Mastering Salesforce Automotive Cloud: A Comprehensive Guide

Salesforce Automotive Cloud, launched on October 13th, 2022, is a platform designed to address the specific needs and challenges within the automotive sector, helping organizations manage inventory location and meet customer demands. This guide aims to provide a comprehensive overview of Salesforce Automotive Cloud, its key features, and how it can revolutionize the automotive industry.

Introduction to Salesforce Automotive Cloud

Salesforce Automotive Cloud represents Salesforce's commitment to delivering targeted, industry-specific cloud solutions. It is a solution based on the Salesforce Platform + Sales & Service Cloud, with automotive ecosystem and industry-specific customizations. Salesforce has also added declarative (no-code) tools from Manufacturing Cloud to enable companies for automotive solutions as a low-maintenance solution.

This platform plays a crucial role in managing inventory and customer demands. It unifies vehicle and customer data to provide a comprehensive view for all teams involved.

Key Capabilities of Automotive Cloud

Here's an overview of the key capabilities, including some that Salesforce highlights and some that are considered particularly useful:

Managing Products with Ease

The Product object in Salesforce gets a makeover with Automotive Cloud because it supports fields relevant to vehicles and their multitude of spare parts. The Vehicle Definition object extends product information to capture vehicle model details like vehicle dimensions and battery, fuel, and transmission specifications. Product bundles can be assembled to group multiple products into sellable units. Product-related material records can be created to capture the quantity and lead time required to build each component. In Automotive Cloud, product-related materials are the installed parts and accessories, while product-related components are the compatible parts and accessories in a vehicle. The product data model in Automotive Cloud is a solid foundation for managing complex information, including fault and labor codes, warranty terms, serialized product records, and product items at specific locations.

Vehicle and Asset Consoles

Automotive Cloud unifies vehicle and customer data to provide a comprehensive view for all teams involved. At the heart of unified data lies the Vehicle Console and the Asset Console. The Vehicle Console is designed specifically for vehicles, while the Asset Console is useful for all types of assets, including parts and accessories. Agents can find information about service contracts, claims, warranties, locations, milestones, and more, depending on how your Salesforce admin customizes the console.

Similar to Vehicle Console, Driver Console allows displaying related data around owner of the car and customer behavior. Or, more correctly, driver and customer data.

Stakeholder Relationships

A car can be related to the dealers who sell it, the service dealers who repair and maintain it, and the customer who buys it. Automotive Cloud allows you to view the sales relation manager of the dealership branch where the product is stocked, the driver of a vehicle, and the relationships between different members in a household. Automotive Cloud also comes with components like Actionable Relationship Center Graphs and Relationship Cards that help you visualize the complex relationships between stakeholders.Automotive Cloud allows you to view the sales relation manager of the dealership branch where the product is stocked, the driver of a vehicle, and the relationships between different members in a household. Automotive Cloud also comes with components like Actionable Relationship Center Graphs and Relationship Cards that help you visualize the complex relationships between stakeholders.

Proactive Service Experience

A team of service executives and service representatives can resolve queries from customers, dealers, and even internal departments. Provide intelligent recommendations tailored for customers. The console is totally configurable.

Appointment Scheduling

Timely booking of test drives and vehicle service appointments improves the pre-sales and post-sales experience for customers and dealers. Customers can schedule timely vehicle service appointments either from service centers, from their nearest dealership, or from the comfort of their homes. OEMs and dealers can schedule both test drive and vehicle service appointments, while customers can only schedule vehicle service appointments. A guided wizard helps users select their preferred appointment location, a service representative or technician who facilitates the appointment, and a time slot. Additionally, for a test drive appointment, users can select the preferred vehicle.

Automotive Data Foundation

Salesforce says they’ve drawn inspiration from the STAR (Standard In Automotive Retail) standard for their vehicle data model. Upon closer inspection, it seems like Salesforce has given it their own unique spin rather than adopting it outright.

