Introducing Salesforce’s Consumer Goods Cloud, a powerful platform designed to make things easier for retail companies. It helps them run their operations more smoothly, improve how they sell products, and increase their sales.
Consumer Goods Cloud has a lot of useful features that help businesses manage their relationships with customers. It gives them a complete view of each customer, including their preferences, what they’ve bought before, and how they’ve interacted with the company. This helps sales teams understand customers better, personalize their approach, and give them great experiences.
The platform also helps teams work together when planning how to work with important customers. They can make plans, set goals, and work on those plans together. This makes sure that everyone is on the same page and that the company and the customer work well together.
Consumer Goods Cloud also uses advanced technology, like artificial intelligence and machine learning, to give companies even more help. It can analyze data and make predictions, which helps companies make better decisions, make customers happier, and make more money.
Under the “Retail Execution” part of Consumer Goods Cloud, companies can make sure their products are always available in stores, make their products look good on shelves, and help their field workers be more productive. They can use mobile devices to collect real-time data about the products on store shelves, what the competition is doing, and how much things cost. This information is sent to the Consumer Goods Cloud, so the sales teams can make good decisions quickly.
The platform also helps companies manage tasks, like restocking products or setting up promotions in stores. Managers can keep track of what’s happening, solve problems, and make sure everything gets done on time.
Mobile Data Collection: Field teams can leverage mobile devices to collect real-time data on shelf conditions, competitive insights, and pricing information. This data is instantly synced with the Consumer Goods Cloud, enabling timely data-driven decision-making by sales teams and managers.
Task Management: The platform streamlines task assignment and tracking, enabling companies to assign specific actions to field representatives, such as product replenishment, planogram compliance, or promotional setup. Managers can monitor progress, address issues, and ensure efficient task completion.
Consumer Goods Cloud utilizes Field Execution to help companies optimize their field operations, boost productivity, and enhance customer engagement. Key features include:
- Territory Management and Visits: Organizations can optimize field resources and balance workloads using territory management and visit planning. This ensures sales reps cover the right areas and maximize their time and effort.
- Route Planning and Optimization: Field representatives can utilize Salesforce Maps to plan optimized routes for their visits, considering factors such as customer priority, traffic conditions, and travel distances. This saves time, reduces fuel costs, and increases the number of customer visits.
Consumer Goods Cloud also offers robust analytics and reporting capabilities, providing actionable insights into field performance, compliance, and sales trends. Real-time data empowers companies to identify areas for improvement, optimize execution strategies, and drive sales growth.
One notable success story involved a South American pharmaceutical company seeking a comprehensive solution to manage their extensive list of retail accounts. They specialize in importing, distributing, and marketing medicines, medical products, and food supplements globally. Their requirements included tracking in-store agreements, inventory, planograms, asset placement, and product placement. Additionally, they aimed to enhance their sales team’s in-store visit planning using Salesforce Maps.
The highlight of the project was the configuration of retail execution, enabling the display of a territory map with scheduled visits for sales reps. Clicking on a visit provided a list of tasks to be completed, either through a predefined set of tasks or a custom action plan created by the sales manager. For the customer’s specific needs, we developed custom tasks using code, including store agreement compliance, asset condition checks, and accurate asset counts within the store.
Consumer Goods Cloud requires significant administrative setup to ensure optimal functionality for end users. As a new product from Salesforce, it is important to acknowledge that there may be documentation issues. Consequently, certain fields necessary for data entry were not mentioned in the implementation or developer documentation, yet they were still required.
While Consumer Goods Cloud requires initial setup and documentation improvements, its impact on businesses has been significant. With its transformative capabilities, the platform has the potential to drive sales growth, streamline operations, and enhance customer experiences in the consumer goods industry.
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Contact us here at Alternative Solutions for assistance implementing Consumer Goods Cloud today.
