Guide to Consumer Goods Cloud

The consumer goods industry faces a dynamic environment, with new challenges emerging constantly, from regulatory shifts and tariffs to mergers and divestitures. Today, many consumer goods leaders feel a new strategy is necessary to compete effectively. Profitable growth remains difficult to achieve. Legacy enterprises often suffer from siloed teams, inconsistent brand experiences, and a constant battle for shelf space.

Achieving future success requires adapting to a new reality. The next generation of consumer goods companies is moving towards a model of augmented humans, elevated experiences, and increased growth. This shift demands a powerful technology platform that connects the entire enterprise. Consumer Goods Cloud is designed to address these challenges, and it delivers a comprehensive solution to help unlock that profitable growth.

A consumer goods cloud is a specialized, industry-focused platform that provides the tools necessary to manage the complete sales, planning, execution, and service operations for a consumer packaged goods (CPG) company. It is designed to replace disconnected legacy systems and unify siloed teams. By centralizing essential business data and processes, a consumer goods cloud enables companies to move from inconsistent experiences to elevated experiences.

The goal of a consumer goods cloud is to help enterprises adapt to instability and move toward becoming what Salesforce calls an "Agentic Enterprise." This new reality involves using intelligent, connected technology—known as agents—to automate manual work, generate insights, and enable every team member to deliver exceptional service and drive sales growth. These systems connect the front office on a single platform to turn data into actionable insights and build a complete view of the customer.

Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud is a comprehensive, integrated platform built to help consumer goods companies unlock profitable growth by connecting people, agents, applications, and data. Now known as Agentforce Consumer Goods, it represents the future vision for the industry, emphasizing a seamlessly-connected, agent-driven, and data-rich system that produces actionable insights.

Agentforce Consumer Goods is built on the Agentforce 360 Platform, which integrates various components like Marketing, Commerce, Sales, Service, and Supply Chain, along with a dedicated consumer goods industry data model and business processes. This integration is critical for breaking down organizational silos and providing a single, complete view of the customer across all touchpoints, from Key Account Management to Customer Service. It uses intelligent agents to transform operations and help teams move past the inefficiencies of siloed data and manual work.

Consumer Goods Cloud delivers substantial benefits across the organization, enabling teams to operate more efficiently and strategically. Some examples include:

One major benefit is the ability to significantly increase self-service capabilities for customers. For simple cases, customers can quickly find answers and manage their needs without constant human intervention. For more complex cases, Consumer Goods Cloud provides a complete view of the customer and tools to take quick action. This helps prevent negative interactions that can cost a company both customer trust and revenue.

Trade promotions represent a significant annual investment for consumer goods companies, yet a large percentage of promotions fail to generate a return or go unevaluated due to limited insights. Consumer Goods Cloud introduces tools like the TPM Agent and Accruals Management to help improve the effectiveness of these trade promotions. The platform surfaces insights on top-performing promotions and harmonizes promotion and store information to drive a higher return on investment.

Key Account Management teams often struggle to optimize customer investments due to a lack of coordinated information. The integrated platform offers Performance Insights and Promotion Assistance to Key Account Managers. By connecting the front office, teams gain a comprehensive view of the customer and combine promotion and marketing signals for better decision-making. This allows teams to better target investments and manage complex processes like claims matching and processing.

The pursuit of the "perfect store" can be costly and inefficient for field execution teams. The platform provides tools for Visit Preparation, Visit Execution Guidance, and Compliance Insights, which help field reps optimize their store visits. Instead of drowning in manual tasks and reporting, field teams can take advantage of Visit Summarization and new capabilities like the Retail Execution Agent for a more intelligent and efficient "perfect store" execution.

For Territory Sales teams, the platform turns data into proactive sales opportunities. Sellers are no longer slowed down by manual reporting. Instead, they receive Up-sell and Cross-sell Recommendations, alongside tools for Forecast Creation and Opportunity Creation. This focus on data-driven guidance and automation allows sales teams to spend more time selling and less time managing administrative tasks.

