Guide to Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud

Manufacturing businesses have consistently set a high bar for excellence and innovation. The industry contributes significantly to the global economy, representing about 17.5% of world Gross Domestic Product (GDP). To maintain and grow this success, manufacturers must evolve, embracing new technologies to solve persistent challenges like scattered knowledge, high-margin pressure, constrained workforces, and data complexity.

A new era of innovation is transforming the way manufacturers operate. It focuses on leveraging modern data and technology, including artificial intelligence (AI), to move away from tech stacks with limitations that many companies use now toward solutions that empower employees and accelerate innovation. This shift has paved the way for the Agentic Enterprise, an operating model which connects the entire value chain—humans, agents, assets, apps, and data—in a completely new way.

A manufacturing cloud is a digital technology platform and customer relationship management (CRM) system designed specifically for the manufacturing industry. It helps manufacturers manage their complex operations outside of the shop floor. These cloud-based systems connect different aspects of the business—from sales and service to assets and partners—to provide a unified view of the customer, asset, and business operations.

A manufacturing cloud typically operates as an engagement layer that unlocks data from traditional Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems or Internet of Things (IoT) platforms. It brings together structured and unstructured data from across the enterprise, to simplify data complexity and streamline processes. It integrates key areas like sales and operations, field service, asset maintenance, and customer service with data on products, customers, suppliers, partners, and assets. The goal is to bring a level of precision and personalization to every customer and employee interaction, mirroring the high standards manufacturers already apply to their production processes.

Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud, now known as Agentforce Manufacturing, is a purpose-built platform that allows manufacturers to automate processes, modernize sales operations, deliver personalized service, and simplify channel engagement. It offers a deeply unified, trusted, and open platform that connects humans, agents, apps, and data. The platform is easy to use, supporting both no-code and low-code development.

Agentforce 360 for Manufacturing leverages AI and data to transform sales, channel engagement, and service experiences. The Agentforce 360 platform includes core components like a trust layer, deep context control, a command center for orchestration, and open APIs that support any AI model. This powerful combination helps drive profitable margins in sales, simplify communication with partners, and increase asset uptime in service.

Manufacturing organizations can achieve substantial benefits by implementing a specialized platform like Manufacturing Cloud. The technology is designed to address key industry challenges, helping companies move toward an agentic enterprise model. Examples include:

The platform helps sales teams work more efficiently by allowing them to focus on higher margin activities, such as upsell and cross-sell opportunities. It enables proactive selling and automates traditionally manual tasks like contract generation. Furthermore, AI for demand forecasting can lead to significant improvements in forecast accuracy.

Manufacturing Cloud simplifies channel engagement by promoting close collaboration with suppliers, distributors, and channel partners. It helps identify "white space" opportunities and enables personalized communications across the channel. Tools like Channel Revenue Management give partners transparency on rebate payouts, which helps improve trust and loyalty.

The platform helps improve service experiences by focusing on three key metrics: asset uptime, increased service revenue, and reduced operation costs. For example, the use of AI has been associated with an expected 30% increase in support productivity for one company. Features such as Asset Service Management maximize asset uptime through proactive service and enable real-time remote actions.

Operational staff can benefit from process automation, such as automated order management and frictionless business actions. Service professionals report that customer expectations are higher than they once were. The platform addresses this by enabling always-on service and automated work orders for field service. By streamlining internal processes, the platform reduces overhead costs across the business.

A major challenge for manufacturers is using multiple disparate systems that do not seamlessly connect. Users often need to toggle between many systems and screens to find the information they’re looking for, which reduces productivity and may lead to duplicate or inaccurate information. Manufacturing Cloud solves this by serving as a unified platform that connects various teams, data, and systems. It integrates essential functions like sales and operations planning with back-office databases so that users have a complete view of information that reduces administrative work and fosters increased productivity.

Manufacturing Cloud functions by creating a single, connected ecosystem across the manufacturing value chain, using data models and business processes specifically designed for the industry. This is often facilitated by an "Agentic" approach, where manufacturing AI agents act on data and orchestrate workflows across various systems.

The process can be understood in these key steps:

• Integrate Teams and Systems: The platform unifies the functions of different teams—like Sales & Operations, Field Service, and Customer Service—with systems such as ERP, IoT, and Demand Planning.
• Centralize Data and Experiences: It establishes a 360-degree view by consolidating information on products, customers, suppliers, partners, and assets. This gives a complete, single source of truth.
• Apply Agentforce AI and Automation: AI agents, which are a core part of Agentforce Manufacturing, are deployed to automate rule-based processes, augment employees, and personalize customer interactions.
• Drive Process Transformation: The platform uses this unified view and automation to drive specific business outcomes, such as modernizing sales excellence, simplifying channel engagement, and transforming service experiences.
• Maintain Trust and Security: The entire operation is governed by a trust layer and deep context control, ensuring that data privacy and ethical AI practices are maintained across the open ecosystem.

Manufacturing Cloud is equipped with features designed to address the specific needs of different manufacturing sectors, including made-to-stock, made-to-order, asset-centric, and process manufacturers.

