Last week, our team attended Salesforce’s largest conference, Dreamforce, in San Francisco. For many attendees, it was the first time in three years that they were able to gather in-person with peers and clients. During the three-day conference, 40,000 Salesforce partners, clients, and vendors got together to hear from Salesforce leadership, industry experts, and a handful of celebrities, as well as get hands-on experience with Salesforce platforms.

As a leader in Salesforce solutions for the Manufacturing and Automotive industries, I want to share with you some key learnings from Dreamforce.

 

Trends in the Automotive Industry

As in every industry, automotive customer expectations continue to change, and their expectations are higher than ever before. According to Salesforce’s recent Trends in Automotive industry report, 73% of customers expect personalized experiences from automotive companies.

A few trends we’re seeing across the automotive industry include:

Connected and electric vehicles. Every new car is now a connected car, and there’s so much data available (usage and vehicle) that you can take advantage of. But the question is how do you use it.
New selling models. The lines are blurring between automobile makers and dealers, compounding who owns the customer relationship.
Emerging services, subscriptions, and charging
Sustainability

These trends have created a fragmented landscape, which has led to a fragmented customer experience. Salesforce’s goal is to give customer-facing teams one source of truth to provide seamless customer experience, and automotive leaders are thinking about not just the Customer 360, but the driver 360 as well.

 

Salesforce Automotive Cloud

At Dreamforce, Salesforce announced the release of its Automotive Cloud, which enables OEMs, retailers, suppliers, and mobility services to connect with their customers in new ways. With the new Salesforce Genie, your automotive customers can use connected, streamlined data to engage customers and deliver even more personalized experiences. Automotive Cloud will be generally available on Oct. 17.

 

Connect the Value Chain

For manufacturers and automotive clients, today’s challenges include supply chain disruptions, chip shortages, inflation, talent needs, and ESG regulations. We’re entering the age of doing more with less. How do you help your clients address these challenges?

The answer is data – that’s what will drive your business forward. Connected cars and products will help drive new experiences, business models, and revenue streams, and data is the foundation for all of these. Salesforce is bringing the data-first vision to life with Salesforce Genie, integrating data into the Customer 360 platform.

We heard from FordPro CTO Rahul Singh about how having a data-first mindset is transforming the customer needs at Ford. In the industry, companies like Ford are innovating with connected cars, but are working with fragmented data sets. With Salesforce, they were able to build a data-first foundation and implement CX journey maps to create a 360-customer view.

Want to learn more? Tune into the Manufacturing and Automotive keynote from Dreamforce via Salesforce+.

 

Modernizing Manufacturing Operations with Sales Cloud

Around 2008, the President and CEO of Salesforce customer Mipox noticed a huge decrease in profits, and went on a journey to figure out why. He identified a number of challenges, but realized that the biggest issue was siloed data and siloed communication.

By adopting Salesforce Manufacturing Sales Cloud, Mipox was able to break down communication barriers and unlock data. Salesforce enabled Mipox to take its digital transformation journey up a notch and evolve.

To hear more about the Mipox journey, tune into the Dreamforce breakout session How to Modernize Commercial Operations in Manufacturing via Salesforce+.

 

Interested in More Dreamforce ’22 Content?

Hear from Johnathon Rademacher, Salesforce Principal, as he recaps his key takeaways from Dreamforce.

If you weren’t able to attend Dreamforce in-person, or want to revisit some of the sessions, you can sign up for Salesforce+ for free to get access to content on-demand.

 

Perficient + Salesforce

We are a Salesforce Partner with more than two decades of experience delivering digital solutions in the manufacturing, automotive, healthcare, financial services, and high tech industries. Our team has deep expertise in all Salesforce Clouds and products, artificial intelligence, DevOps, and specialized domains to help you reap the benefits of implementing Salesforce solutions.