The 2023 calendar year had some fluctuating fortune for manufacturers, with demand up and down and high borrowing costs keeping everyone on their toes—but the economy overall improved as the year went on. Still, the manufacturing sector is seeking a more fruitful future with more talent retention, operational efficiency, supply chain visibility, and, most critically, revolutionized technology to fuel it all. 

Manufacturers in 2024 need to continue investing in transformative technologies that put end user service and partner sales management at the forefront of operations. For the year ahead, we predict these three themes will dominate the conversation in the manufacturing industry: 

Complex manufacturing sales will require CPQ more than ever before

We’ve seen manufacturers adopt CPQ more and more over the past several years as a top-priority add-on to CRM systems for managing what is very often a complex sales process. Salesforce’s Revenue Cloud is the perfect solution for fueling more seamless sales motions and increased revenue visibility no matter what your work orders, contracts, and sales model looks like. With CPQ, Billing, and Commerce support, you can automate even the most complex sales ops tasks and integrate with your extensive sales/service catalog for perfect quote configuration each and every time. 

Rebate management will surge in urgency

Manufacturing is a partner-based business, and that’s why pristine rebate management options are a must for manufacturers committed to driving more partner sales. We foresee more manufacturers looking to elevate their portal for channel partners and building them out with dynamic loyalty programs, collaboration functionality, and incentives, making it possible for any partner type in your network to work with you in sales. Partners enabled with rebate knowledge and management functionality are partners that elevate your brand, not just mention it. So whether it’s dealers, suppliers, or distributors, taking the typically cumbersome partner sales process and turning it into something intuitive and seamless is a surefire way to increase partner sales and yield the best profitability. 

Production line visibility will fuel forecasting demands

Manufacturing decision-makers want more visibility into supply and production lines, and that means production forecasting is really what they’re after. Being able to predict the long-term future of supply and demand is an impressive way to distinguish your operations from the next guy and stay ahead of the market’s fluctuations with ease. Using an integrated solution built on Salesforce, manufacturers can connect all relevant information from a variety of data sources and create a SSOT that fields dynamic production forecasting dashboards, so you can always know what’s going on from the supply chain and assembly line to inventory and beyond. 

To jumpstart your manufacturing organization’s drive toward any of these technical investments and beyond, reach out to Simplus. We’ve helped manufacturers like Komatsu, Mitsubishi, and Cognex transform their systems and revolutionize operations for better customer experiences, and we can help you too.