Salesforce has announced new products for consumer goods companies to help brands navigate increasing market complexity more easily.
In addition, the new offerings will drive profitable growth and greater customer loyalty through connected automation and expanded sales capabilities.
Salesforce explains that the consumer goods industry is grappling with several challenges, including cost increases due to inflation, tighter margins, and global supply chain issues.
It says combining these factors can decrease sales and diminish brand loyalty.
Furthermore, 70% of consumers turn to other options when their favorite brands are unavailable, making it vital for consumer goods companies to ensure they are resilient and efficient to deliver success to customers in turbulent economic conditions.
“The consumer goods industry is looking for digital solutions to make their operations more efficient and resilient as they face economic uncertainty,” said Salesforce senior vice president and general manager for sales and consumer goods Kishan Chetan.
“These innovations extend the power of Salesforce Customer 360, giving consumer goods companies a single, comprehensive platform to grow their business and, most importantly, a single source of truth for customer data to create more frictionless experiences and increase efficiency.”
The new Salesforce for Consumer Goods offering includes:
Trade promotion management
This offering improves trading activity and scheduling on a single, connected platform, meaning sales teams can manage promotion plans and allocate trading funds to increase revenue.
Clear visibility into trade budgets and dynamic funding also enables reps to ensure their promotions are accurate to avoid overspending.
Offline Penny Perfect Pricing
Consumer goods sellers need access to critical sales information in the field to deliver products anywhere, whether connectivity is available or not.
With this new offline app, reps can meet interaction goals and take orders anywhere by calculating the exact price based on available promotions, customer-specific discounts, and other pricing terms.
In addition, a completely offline field sales representative can take orders while viewing possible promotion-driven orders to help sell additional products.
They can also perform inventory tasks for their list of products and view options to reschedule visits to store locations, then sync those changes to Salesforce via their mobile device when they’re back online.
B2B commerce and marketplace
The new B2B Commerce Wholesale Retail app makes the most of wholesale purchases for consumer goods companies with new virtual showrooms, sales collaboration, and significant shopping cart orders.
Salesforce notes that the buyers and sellers landscape is currently fragmented. The new commerce market is bringing this landscape together to foster new revenue streams, allowing brands and distributors to expand their reach by accelerating the time it takes to add inventory to trading partners.
MuleSoft Accelerator for Consumer Goods
Salesforce recognizes the need for consumer goods companies to connect essential systems, data, and applications for holistic trade planning to accelerate innovation.
This includes trade promotion management, enterprise resource planning, and product information management systems.
This offering enables companies to have a single source of truth for data and quickly deploy trading and retail execution capabilities by leveraging existing data in traditional back-end systems.
As part of Salesforce Customer 360, all new offerings can be easily connected to the Salesforce Customer Data Platform.
In addition, by bringing first-party data from these offerings into a unified customer profile, consumer goods companies can more efficiently plan, activate, and optimize personalized engagement strategies for all customers.
This also applies to customers who want value or premium offers to increase their loyalty.
Salesforce is also leveraging its partner ecosystem to make the most of this offering with ISV partners such as PSignite, building on Salesforce’s value for consumer goods.
Consulting partners Accenture, PwC, Corrao Group, SBX Solutions, Peak & Peak, Everymind, and PSignite are experts in Salesforce for Consumer Goods and equipped to implement tailor-made solutions for individual customers.
Sanofi Consumer Healthcare produces consumer health products, including ACT mouthwash, Gold Bond, IcyHot, and Rolaids.
The company uses Salesforce to create a single source of truth for customer insights and personalize customer engagement.
“Our global health care system is interconnected like never before,” said Sanofi’s digital global head of consumer health care, Axel Adida.
“With Salesforce solutions like Consumer Goods Cloud, our teams can connect with retailers, healthcare providers, and most importantly, shoppers like never before, and use analytics tools to ensure people have access to world-class healthcare products when needed.”
