Quote to Cash – How Digital Supply Chain Management Helps Organizations?

Supply chain, a process by which we extract raw materials somewhere in the world and convert it to some form of a manufacturing process and deliver it to customers, this is a classic definitaion of supply chain and as most of us know everything is leaning towards digital, and supply chain does not exempt from this.

Salesforce introduced a digital and cloud-based platform for sharing information and allowing all stakeholders to visually monitor and view different aspects of the process from manufacturing standpoint to billing and invoicing customers.

In classic definition of “Supply chain” the input in the process is the raw material (in possession of a supplier) whereas in cloud industry or any professional services sector the vital substance is the human capital, and sales force is pioneer delivering a magnificent  and innovative service to High tech, telecom, and so many financial service organizations across the world to monitor and track the chain of supply from supplier to the consumer.

Salesforce journey is all about improving access to information through streamlining and automating information delivery and simplifying business process where we are referring to as supply chain process.

In a real world, the supply chain is a process that involves from manufacturing to delivering the final product to the customers, but what if you look at it from another viewpoint, where putting together a quote for a customer is a vital substance and first component in the chain  and invoicing the client is a last chain of the process from supply chain standpoint?

One of the innovations introduced by Salesforce to its customers was a cloud base Quote to Cash which to me is more like cloud-based internal supply chain management which enables growth and improves employee and customer satisfaction.

All the information from quotation stage through invoicing and billing is streamlined to the whole network of the employee within the organization and can be accessed by the high executive levels.This platform not only enables the employee to communicate effectively for the good of everyone but, it has capabilities to push information to (early warning visibility, root causes and potential risks and quick resolution) to executive management levels.
For example; if there are several of approvals required because of a particular pricing structure that is holding up some of the deals ,the higher executive manager may look at that knowing the business unit has not reached its target for the year and approves and overwrite the system and move the needle to get closer to the forecasted sales.

he/she can get access to more granular data including every single deal and see how that is impacting the business and share his input through chatter with the other members of the team of executives to get a collaborative educated decision.

streamline the process from order to fulfillment improve sales rep productivity, reduce the selling cycle time with the help of this web-based, cloud base platform.

Automation is essential in every industry from manufacturing standpoint to selling the final product to the end user, and Salesforce has helped companies to accelerate sharing the information in internal backstage supply chain process.

Lessons for Others

Digital supply chain allows us all to have transparency over data; we can all get the information wherever and  whenever we want which will result in faster responses due to world wide coverage and fast execution which really could be a winning factor in today’s competitive marketplace.

According to Mona, customer satisfaction and quality specialist ;

“Case management is today’s every company’s need to capture true customer’s journey; from the opportunity detection to resolving post sales issues. Salesforce dashboards and reports shows data trends clearly which is helpful in decision making and setting strategic goals”.

 

If you have concerns as to the accuracy of anything posted on this site, please send your concerns to Peter Carr, Program Director, Social Media for Business Performance.

---

References