Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud Overview

Manufacturing Cloud is a Salesforce tool that increases the ability to collaborate between sales and operations organizations within your Salesforce organization. This is a very new part of Salesforce as it was announced on September 16, 2019, and became available for use in October, so as a new Salesforce product expects, it will continuously evolve increasing functionality exponentially through 2020.

Two main features included that will be outlined later in this text are Sales Agreements and Account-based Forecasting, which will eliminate the need for tons of confusing spreadsheets and ERPs. Manufacturing Cloud is available in Developer, Enterprise, and Unlimited editions of Salesforce. Unfortunately, as of the release of this text, it is not available to test on the trailhead. Salesforce also has integrated Einstein Analytics, Community Cloud, and MuleSoft Anypoint with the Manufacturing cloud, and these integrations will also be outlined.

Features of Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud

Sales Agreements

This is the feature that brings together all the spreadsheets, ERP data, and order management with contract terms. Some of the main terms included are planning volumes and revenues, allowing the account and operation teams to see all customer info in one place. This also allows changes to be made to agreements easily since the changes will be reflected across all related objects. Account teams will have full access to the sales cycle seeing the real numbers for their order volume and can check the accuracy of their forecast. Sales agreements also bring simplification of renewal processes.

Account-Based Forecasting

The Account-Based Forecasting feature provides a complete view of current business and future opportunities allowing sales, operations, and finance teams to more accurately produce forecasts. The account teams can also add updates that are reflected in real-time so that forecasts can be adjusted without much fuss at all.

Integrations of Manufacturing Cloud

Einstein Analytics for Manufacturing

This feature allows users to incorporate current fields to determine/predict statistics such as account health, demand, product penetration, and sales agreement processes. All through identifying key trends and data sources, account managers can focus engagement on clients deemed as high risk by Einstein, and propose to upsell and cross-sell opportunities.

Community Cloud for Manufacturing

A new template specific for manufacturing is the main feature of this update—the template would be for a manufacturer extending sales agreements. The community provides the means of secure communication and collaboration on leads and opportunities.

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform

MuleSoft provides availability to integrate external databases with manufacturing cloud so the sales and operations teams can automate order-to-cash processes and create extensive forecasts with the external data.

Enabling Manufacturing Cloud

Enabling the manufacturing cloud is very easy; you need to be sure you enable the features and assign the appropriate permissions to your users needing to use features. First, let’s turn on the Sales Agreement and Account Forecasting features via the steps below.

1. Click Setup -> Search for Manufacturing -> Click Sales Agreements -> Toggle On
2. Click Setup -> Search for Manufacturing -> Click Account Forecasting -> Toggle On

After successfully toggling the features, let’s assign user permissions to use them as outlined below.

1. Click Setup -> Search for Permission Sets -> Click Manufacturing Sales Agreements -> Click Manage Assignments -> Click Add Assignments -> Assign both Manufacturing Account Forecast and Manufacturing Sales Agreements permission sets.
2. Ensure the user has Create, Read, Update, and Delete permissions on Account, Contact, Order, Opportunity, Contract, Product, and Price Book objects. 

Creating a Sales Agreement

After enabling the manufacturing cloud for our users and toggling sales agreements/account forecasting, it is time to practice using the new features. We will start by walking through the basics of creating a new sales agreement with out of the box functionality. After creating the agreement, we will go through adding some products to the agreement then finally relate our orders to agreements.

1. Click App Launcher -> Select Sales Agreements -> Click New -> Provide Unique Name -> Select Account -> Select Price Book -> Select Contact associated with Account -> Select status (always created in draft) -> Select Schedule Frequency -> Enter number for Schedule Count (number of schedules agreement is active for) -> Enter End Date
2. From your created Sales Agreement Record Page Click the Down Arrow -> Click Add Products -> Search for and Select Products -> Enter Sales Price as Per Unit -> Enter initial quantity -> Enter discount if applicable -> Save
3. Click setup -> Search for Manufacturing -> Click Sales Agreements -> Select one of the Actuals Calculation Mode options

Also if you want the latest quantities before the automatic update occurs follow the steps below.

• Navigate to Sales Agreement Record you want To be Updated -> Click Agreement Terms -> Click Recalculate Actuals -> Select either only for current schedule or all current and future schedules -> click apply. 

Inventory Visibility and Agreement Renewal

After you have enabled Manufacturing Cloud and started creating some sales agreements, it would make sense to show the product inventory so you can ensure the quantities being promised to the client. The steps below will show you how to map the inventory fields to your sales agreements page.

1. Click Setup -> Search for Manufacturing -> Click Sales Agreements -> Sales Agreement Product Schedule Metrics should be preset to Inventory Level -> Select Sales Agreement Product Metrics (Total inventory recommended)
2. Click Setup -> Search for Manufacturing -> Click Sales Agreements -> Move Inventory Level to Selected Metrics -> Optionally move Planned Amount, Forecasted Quantity, Forecasted Amount, and Discount Percentage from selected to available (this will hide these metrics) -> Change Order of Metrics with Up and Down arrow

Now let’s say we have a client that would like to renew their sales agreement for another year. We can do that very quickly in the manufacturing cloud by following the steps below.

1. From Sales Agreements Click the Down Arrow -> Click Renew -> Enter name for Renewal -> Select start date -> save changes.
2. From details tab -> look at Renewal Information Section -> Click Renewed-From Sales Agreement and Renewed-To Sales Agreement to see the sales agreement records.

Setting up Forecasts and Formulas

It is very important to determine a way to project product quantities and revenues accurately, and this can be done very quickly with the Manufacturing Cloud. First, we need to set up Forecasts, which can be done with the steps outlined below.

• Click Setup -> Search for Manufacturing -> Click Account Forecasting -> Choose Forecast Frequency -> Enter start period -> Enter display duration -> Select Adjustment Frequency (manual adjustment frequency) -> Enter Adjustment Period in Days (number of days allotted for edits) -> Select an Option for Allow Adjustments (start or end)

Now that we’ve set up forecasts, let’s learn how to create formulas for them to achieve more advanced analytics for our teams. To create formulas for your forecasts, follow the steps below.

1. Click Setup -> Search for Manufacturing -> Click Account Forecasting -> Click Add Formula -> Choose Quantity or Revenue -> Enter formula with a combination of fields and mathematical operators -> Enter Start and End Period -> Click Save
2. You can add multiple formulas! To add another click Add Formula and Repeat above steps.

Have any questions about the Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud? Reach out to our team at any time!