Everything About The New Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud

Launched in 2019, the Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud has altered the consumer goods value chain from retail channel customers to end customers. This platform reshaped the existing paradigms and paved the way for a more connected and customer-centric future.

It empowers field reps with actionable data, enabling smart decision-making that streamlines operations, elevates the in-store experience for end customers, and ultimately drives more revenue.

Since its inception, the Consumer Goods Cloud has continually evolved to meet the changing needs of the consumer goods industry, proving itself an invaluable tool in this dynamic market.

Furthermore, its impact has been recognized by the Promotion Optimization Institute. They have awarded it the ‘Best in Class’ product for four consecutive years. This recognition highlights its significant contributions to improving enterprise planning, as well as the promotion and distribution of consumer goods.

Want to unveil more about Salesforce Consumer Goods Clouds? Its features, benefits, and how it can be implemented for your business. This comprehensive guide will help you find answers to all these questions.

Why Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud?

Here are some of the reasons that underlines the need for Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud for companies;

Personalized experience

The CG industry is witnessing the growing demand for a personalized experience. According to McKinsey, 80% of consumers expect retailers to know and understand them. Consumer Goods Cloud can help brands deliver a personalized experience in several ways;

• Real-time insights about customer information, such as demographics, locations, and purchase histories. So, brands can deliver a tailored experience to each customer.
• Companies can set up custom fields to collect the customer information most relevant to them.
• It facilitates targeted and omnichannel marketing campaigns ensuring the right customer gets the right message at the right time.

Unified data

38% of companies believe that data silos are one of the biggest challenges in delivering positive customer experience (Source: Forrester). Consumer Goods Cloud can unify all the data from sales, service, back-office, etc. This results in unified customer data ensuring the entire organization is on the same page and working towards a common goal.

Improving retail execution

A retail execution strategy involves getting the right product to the right store at the right time. According to a survey conducted by Webinar Care, only 29% of organizations consider themselves good in retail execution. Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud helps in improving retail execution in the following ways;

• It automates mundane tasks helping sales reps focus more on selling. With store-level insights and analytics capabilities, it helps retailers to improve efficiency.
• Real-time data synchronization between the brand and field reps enables the identification of planogram gaps, out-of-stock products, and asset management. So, you can plan your product inventory accordingly.
• It offers guided selling, in-store collateral, account-specific product lists, and more facilitating perfect store execution.

Optimizing in-store merchandising and marketing

According to Salesforce, CG companies in the USA spend around $200 billion yearly on sales promotions, product displays, and more. However, $100 out of this is not being used effectively. Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud can help you make the most out of in-store merchandising and marketing;

• It provides 360-degree visibility into sales targets, orders, discounts, promotions, and more. So, you can optimize the smooth execution of retail activities.
• It uses AI to optimize key tasks resulting in effective marketing and generating better ROI.
• Improving lead planning results in better store management.

Accessibility

The platform can be easily accessed on any device with an internet connection. This enables the remote workforce to access real-time data and collaborate with other team members.

Scalability

CG Cloud is a highly scalable platform, enabling businesses to increase their usage according to their growth.

Customizability

It is a tailor-made solution for the CG industry. Furthermore, it can be customized easily to meet specific processes and workflows.

Integration

Consumer Goods Cloud can be easily integrated with Salesforce products like Sales, Marketing, Commerce, and more. It can also be integrated with third-party systems enabling you to create a comprehensive system for your business.

Features of Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud

Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud is packed with several features such as;

1. Visit planning

• The Consumer Goods Cloud assists sales representatives in maximizing efficiency by prioritizing visits.
• Visiting planning objects like customer visit settings, event job lists, trip lists, visits, and more enable the detailed planning of a sales rep’s store visit.
• These Objects enable sales managers to structure tasks and field reps to perform them during visits.
• Automatic visit planning ensures that the sales rep visit the store at regular interval and perform the necessary tasks.
• A list-building system facilitates the sales reps’ ability to keep track of all the tasks they have been assigned and prioritized for that day.

2. Salesforce Maps for optimized routes

Consumer Goods Cloud uses Salesforce Maps to optimize rep routes based on factors such as duration, number of visits, store operation hours, etc. Optimized routes enable the right agent to reach the right store at the right time.

3. Visit execution

Consumer Goods Cloud improves the visit execution to ensure that the store visits are productive and efficient by offering the following capabilities;

• Clear and detailed guidance to sales reps on what tasks they need to complete during store visits.
• Customizable templates to meet the specific needs of customers. For example, a grocery store template may include tasks like checking the stock of certain items.
• Tailored visits based on customer needs can also be scheduled to ensure the necessary tasks are executed.
• Consumer Goods Visit Execution app lets the sales reps engage and monitor the store virtually eliminating the need for physical visits.