Consumer Goods Cloud transforms the consumer goods operation by acting as a single, unified source of intelligence and action, eliminating the disconnects that have traditionally hindered profitable growth. It operates by connecting disparate data sources and processes across the entire commercial operation.

The core mechanics of the platform include the following steps:

• Connecting Data Across Silos: The platform breaks down data silos by integrating various information sources, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) data, syndicated purchase data, retail media data, demographic data, and store information. This connected data approach is fundamental to creating a unified view of the customer and the operation.
• Unifying the Front Office: The platform fully integrates the front office—including Key Account Management, Territory Sales, Field Execution, and Customer Service—onto one connected platform. This unification reduces internal silos and allows teams to share a common, accurate understanding of customer investments, promotions, and service history.
• Applying Industry-Specific Intelligence: The solution includes a Consumer Goods Industry Data Model and pre-built CG Business Processes, along with specialized CG Industry Agents. This industry focus means the platform speaks the language of consumer goods and is purpose-built to address industry challenges, such as optimizing promotion ROI and achieving intelligent retail execution.
• Driving Actions with Agentforce: Intelligent agents are embedded into the workflow to automate routine tasks, provide in-the-moment guidance, and proactively surface insights. Examples include Promotion Recommendations for key account managers, Visit Execution Guidance for field reps, and Account Summarization for service agents.
• Continuous Improvement through Analytics: Through tools like Tableau and CRM Analytics, data is continuously turned into actionable insights. This process allows for constant monitoring of key metrics, such as compliance and promotion performance, ensuring that consumer goods companies can adapt quickly and maintain an elevated customer experience.

The solution offers a suite of features that address the full spectrum of commercial operations for a consumer goods company such as:

• Trade Promotion Management (TPM): This feature helps to harmonize promotion and store information, reduce the manual effort involved in creating promotions, and surface insights on top-performing promotions to increase promotion ROI.
• Retail Execution: This feature supports the goal of perfect omni-channel execution. It enables intelligent perfect store execution by providing visit preparation, execution guidance, and compliance insights to field teams. It works with a hybrid mobile app for use in the field.
• Consumer Goods Data Model: This feature ensures that the entire enterprise is working from the same, complete, and accurate set of information. By integrating data lakes, ERP data, retail media data, and more, it breaks down data silos and powers the intelligent agents and analytics.
• Omni-Channel Service Capabilities: The platform provides 24/7 seamless service for customers. It includes features like Account Summarization and Asset Monitoring for proactive maintenance, increasing the self-service rate and ensuring service is consistent across all touchpoints.

Consumer Goods Cloud is designed to solve complex, real-world business challenges across the industry. Some examples include:

Consumer goods companies can use the platform to move away from limited insights and underperforming promotions. The TPM Agent and related tools allow them to build promotion and execution programs more effectively. For example, a CPG company could use the system to harmonize promotion and store data, then deploy the TPM Agent to instantly surface insights on which promotions are generating the best return on investment. This shift from manual to agent-driven promotion management can directly lead to increased promotion ROI.

Retail execution teams often struggle with the cost and inefficiency of pursuing the perfect store. The platform, with features like the Retail Execution Agent, enables intelligent, insights-driven execution. A field representative can use the mobile app to receive guidance on the most optimal visit preparation and in-store execution, ensuring the right products are on the shelf and maximizing compliance. This is particularly valuable as brands still struggle with an omni-channel strategy.

Companies that work with a network of bottlers or retailers can use the platform to provide a shared view of every customer interaction and streamline ordering. A business can leverage B2B Commerce to offer a self-service portal, allowing retailers to process orders 24/7. MuleSoft integration ensures that systems are connected so that bottlers can serve retailers faster, keeping customers stocked with the right products and handling a high volume of orders per week.

The shift toward an Agentic Enterprise is not a future possibility; it is the new reality. Consumer goods leaders who adopt this integrated, agent-driven approach are best positioned to unlock profitable growth and gain a competitive edge. Explore the potential of Agentforce Consumer Goods, formerly known as Consumer Goods Cloud, and learn more about becoming an Agentic Enterprise today.