• Sales Agreement Management: This feature helps sales teams grow revenue by providing summaries of agreements and automating tasks like scheduling and bulk updates. It allows for real-time tracking of actual versus committed revenue to quickly spot non-compliance.
• Asset Service Management: Manufacturers can boost service rep productivity and help customers maximize their asset uptime and by enabling proactive service management. It drives asset efficiency through real-time remote actions. This feature also enhances warranty management.
• Depot Repair & Inventory Management: Manufacturers can improve service efficiency by creating work orders directly from return orders. It provides vital inventory visibility throughout the entire repair process, helping to drive efficiencies in spare parts and inventory management.
• Sales Concierge: This capability empowers sales representatives to deliver a targeted experience for channel partners by providing a unified, comprehensive customer view. It includes tools for summarizing accounts, viewing asset information, and suggesting recommended actions.
• Channel Revenue Management: This feature gives partners transparency on how rebate payouts are generated and facilitates the troubleshooting of any related issues. Key capabilities include Rebate Payout Insight and Channel Inventory Tracking. It helps drive incentives with rebates and ship-and-debit.
• Remote Action Orchestration: This feature accelerates time to value by providing a comprehensive lifecycle management solution encompassing telemetry definitions, version control, and declarative actions. Automatically generate fulfillment UIs and processes, including automated responses to various telematics events.
• Sample Management: Streamline operations by centralizing all sample requests, inventory, and tracking within a single, cohesive system. This centralization is enhanced by the automation of complex intake, tracking, and approval workflows, which simplifies processes and allows for effective sample performance monitoring.
• Advanced Forecasting: Create a unified, holistic sales forecast by capturing predicted volumes and revenue streams across both new and run-rate business. Facilitate collaboration across product, operations, sales teams, and distribution partners to surface and leverage key insights, leading to more accurate forecasts and measurable performance over time.
• Program Based Business Management: Drive sales excellence by aligning manufacturing program planning and execution, which includes estimating market potential, managing sales agreements, tracking performance, and facilitating customer collaboration for refined forecasts. Enable the management of third-party demand streams by calculating derived component demand patterns based on industry and customer signals such as IHS and Dodge. Provide improved visibility into customer margins and the impact of volume changes on fixed cost allocations, allowing for better understanding of volume impacts.
• Visit Management: Enable effective planning of customer and partner visits by allowing users to set up detailed action plans, location details, priorities, and track visit history and key metrics. Field representatives can efficiently manage these visits via a mobile app, capturing necessary metrics, completing tasks, and adding notes while navigating to locations.
• Product Catalog Management: Streamline operations and mitigate risks by managing catalogs at scale, ensuring a single source of truth for products and assets with a robust hierarchy and attribute management. Incorporate attributes into sales agreements to manage intricate details. This comprehensive product catalog management feature boosts sales opportunities and reduces errors through product rules for accurate configurations, while leveraging product bundles to enhance upsell and cross-sell potential.
• Warranty Management: Define tailored programs based on duration, usage limits, and covered parts, while automating claim approvals through configurable business rules to streamline processes for finance and claim teams. Improve payout visibility by empowering partners and customers to submit claims easily via APIs or portals, and generate accurate work orders with entitlement-based pricing through a guided flow. Service technicians benefit from a mobile-friendly workflow, enabling them to quickly generate, send, and manage customer approvals for estimates, thereby enhancing overall efficiency and satisfaction.

Manufacturers across various verticals leverage the platform to tackle industry-specific challenges and drive business growth

• Modernize Commercial Operations: This use case focuses on driving profitability excellence across the entire selling process. Manufacturers who deal in high-volume, long-term contracts benefit from features like Sales Agreements, which allow them to manage their complete book of business and plan and align operational forecasts to reduce deviations. The platform helps modernize selling by facilitating activate configure price quote processes (CPQ) and enabling self-service and automation, including self-service ordering for customers and partners and streamlining sample management to accelerate time-to-market
• Transform the Service Experience: This use case focuses on increasing customer satisfaction and service revenue by automating service management and connecting assets. Manufacturers often have high demand for effective field service and asset maintenance. With asset service management, they can use proactive service to predict maintenance needs and maximize asset uptime. Key capabilities include Guided Customer Support & Field Service, Returns, Recalls & Depot Repair, and reduced operational cost with entire Warranty Lifecycle Management. The platform helps drive efficiencies with spare parts and inventory management and enables proactive service to predict maintenance needs and maximize asset uptime.
• Simplify Channel Engagement: This use case focuses on streamlining the partner journey to foster loyalty and growth. Manufacturers can streamline the quote-to-order process and promote close collaboration with distributors and partners. Channel Revenue Management gives partners transparency on how rebate payouts are generated and facilitates troubleshooting. This helps drive incentives with rebates and ship and debit. Sales Concierge empowers sales representatives to deliver a targeted partner experience. The entire solution leverages intelligent automation to enhance partner communication and efficiency.

The next era of innovation for manufacturers is the Agentic Enterprise. It is possible to transform your organization today with purpose-built capabilities that automate processes, modernize operations, and deliver personalized service. Start your free trial of Manufacturing Cloud to experience the power of Agentforce 360 for Manufacturing.