Streamlining Sales with Salesforce Sales Cloud for Manufacturing

Client Overview

The company is a leading manufacturer specializing in customized water treatment equipment. Each product is uniquely designed based on specific customer requirements, meaning no two products are alike. Their sales team comprises engineers who handle sales and technical specifications to meet customer needs. The complexity of the sales process requires a robust solution to maximize sales output, enhance customer engagement, and integrate seamlessly with existing ERP systems.

Problem or Challenge

Complex Sales Process

Since every product is custom designed, the sales team needed a structured approach to track project details and customer requirements and ensure smooth communication between the sales, design, and production teams. The absence of a structured workflow led to inefficiencies and delays in finalizing sales contracts.

Lack of a Customer Engagement System

With multiple ongoing projects and unique specifications for each client, the company faced challenges in maintaining a complete historical record of requirements, preferences, and past communications. This led to misalignment between sales and engineering teams, delayed responses to customer inquiries, and difficulty in personalizing sales approaches, ultimately affecting customer satisfaction.

Overcoming Budget and Invoice Management Challenges

Managing budgets, order history, and invoices across multiple projects and subsidiaries is demanding. Without an integrated financial tracking system, sales teams were having difficulty monitoring payment schedules, outstanding invoices, and budget adherence. This occasionally resulted in revenue leakage and inefficiencies in financial management.

Lack of ERP-Salesforce Integration Leading to Manual ERP Updating

The company used SAP for backend project management but required the sales team to access project progress in real time without exposing sensitive ERP data.

The absence of Salesforce integration caused delays, miscommunication, and manual updating of ERP, heightening the risk of errors. A seamless flow from design approval to production was needed.

Isolated Data Across Subsidiaries

The organization operates across multiple countries, each with different workflows and reporting structures. A lack of a unified system means subsidiaries worked in silos which made it difficult to standardize processes, share data, and collaborate efficiently on global projects.

Limited Language Support and Globalization

With operations spanning multiple regions, their manufacturing and sales teams combat language barriers, regional compliance variations, and inconsistent customer interactions. The absence of a system that supports multiple languages hinders seamless customer service and global sales alignment.

Impact and Results

Maximized Sales

• Implemented Salesforce Sales Cloud to automate lead qualification and opportunity management.
• Implementing automated lead tracking and AI-driven recommendations boosted sales team productivity, reducing the average sales cycle from 46 days to 28 days and enabling faster deal closures.
• Our team facilitated the use of analytics to identify high-potential leads and reduce sales cycle times.
• Enabled their sales teams to configure complex quotes with Salesforce CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote), ensuring accurate pricing and quick approvals

Improving Customer Engagement

• We deployed Salesforce Customer 360 using Salesforce Sales Cloud, allowing the sales individuals to track every customer interaction, past project, and service history.
• The well-defined workflow increased their sales cycle efficiency by 30, while a centralized CRM enhanced customer satisfaction through improved tracking and personalized interactions.
• Integrated Salesforce with email and communication platforms to simplify follow-ups and maintain a structured communication flow.
• Leveraged Agentforce for personalized recommendations and proactive engagement with customers.

Salesforce-ERP Integration for Seamless Workflow

• Integrated Sales Cloud with ERP to enable seamless data flow from project design to manufacturing without exposing ERP data such as leads, PII, and quotes.
• Seamless ERP integration cut order processing time, allowing production to begin within 48 hours of design approval and ensuring smooth project execution.
• Created a bridge between Salesforce and the ERP ecosystem, ensuring that approved designs move automatically into production planning.
• Facilitated bidirectional data sync to ensure sales and manufacturing teams work with real-time data.

Managing Budgets, Order History, and Invoices

• Implemented Sales Cloud with financial management enhancements, enabling real-time tracking of budgets and financial transactions.
• Real-time financial tracking minimized invoicing errors and revenue leakage by 1.5%, improving budgeting accuracy and cash flow management.
• Automated invoicing and order tracking, reducing manual errors and improving financial transparency.
• Allowed sales team to access insightful reports and dashboards to monitor revenue, pending payments, and forecasting.

Unified Platform for All Subsidiaries

• Standardized the sales process across multiple global subsidiaries using a single Salesforce instance.
• A unified Salesforce platform supports scalability for global growth while enabling subsidiaries to maintain country-specific sales strategies.
• Centralized their data repository for seamless sharing of financial data, sales, revenue, and expenses across all subsidiaries.

Globalization

• Implemented multi-language and multi-currency support to accommodate regional sales teams and customers.
• Configured country-specific tax rules, pricing models, and regulatory compliance to align with business requirements.