Introduction
Across the channels, one of the most important topics discussed frequently is how to increase the profitability of digital enterprises. Enterprises have been frantically and desperately trying to plug in novel ideas to achieve their established tactical and strategic targets. Salesforce’s product ‘Revenue Cloud’ could just get you a step closer to achieve your goals and bring your business a leap ahead of your competitors.
Revenue Cloud – An Overview
Revenue cloud is a consolidated software for revenue management that covers the entire cycle from product to cash covering all areas of quote, subscriptions and billing. The CPQ journey entails structures and guardrails for reps, generating quotes with a single click, expanding as necessary with new revenue models, automating renewals, streamlining contract amendments and gaining a unified view of revenue pipeline which ensures a seamless journey from product selection to order generation. The billing capabilities comprise of understanding customer history, consolidating invoice, providing flexible payment terms, automating payments and making collections and dunning to ensure prompt cash collection.
The module is built on the Salesforce Lightning platform with the standard Salesforce features and functions like data modeling, integration options with other systems, standard integration with exchange and Gmail, access permissions, process automations etc. It becomes now easier for the companies to digitally map process chains, thereby simplifying and automating to an extent. With Revenue Cloud, irrespective of the revenue model, customer can ensure robust business growth. Toggling the product with in-house Einstein and Tableau also leverages AI and analytical capabilities. This combination takes the customer journey to next innovative level by entering new dimensions like discount guidance, product recommendation, pay-as-you-go capabilities etc. When integrated intelligently with external systems, the possibilities with revenue cloud are endless.
Components of Revenue Cloud
Revenue cloud comprises of two primary portions at the moment – CPQ and Billing. CPQ is responsible for creating seamless product-to-order processes. To begin with, it helps Sales representatives choose the right product as per customer’s needs through step-by-step configuration which is called a quote-line editor. Representatives can then leverage the underlying AI logic and can share the appropriate product recommendation to the customer. The quote generated through the system will not have manual errors caused by copy-paste. The workflows like approval processes streamline approvals by building concurrent approvals. This helps in application of discounts right from the beginning and customers can not cherry pick and ask for discounts as all discounts are already approved in the system. This makes the process easier and doesn’t confuse Sales rep and the customer. CPQ also provides usage, consumption, subscription and milestone based billing as per customer demands to broaden the billing perspective as per new revenue models. With Revenue Cloud, Sales leaders can now get an easy and unified view of revenue pipeline including current deal and renewal opportunities. Sales order validation time will reduce by a large extent as testimony by multiple Salesforce Revenue Cloud clients.
Along with CPQ, the other portion of Revenue Cloud package includes billing capabilities which assists in collecting cash faster by unifying Sales and Finance with more complex billing data. If a customer misses on the billing capability of Revenue Cloud and just uses CPQ, he would have to connect to an ERP for the billing capabilities and it would make things harder because of extra layer of integration, additional software, more user training etc. Because of the direct, seamless connection between CPQ and Billing, invoice generation is quicker ultimately making customer happier. Billing capability also helps in providing a 360-degree view by understanding customer’s history like bill payment punctuality, debts, past deals etc. Billing also provides flexible payment plans, milestone-based billing, consolidated payments and automatic debits. An important feature that can be customized on billing using opensource AppExchange packages is for Collections and Dunning. These packages can be connected to out-of-the-box Salesforce and with the help of custom rules and workflows, dunning methods like regular reminders and other automations can be incorporated.
Evolution of Revenue Cloud
With the latest developments and recently introduced enhancements, Revenue Cloud is to be collated with subscription management to reap best benefits. With subscriptions, customers generate recurring revenue for the company and user-friendly self-service portal makes sure that the control is with the customer even though Sales representatives can anytime step in to help them close deals faster. All of this improves customer relationship and increases profitability.
The journey of Revenue Cloud has been long and interesting, and its evolution started with a company named ‘Invoice IT’ which was leader in billing functionality for CRM software until its acquisition by Steelbricks which had a custom CPQ software built on Salesforce’s platform. Together it made a robust product that met market needs of that time. However, with growing competition, Steelbricks had to be merged into Salesforce making it a leader in CPQ and Billing areas. Salesforce CPQ and Billing (with base from above products) have evolved today into a broader product called Salesforce Revenue Cloud with regular updates keeping note of current market needs like analytics, AI, automation etc.
Conclusion
This product has created quite a lot of market hype recently and with Salesforce Revenue Cloud, we can bring in every point in the customer journey from quote to product to cash on a single platform, thereby creating a Monetization Ecosystem for an organization implementing this product. This is also a single platform that helps in adapting new strategies for the business and making it easier to connect to internal and external systems. By aligning with the Customer 360 methodology of Salesforce, Customer is at the center of revenue lifecycle, making sure the business reaches new heights.