Lead Management

The Automotive Cloud goes a few steps further than the standard Salesforce Sales Cloud. In addition to the basic foundation it inherits from Salesforce, the Automotive edition includes Products, Preferred Seller, Action Plans, and even the ability to link one automotive lead management name to one or more other partners with multiple vehicles of interest. These enhancements hint at a lead management system specially designed for organizations dealing with multiple sellers launch partners, or distributors.

Dealer Performance Management

The Salesforce Automotive Cloud lets automotive companies monitor dealers performance through rebate claims. This feature is able to report not only on vehicles as a whole, but also on their individual parts through the Assets feature. To access this performance functionality, you need Salesforce Automotive Cloud licenses. There’s a potential detour via the Experience Cloud.

Experience Cloud

Salesforce has released a “tailored for automotive Experience Cloud”. It’s essentially a salesforce Partner Portal template, fine-tuned for lead distribution and opportunity tracking for retail partners (pretty much for dealers).

Forecasting

The Salesforce Automotive Cloud has a fresh take on forecasting functionality, likely with manufacturers in mind. They’re focusing on future sales projections instead of past performance.

Read also: Mastering Salesforce

Rebates

In most automotive circles, what Salesforce calls ‘rebates’ are usually termed ‘campaigns’. Salesforce includes a business rule engine for rebate approvals.

Warranty Management

This function offers a comprehensive and powerful solution for handling warranties in the automotive industry, a sector where warranty claims and the customer experiences, customer loyalty and service are closely linked. It’s been fine-tuned to track warranty details, streamline claim processes, and facilitate better customer relations.

CRM Analytics

Along with Manufacturing Cloud, Salesforce automotive service cloud comes with CRM Analytics with prebuilt dashboards. This tools enables companies and automotive companies to build really sophisticated reports from data available on the Salesforce platform. This is especially handy, if you are looking to shift most of your IT operations to Salesforce, but still have to keep some legacy systems.

Industry Cloud

Salesforce’s Automotive Cloud service is built on their Industry Cloud service, which has its roots in a company called Vlocity. The beauty of the Industry Cloud is that many of its key features, are “declarative” - meaning they don’t need custom code and can be managed by folks who aren’t necessarily coding wizards.

OmniStudio

OmniStudio is a toolbox filled with Salesforce customization goodies that does two key things. First up, it lets you whip up custom screens without having to write a single line of code, thanks to a neat feature called FlexCards. Then there’s Data Raptors, a cool tool that lets you weave in data from across your entire system right into those screens.

PDF Generation

Salesforce Automotive Cloud has a built-in solution for generating PDFs.

Decision Tables

Decision tables are all about applying complex business rules. It’s a powerful tool for automating your decision-making and sales process. For example, you can set up intricate criteria for approving rebates or discounts, saving you the trouble of approving quotes manually.

Intelligent Document Reader

Salesforce Automotive Cloud has an intelligent document reader that transforms those paper documents into Salesforce records.

Business Rules Engine

Much like decision tables, the business rules engine is all about automating decisions and customer engagement. Depending on the rules you define, this engine assists with eligibility informed decisions and customer interactions.

Data Processing Engine (DPE)

The DPE merges data from multiple systems, all in different formats and locations, into a single Salesforce record, making it easier to digest and action upon.

Alerts

Alerts are unique pop-up notifications that appear at the Vehicle level. They notify you about different events related to a Vehicle, such as upcoming maintenance or warranty expiration.

Interest Tags

Interest tags are simple, reportable tags linking interests to vehicle properties.

Vehicle Milestones

This feature is all about tracking events of connected vehicles, which, let’s face it, don’t always happen in the order we expect. It accommodates multiple events of the same type and lays out events (like manufacturing, sale, or warranty expiration) in a way that’s super easy to understand.

Vehicle Timeline

Vehicle Timeline is akin to Vehicle Milestones, offering an alternative method to visualize the same information. All the events tied to a vehicle history are showcased in a linear, timeline format.

Licensing

Licensing model for Salesforce Automotive Cloud, at first, looks very straight forward. 300 to 400 USD (or EUR) per user per month. You don’t need full license for all your users.

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