4. Einstein AI for Consumer Goods

Einstein AI adds several capabilities to Consumer Goods Cloud such as;

• Retail Activity Optimization (RAO) involves analyzing the multiple data points around retail visits, and on-site tasks such as store sales data, customer feedback, etc. Using this data, RAO can help sales reps identify stores that are performing well and recommend spending more time there.
• Einstein AI working with Google Maps can help the sales rep find the best route to execute the visits ensuring optimal use of resources.
• With Einstein AI, planogram levels can be audited, including on-shelf availability, product facings, share of shelf, and more.
• Einstein’s Vision can identify the product on the shelf from the picture, eliminating the manual efforts of sales reps to check the number of products on the shelf.
• Einstein Discovery lets you discover relevant patterns in in-store data, regardless of whether it’s within Salesforce or not.

5. Mobile order capture

Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud is one of the most valuable features for field reps that provides the following capabilities;

• On-the-fly order capture enables field reps to capture orders from anywhere, anytime. The order information can be updated automatically, eliminating manual efforts, and order information getting muddled.
• Product scanning enables the sales reps to find the product information simply by scanning the SKU barcode. This speeds up the process of capturing the orders.
• Onsite order collection enables the sales rep to instantly update the order information.
• Avoid stockouts by ensuring the real-time update and availability of the data.

6. Direct store delivery

• This feature helps the consumer goods industry to maximize the selling opportunity and inventory fulfillment with the following capabilities;
• Prioritizing deliveries to ensure that the most important deliveries are made first based on the business needs.
• Comprehensive visibility into order information to enable sales reps to ensure the timely fulfillment of the orders.
• Live tracking and rerouting to ensure the deliveries are made efficiently.

7. Sales agreement

This feature is used to ensure accountability and transparency in all things you have agreed with partners. Here is how it works;

• Real-time tracking of financial information such as transactions, profits, and revenue margins in real-time.
• Planning vs actual comparison enables you to find out how well your plans are executed.
• Custom metrics let you define your custom metrics in sales agreements to ensure tracking of the information that matters most to you.

8. Integration with front-and-back office

Consumer Goods Cloud can help brands connect the data across front-and-back offices creating a single source of truth.

9. Trade promotion management

This feature helps you to improve the trade promotion effectiveness in the following ways;

• Streamlines the promotion planning and provides a comprehensive view of the trade budgets and checkbooks.
• The claim management and deductions reconciliation process has been simplified.
• Real-time reporting ensures the optimization of trade speed to boost ROI.

Latest Updates in Consumer Goods Cloud

With the latest Winter 21′ release, Salesforce has launched some exciting updates in its high-in-demand Consumer Goods Cloud to expand the scope of introducing new experiments in Consumer Goods Cloud objects.

Most of these changes are applied to only those editions in which Consumer Goods Cloud is enabled, like Lightning Experience in Developer, Enterprise, Performance, and Unlimited Editions.

Here is the list of new updates in the Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud:

1. Faster Set up Of Retail Stores

Salesforce added a new Address field on Retail store objects. It will support Sales Managers in quickly creating records of their retail store as they won’t have to create location records every time they can update or create a new store record.

2. Easy Sharing of Retail Store Records

Now the retail store objects get the sharing rules from the account object that gets your sales representative access to records of your retail store automatically when you provide them access to account records.

3. Understand Visit Recommendation Flows

Users can easily understand how the visit recommendations are generated through Sample flows.

4. More Power From Consumer Goods Object Records

Now Consumer Goods object records allow you to add notes, attach files, and create Chatter posts. It also helps you create formula fields and enable field history tracking on crucial consumer goods objects.

5. Improved Managed Access With Updated Permission Sets

The default access levels of Consumer Goods objects are updated at the beginning of Winter ’21 in Lightning Retail Execution Starter, Lightning Retail Execution Merchandiser, Lightning Retail Execution Plus, and Lightning Retail Execution Contractor permission set. Users can now change the level of access as per the requirements.

With all these updates in Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud, users can experiment with different objects and build proficiency in managing their retail store.

On that note, let’s dig deeper into the basics of the Consumer Goods Cloud, what features it brings in, and what some significant impacts of Consumer Goods Cloud on the retail sector.

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What is its impact on the Retail Sector?

As per the statistics, most goods sold in retail are from physical stores. Besides that, there are specific strategies that retail businesses must focus on, such as in-store placement, store management, and promotion of goods. For that, a company needs the right technology and data.

