Portals and electronic data interchanges have long been how manufacturers communicate with partners, dealers, resellers and distributors along their extended value chains. The technology behind these solutions were built on legacy systems without modern features—built-in mobile, social, analytics and AI capabilities—that most companies in other industries have come to expect.

With one-third of the average company’s revenue coming from partners—and 75% in the manufacturing industry alone—isn’t it time to apply more innovative technology to such a critical business process?

That’s why we are delighted to announce Sales Cloud Lightning Partner Relationship Management (PRM), the new app that brings the world’s #1 CRM directly into a turnkey PRM app to make it fast and easy for companies to provide partners with everything they need to sell--all in one place. Sales Cloud Lightning PRM arms every manufacturing partner, distributor and reseller with the personalized tools and information they need to sell smarter and faster. This means that whether you’re an OEM manufacturer, a production supplier, or a distribution and aftermarket supplier, you can use Sales Cloud PRM to communicate and deliver solutions to your supply chain partners.

Salesforce’s industry-leading Sales Cloud Platform empowers indirect sales managers to improve forecasting and collecting cash faster with Salesforce Quote-to-Cash, as well as easily sharing marketing collateral with their partner network.

In a recent study of manufacturing professionals, more than half (52%) said their company has an increasingly difficult time competing based on product differentiation, a challenge that can be magnified for the channel. To solve this issue, Sales Cloud Lightning PRM brings together new and existing technologies, including:

• New Guided Setup Wizard makes it easy to configure, customize and deploy apps. Using the interactive wizard, indirect sales managers can configure lead distribution, deal registration, marketing development funds and Salesforce AppExchange Components, such as Xactly for compensation management and NetExam for learning management systems. And managers can automatically assign partners into tiers and provide targeted promotions and customized content based on those tiers.
• Lightning CMS Connect allows for easy creation and customization of branded partner experiences. Indirect sales managers can drag and drop website content, graphics and videos to keep experiences as up-to-date as a company's website.
• Einstein Content Recommendations uses machine learning tosurface the right information for channel reps. For example, if a partner views a new product description document, Einstein will recommend files such as logo graphics, product placement instructions and pricing documentation for that new product.
• Channel Marketing Automation extends the power of Marketing Cloud to every partner, enabling them to build, track and analyze email campaigns to deliver 1:1 customer journeys on any device, essentially turning them into their own marketing department.

This announcement extends Sales Cloud to empower manufacturing firms to accelerate their sales with smart, customizable apps for every sales function. For more information, see the full announcement here. And to learn more about Salesforce’s solutions in the manufacturing industry, visit www.salesforce.com/solutions/industries/manufacturing/overview/

1 Simple Rules for Making Alliances Work, by Johnathan Hughes and Jeff Weiss, HBR. Reprint R0711H

2 Alexander Group: Manufacturing: The Rise of Complex Selling Models