Top 4 Reasons to Implement Salesforce CRM in Manufacturing Industry

The first industrial revolution began in the 19th century when it transitioned from agricultural to factory production. Today it has arrived at Industry 4.0, a development phase that encourages manufacturing to become more digitalized.

Digitalization brought some new challenges in the manufacturing industry, such as:

• Arduous to implement a flexible business methodology that can be tailored to the customer’s behaviors and needs.
• Difficult to select the best technology to implement among various options.
• Accurate forecasting to recognize market trends and shifts.
• The high cost of technologies, budget constraints need to be considered.

Today Manufacturing companies have recognized that for successfully implementing a long-term business strategy, they must optimize their processes to allow for better decision-making, efficient workflows, increased production, and improved customer experiences.

Salesforce CRM is a software platform that helps manufacturers to connect with customers, manage & increase sales, and fulfill market expectations through their distinct cloud systems.

Here are the top four reasons how implementing Salesforce can benefit the manufacturing industry!

1. Modernized Software
Traditional manufacturers have relied on a slew of in-house applications and platforms that couldn’t keep up with today’s manufacturing demands, such as multi- or omnichannel service delivery, a geographically dispersed workforce, and mobile workers.

Salesforce has all of the features necessary to meet the needs of today’s manufacturing companies. Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Force.com’s development power, Salesforce1’s mobile skills, manufacturing-oriented 3rd party apps on App Exchange, and Mulesoft’s integration capabilities can reform the manufacturing industry.

2. Management of indirect channel
To get their product to market, manufacturing companies rely on distribution partners. The logistics and marketing requirements are handled in part by partners. As a result, manufacturers must manage their relationships with all of their partners to ensure that everyone is on the same page.

Salesforce CRM helps businesses communicate more effectively with their channel partners. Manufacturers can collaborate, communicate, educate, support, and reward their partners using the platform. Salesforce enables manufacturers to streamline and accelerate the partner onboarding process, allowing them to sell more quickly. It also enables manufacturers to provide support and guidance to their partners to improve performance.

3. Visibility of all data
From managing inventory to sales to maintaining customer relationships and partners, a manufacturer generates a lot of data. The issue is that these businesses use various applications for each process, resulting in data that is both decentralized and challenging to use.

Salesforce contextualizes information in the context of the customer, which is a game-changer for manufacturing companies. It allows manufacturers to cut through the noise and extract the information they need to run their businesses. Salesforce assists in predicting sales demand using actual data rather than guesswork. This allows manufacturers to order the correct amount of raw materials, resulting in fewer back orders and waste. Salesforce enables manufacturers to have complete visibility into a specific customer, partner, or dealer, regardless of where the data is stored.

4. Supply Chain Intelligence
The manufacturing industry’s most common challenges are inventory issues. Manufacturers who use the wrong retail inventory management strategy can incur higher carrying costs. These inventory problems could result in a lack of visibility into data such as fast-moving vs. slow-moving products, revenue loss due to lower labor productivity, long travel times, and so on.

Salesforce makes it simple to set up and create field service locations where inventory is kept, such as warehouses, customer sites, or work vehicles, so the manufacturer can track everything and avoid stock outs. They can customize page layouts and assign user permissions to help their team in managing inventory. Salesforce also provides detailed and actionable insights into operations, inventory management, order processing, warehousing, and distribution chains for manufacturers.

Conclusion
Salesforce CRM implementation assists manufacturing companies of all sizes in adopting a customer-centric strategy. From sales to marketing to customer service, Salesforce enables the manufacturer to focus on their customers, create a one-on-one personal experience, and make recommendations based on customer journeys. Manufacturers are beginning to see personalized and relevant engagement as a key differentiator.

As the traditional businesses fade away, more companies are turning towards Salesforce implementation because Salesforce is an all-in-one platform and includes a slew of useful out of the box features which can be further customized as per business requirements.