Fortunately, Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud has successfully revolutionized Store Management Services. It helps brands establish long-lasting relationships with their customers. Additionally, the rest of the improvements are made in the store management from the analytics provided by Einstein AI.

This cloud was launched by Salesforce back in 2019, majorly for retail companies. Salesforce specified that this Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud would act as the left hand for retail companies in generating more revenue and driving more ROI via improved retail execution capabilities.

This Consumer Goods technology provides business intelligence, ultimately helping brands solve complex business problems. One of the significant impacts of Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud is that field representatives can ensure that shelves in the store always have ample stock and that respective pricing and promotions are synchronized with it. It also helps sales executives create effective connections with retail channel partners.

Companies in the retail sector can fully trust this platform to achieve their overall objectives and earn a competitive advantage in the best possible manner.

Benefits of Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud

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Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud has come up as the newest addition to the extensive suite of Salesforce products for businesses. This new edition has been designed further to modify the relationship between retailers and field representatives while streamlining the retail execution, which will help improve the overall customer experience. Following are the key benefits of the Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud, which have been discussed briefly:

1. Improvements in Store Planning

Salesforce can provide consumer goods companies with the best available option and help in optimal planning. The Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud has been ensured to provide sales managers with an overall 360-degree view of their sales targets, orders, discounts, and promotions. Moreover, this is also done by ensuring the execution of all the retail business activities in a smooth manner.

2. Better Store Layout

The organization of inventory is done quite differently in each of the stores. With the help of Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud, businesses can personalize and assign templates that will further depend on the segment categories of a store. Templates could also be used, which is dependent on individual stores to increase their productivity from check-in to check-out.

3. Accurately Auditing The Shelves

The maintenance of store shelves and proper management of the inventory will be smooth with Consumer Goods Cloud. It would enable the organization to have a proper improvement in inventory management, creation of planograms quicker, and ensure the conformity of the merchandising.

Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud is used to bring the shop shelves to the fingertips of the organization and have its usage as the best planogram software used explicitly for visual merchandising. Furthermore, the businesses could scan the shelves in the store while using Einstein Vision in Consumer Goods Cloud, which would help track the inventory and further identify out-of-stock products. It also assists businesses in embracing information about a particular product category, pricing, quantity, promotions, and discounts, all from the mobile device.

4. Navigable Store Visits

The field sales representatives could be made more effective by  Consumer Goods Cloud while streamlining the activities and shop visits. To understand how this is precisely accomplished, follow the given example. The Sales Representatives might need the maintenance of tracking each of the store visits through the collection of crucial parameters such as store name, location, the number of hours spent, visit time as expected, and any previous visits with quick access to the available data. All of these incredible features that the Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud provides would help the retailers work while this is among the top retail management software.

5. Capturing Orders on Mobile To Increased In-Store Sales

In-store sales have been a game-changer for businesses while ensuring high profitability delivery. Retailers can use the best shop management software to create the best strategy, provide discounts, properly execute promotional activities, and improve customer experience.

The users could further increase in-store sales with the help of Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud while taking up orders with the help of their mobile phones. Thus, it helps assist the sales professionals while also guiding them with assorted product recommendations, which helps in having a complete picture of order management, price, promotions, and discounts.

6. Comprehensive Surveys And Data Collection

Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud enables organizations to have efficient retail management by ensuring promotions in real-time with the help of collaborations among multiple teams through a single and unified platform. In addition, this addition, this will bring in all the data in one place and help devise better strategies. In addition, the businesses can also leverage the Salesforce Consumer Cloud with the help of conducting surveys, gathering feedback over the same, and further collecting data from various stakeholders.

Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud Pricing

Regarding Pricing Strategy, Salesforce plays well by dividing the functionalities of its Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud into different categories.

Take a look at how Salesforce has kept the pricing of its Consumer Goods Cloud:

The upfront costs of Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud ultimately depend on your plan. With the increased number of users, you have to pay additional costs.

Final Thoughts

A daily schedule of all the assigned and prioritized store visits, with more suggested and needed activities, have been routed and mapped with the help of Salesforce Maps, all due to Consumer Goods Cloud. Representatives could use smartphone-optimized segments, storing multiple templates for planogram inspections, proper inventory planning, and processing return orders and surveys. Furthermore, this has allowed them to adequately capture the orders during all the store visits and collect product data such as pricing and quantity.

Therefore, Consumer Goods Cloud has been jam-packed with several tool sets designed for the smooth running of retail operations by ensuring the availability of products and promotions. The price has been kept in line with corporate standards.

To fully leverage the Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud, we are here to provide expert Salesforce CRM Consulting Services to ensure that the retail management software would help make the store perfect.