ultimate achievement. As your organization changes over time, you have us to keep your system aligned. We support you as you serve your customers in an unavoidable, ever-changing environment. WhiteRock has the experience needed to help your complex manufacturing processes through highly accountable change process flows related to improvements in your CRM and related systems. Reach out to us at learnmore@whiterocktech.net or via the form below!

The Relationship Between CRM and Accounting Systems

CRM, Integration, Salesforce, White Rock Value

How can a CRM system beneficial to produce performance changes in your sales process without the accounting history of your accounts and contacts? I strongly believe that it is not possible. As Salesforce has evolved from a CRM platform to a platform to integrate all systems to your customers and prospective customers, the transformation of a common, simple view of all data in one place has never been more important. Integrating accounting transaction history, credit limits, and other key data in the accounting system to the CRM account/contact view in Salesforce or any CRM drives a faster pace for decision making and simplicity. On this topic, I want to share four examples of the value of integrating your CRM and accounting systems and then conclude with a suggestion for you to consider for your organization.

Example 1 – Knowing the “flight path” of your buyer’s journey to a sale promotes a healthy forecast for your whole organization

The days of flying by the seat of your pants in sales are ending has evolved into a sales process that can be executed consistently by all sales team members. The result is relevant sales activity is captured quickly, easily, and affordably by sales deal stages in a CRM system. Over the last several years and peaking in 2020, the sales efforts must be quantified and organized for understanding and forecasting the predicted sales timing and dollar amount. When this flow of work is consistently input by all sales team members, then revenue and cash flow will be known and can build a revenue forecast that can be relied upon. When the sales team has this insight along with current customer sales history, credit limits, terms, and product/service lines used, the sales team will have all the valuable data needed to support their newest sales and find common characteristics to continue to guide their success.

Example 2 – Accrual vs Cash basis of sales opportunities

I mentioned in Example 1 how the days of flying by the seat of your pants in sales are obsolete. What this means is working on your sales deals and not tracking the progress of that deal. When this happens, a sale technically is only known when the deal closes. From an accounting perspective, if you do not accrue expenses and only book when the expense is paid, this is the cash basis method. Therefore, the same holds true in tracking deals in the CRM system. If you are not tracking sales progress in the sales process, this is equal to a cash basis sales approach. We do not have forecast or prediction capabilities until the sale is closed. Organizations need to “accrue” their sales process just as the accounting system accrues expenses and other events that are recognized but paid or closed yet.

Example 3 – Valuing the importance of information in the CRM and accounting systems equally

One thing is for sure: you cannot prepare a correct tax return for the organization without an exact and organized accounting system. The same is true about the sales process: if the sales activity is not organized by sales stage from learning about the prospect’s interest to the sale close, then there is not a reliable forecast of revenue and cash flow that can be used to capture the whole picture accurately of the business performance.

Example 4 – How and what to integrate between CRM and Accounting

If I have convinced you of the importance of integration, then the next step is how to integrate and what to integrate between your CRM and accounting systems. First, how? Depending on what CRM and accounting system is in place, there are dozens of solutions usually. If your team does not have the experience and skillset for this, then there are many innovation and technology companies that can help. Certainly, our firm can help. Second, what? This depends; but for sure at a minimum, you need insight into sales history, quotes, and other specific information like past due status, credit terms and credit limits are important. All these components from accounting need to be displayed on the account view.

I will finish with this: if you believe that integrating your CRM and accounting systems is valuable but you cannot achieve this without help, then call me. And, if you do not believe this and don’t care to achieve this then I want to know why, so call me. Having a solid integration between these two so systems will unify your information systems, enable faster decision making, and better experiences for all of your folks and your customers and future customers.