Salesforce Introduces Revenue Cloud
Salesforce today launched Revenue Cloud, which brings together Salesforce's Configure, Price, and Quote (CPQ) and Billing, Partner Relationship Management, and B2B Commerce solutions as part of the Salesforce Customer 360 platform.
Revenue Cloud will allow companies to connect sales, partner, operations, and finance teams to create a single source of truth, from purchase to renewal to revenue recognition.
With Revenue Cloud, businesses can jump across sales channels with direct sales, partners and digital storefronts; fill their online carts on their own; and then reach out to sales reps to ask questions or request discounts. Reps will already have a complete understanding of customers' product histories and online interactions.
A new CPQ-B2B Commerce connector allows businesses to customize digital storefronts for complex B2B selling and add customizable, configurable pricing to digital carts for self-service.
Revenue Cloud draws on technology from Salesforce's acquisition of Vlocity to provide industry-specific solutions for unique workflows related to revenue, like managing ad inventory or content syndications for media companies.
With Multi-Cloud Billing, companies can create revenue streams from other clouds on a single platform. And with Revenue Cloud Quick Starts, businesses can launch subscription offerings from start to finish.
Revenue Cloud also includes automation for approvals, data reconciliation, transcription of orders from one system to another, validating sales orders, and consolidating invoices.
A new Customer Asset Lifecycle Management tool shows a visual dashboard of everything customers purchased, keeping track of all contract amendments over time and open balances. Real-time tracking against metrics like customer lifetime value, net revenue retention, and monthly recurring revenue help teams align and make strategic decisions on where to cut costs or what kinds of customers to target. Integrations to ERP systems make revenue data actionable by adjusting go-to-market strategies or providing discounting guidance.
Business communications and customer engagement solutions provider Podium was an early adopter of Revenue Cloud, with it, the company simplified its product catalogue from several hundred down to 30 products and reduced the time to develop quotes by 80 percent Podium also automated onboarding and provisioning once a deal was signed, and customers could upgrade or add products on their own.
With Salesforce, Podium saw the average deal size increase by $45 per month. And when COVID-19 hit, Podium was able to create a new product SKU in less than a week.
"Podium helps small businesses interact and communicate with their customers, and COVID-19 hit our customers hard. The way in which consumers now expect to interact with a local business has fundamentally changed. With Salesforce, we were able to quickly launch new products to support new needs, such as curbside pick-up," said Jason Taylor, chief information officer of Podium, in a statement. "Having that single source of truth for Podium gives us a strategic advantage because we can answer questions and navigate the ever-changing market we're in faster than anyone else."
Salesforce partnerships with Docusign, Digital Route, and Avalara allow businesses to extend Revenue Cloud to manage the entire revenue management process.