How Salesforce Field Service and Manufacturing Cloud Support the Transition to a More Circular Economy
In an age when a brand’s message is just as important as its products or service, how can manufacturers lead through change?
On an annual basis, national leaders meet at the G7 summit to discuss global topics such as rising atmospheric temperatures, the causes of such, and the actions that need to be taken to prevent further disruption. Part of the solution for manufacturers is to design and produce a more sustainable product, contributing to a broader shift to a more circular economy.
To put it simply, a circular economy is “a model of production and consumption, which involves sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing and recycling existing materials and products as long as possible". For manufacturers, this could result in changes to how you research and develop the product, how you actively manage the product while in use, how you retire the product, and how you get performance information back to R&D for the next iteration of the product. The financial and operational impacts of this change have the potential to be large if the solutions for getting to this new lifecycle model are not approached strategically. This is where NeuraFlash, partnered with Salesforce, ServiceMax, DocuSign, and AWS can advise and implement a cost-effective solution, facilitate organization-wide change management, and measure success based on outcomes.
How do we design the next generation of sustainability-forward products?
A large part of designing the next generation of products will come from understanding how the product is performing in the field today with regards to the rate of wear and degradation. As the product transitions to a managed Asset in the field, Salesforce Field Service (SFS) offers a range of Asset centric features to support serviceability and connectivity. Actively taking in asset data from field agents, customers, and the actual assets themselves through mechanisms such as IoT and Telemetry, can all be managed through SFS and supporting products, such as Asset360. In understanding the service life of the product, you can either design a product to combat regular wear modes or design a product with the intent to be serviceable.
How do we design with the customer in mind?
A large part of a successful product is incorporating the voice of the customer (VOC) into the design process. The goal should be to continuously understand VOC throughout the managed assets lifecycle with the intent of increasing overall usability and likability through iterative design. Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud for Service offers an out-of-the-box Survey feature to help gather VOC frequently through automated processes, at scale. This takes a traditionally large task and automates it to fire in standard intervals or when standard support processes are completed (i.e. Work Order complete). Adding an analytics package to this, such as Tableau CRM, we can quickly start to add value to sales and marketing teams by delivering product acceptance trends to help support more targeted selling strategies.
How do we effectively service a product, designed to be serviced?
This is where SFS truly differentiates itself from any other asset-centric field service management tool. SFS facilitates foundational asset management service requirements such as warranties, service contracts, maintenance plans, and work orders. Additionally, using conditional and usage-based maintenance criteria combined with the power of AI, SFS can now identify the needs for service at the optional time as a form of predictive maintenance. Through leveraging all asset servicing features within SFS you now have a solution for proactive, reactive, preventative, and predictive maintenance throughout the lifecycle of your asset.
How do we measure the revenue impact of a larger service program?
Leveraging Service Forecasting Framework and Digital Process Automation (DPA) that comes with Manufacturing Cloud for Service, you can build a service forecasting model that allows you to understand the overall cost and profit of service, and parts demand across your organization. This allows accounting and finance to understand potential revenue, manufacturing operations to understand parts demand, and service teams to understand future capacity requirements. This feature coupled with TCRM can also provide crucial insights for the development of new revenue streams for formal service offerings.
Why would we invest in a new service model?
Ultimately, to sustain the greater goal of a more circular economy, there needs to be an incentive for both the business providing the product/service and the customer receiving the product/service. SFS combined with Manufacturing Cloud for Service is the foundation for accomplishing both of these goals. Leveraging rebate is a popular option to incentivize customer loyalty and maintenance adherence. Manufacturing Cloud offers robust Rebate Management features to help businesses create custom rebate programs quickly. New service revenue models will also be a crucial piece in sustaining growth. SFS offers a vast set of features to create new service options to help expand monetized service offerings.
Why partner with NeuraFlash?
NeuraFlash offers a wide range of product expertise and professional services tailored to service transformations for manufacturers. If you don’t quite know where to start, NeuraFlash’s Advisory Services team helps your business develop strategic digital transformation roadmaps to achieve your short-term goals and long-term visions. If there is a concern about how the transition to a new system will go with your team(s), NeuraFlash provides a truly differentiating Change Management program to facilitate this transition. And finally, all of this is considered in implementing your solution while taking a system-user and customer-centric design approach, building something that is truly a solution tailored to your business.
Want to build a brighter future together? Contact us today!
References:
“Circular economy: definition, importance and benefits | News | European Parliament.” European Parliament, 2 December 2015, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/economy/20151201STO05603/circular-economy-definition-importance-and-benefits. Accessed 12 April 2022.
