The Salesforce Manufacturing Summit took place in Atlanta, Georgia on January 10th, 2024, bringing together experts from the manufacturing industry including Salesforce customers, independent sales vendors, and systems integrator (SI) partners. As a tenured Salesforce partner, the Argano team’s key takeaway was the critical role of successful integration for businesses aiming at high-performance operations. Some notable Summit breakout sessions included:

• Manufacturing Cloud Partner Enablement
• Service Transformation in the Era of Generative AI
• CRH & MuleSoft: Accelerate AI & M&A Integration with API Reuse
• Enosix: Unlock SAP Data in Salesforce: How Trusted Data Transforms CX in Manufacturing

The summit showcased key industry challenges and integration solutions

Trends:

1. Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A): Market consolidation and adjacent market targeting continue to drive M&A activities. However, integrating and standardizing data across organizations can be complex, hindering cross-sell and upsell initiatives.
2. Internal inefficiencies: Siloed departments and manual interventions in cross-functional processes can result in duplicate or even inaccurate data. Solving data problems shortens sales cycles, improves customer experience, and supports compliance and growth to scale.
3. Supplier collaboration: Reliable supply chain management is crucial for accurate forecast planning. However, insufficient platform integrations often mean tedious manual collaboration efforts, disrupting ops and forecasting.
4. C360: Transforming the customer experience requires a comprehensive view of each customer’s products, service requests, and engagement history. Presenting accurate data with meaningful analysis poses architectural challenges for systems integrators.
5. Self-service: Heavy B2B reliance on manual interactions with sales reps results in long sales cycles and scalability challenges. High-performance organizations are integrating self-service portals for efficient, tailored customer experiences.

Relevant Salesforce Solutions and Features

• Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud: Enables sales agreements, advanced forecasting, partner collaboration, and enhanced customer and field service.
• MuleSoft: Facilitates efficient, appropriate data delivery in an event-driven landscape, with integration capacity for SAP and Oracle in addition to agnostic systems for manufacturing, warehouse, and supply chain management.
• Data Cloud: Consolidates and contextualizes different data categories to drive internal efficiencies, enable C360, and support customer self-service. Integrate with Einstein for predictive analytics and next-best actions.
• MuleSoft Accelerators for Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud and SAP S/4 Hana: Delivers faster time-to-value with foundational assets for common use cases

Argano’s Perspective

Argano understands the importance of meeting industry challenges with actionable solutions that drive high-performance outcomes. Our team of experts can assess business processes to uncover areas for streamlining, increasing margins, and transforming the customer experience. Whether your business has specific integration challenges or is ready to implement advanced use cases, Argano offers trusted solutions across the technology stack.

Contact us today to learn how we can help transform your business into a high-performance organization.