If we were to ask you what determines your organization’s health and growth, the answer would be revenue. As long as your revenue trends upwards, it indicates the accelerating potential of your teams, how resilient your organization is with trends and tech advancements, and your ability to scale up. However, maintaining this consistent revenue growth is easier said than done. In today’s evolving landscape, organizations, and even leading names, struggle to streamline their sales cycles and accelerate revenue growth. Then comes the post-credits of technology advancements, dynamic user behavior, and the utter necessity of making sense of massive data sets, which makes the entire process daunting.
Such a situation is more common than you can imagine and it’s exactly the type of use case Salesforce Revenue Cloud accomplishes. A product of the Salesforce ecosystem, Revenue Cloud is an amalgamation of several powerful Customer 360 tools, equipping your sales, finance and operations teams with the weapons they need to streamline their revenue lifecycle and drive business growth.
Here we discuss the empowering potential of Salesforce Revenue Cloud, how it works along with other Salesforce Cloud products, and why it is the right tool for your business, both B2B and B2C.
What is Salesforce Revenue Cloud?
Salesforce Revenue Cloud is a cloud-based revenue management platform, a part of the Salesforce Customer 360 Platform known for its revenue stream and customer relationship management capabilities. Salesforce Revenue Cloud provides a 360-degree view of customers, from acquisition to retention along with several tools to assist with subscription management, pricing, invoicing, etc.
It combines the capabilities of Configure, Price, and Quote (CPQ), Billing, Partner Relationship Management, and B2B Commerce. Utilizing the Salesforce Revenue Cloud is meant to assist businesses in better managing their income streams (also known as revenue streams), getting more out of forecasting skills, increasing efficiency, and accelerating development across all sales channels.
Salesforce Revenue Cloud combines a variety of existing Salesforce products, such as Salesforce CPQ & Billing, to support and enable a more comprehensive sales engine, which includes subscriptions, recurring revenue, and consumption-based models.
What value does Salesforce Revenue Cloud bring to my business?
Often, business owners ponder over the question of what a new tool can do for their business and why they must invest in it. As for Salesforce Revenue Cloud, its array of features make it a must-have tool for organizations who wish to grow their revenue and keep track of it. Here are some use cases that Salesforce Revenue Cloud implementation accomplishes:
#1: Gain actionable customer insights
Track user activities across their subscription to gain meaningful insights about their needs, preferences, and behavior and use it to improve their experience with your products/services. Subsequently, your sales reps are equipped with key customer data and sales insights to offer personalized services to users.
#2: Accelerated sales cycle
Leads follow a lengthy sales cycle before converting, the more time your reps spend in nurturing it, the longer the sales cycle gets. So, shortening of these cycles is imperative to amplify revenue growth and close deals quicker. Salesforce Revenue Cloud product, Salesforce CPQ assists reps with a speedy lead-to-quote process. You can even automate the process of quote generation as per product catalog to provide a consistent buying experience.
#3: Effective picking-and-bundling of products
B2B sales reps are often asked custom quotes of product combinations, a task that results in several inconsistencies when done manually. Salesforce CPQ empowers reps to bundle thousands of products and services from catalogs within seconds with high-level accuracy. Subsequently, its discount approval system assists finance teams in establishing control over discounts and sales teams in maintaining their desired profit margins. Ultimately, as B2B buyers receive custom quotes for their products, it drives customer loyalty.
#4: Self-service tools for accelerated selling
There is a lot of to and fro that happens between buyers and sellers and the more complicated and lengthy that sales cycle becomes, so does the operational costs escalate. For organizations that wish to streamline their sales cycle, Salesforce Revenue Cloud is the right automation tool to enforce the quote-to-cash process. It provides self-service tools for B2B commerce buyers to order their products, saving precious rep time and resulting in higher revenue opportunities.
#5: A high rise in repeat orders
The cost of retaining your existing customers is 4 times lower than acquiring new customers. Therefore, it is imperative that you provide a consistent experience to your buyers throughout the sales cycle. With Salesforce Revenue Cloud, you bring together sales, finance, customer service, and operations, thus simplifying the buying-and-selling process and providing real-time insights to your team about ongoing processes. When your teams have complete information about a buyer and their sales journey, you can take actionable steps to encourage their conversions into loyal customers.
The different tools of Salesforce Revenue Cloud
- Salesforce CPQ: This tool allows businesses to configure, price, and quote products and services accurately and quickly, resulting in higher win rates, shorter sales cycles, and increased revenue.
- Salesforce billing: It automates the billing process and manages revenue recognition, resulting in faster and more accurate billing, improved cash flow, and better compliance with accounting standards.
- Salesforce discount approval system: With this tool businesses can set and manage discount approval workflows, ensuring that discounts are granted only when necessary and with proper authorization, resulting in better control over pricing and increased revenue.
- Subscription management: It enables businesses to manage the entire subscription lifecycle, from subscription creation and management to billing and revenue recognition, resulting in more efficient subscription management and increased revenue.
- Salesforce partner and channel management: A tool that helps businesses manage their partner and channel relationships, including partner onboarding, lead distribution, deal registration, and commission tracking, resulting in better partner engagement and increased revenue through partner channels.
Salesforce Revenue Streams:
Salesforce Revenue Streams refer to the various sources of revenue generated by a business using Salesforce Revenue Cloud or other Salesforce products. In other words, Salesforce Revenue Streams are the different ways in which a business can generate revenue by leveraging the capabilities and functionalities of Salesforce Revenue Cloud.
The following are the Salesforce Revenue Cloud streams-
Salesforce Revenue Cloud Components
There are following components which makes Salesforce Revenue Cloud Ideal for your business:
- Error-Free Billing Process: The Billing component of Salesforce Revenue Cloud is designed to automate the billing process and minimize errors. This includes features such as invoicing, payment collection, and revenue recognition. By automating these processes, businesses can reduce the risk of errors and ensure that invoices are accurate and delivered on time.
- Conversion Rate Acceleration: The CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) component of Salesforce Revenue Cloud helps businesses accelerate their conversion rates by streamlining the quoting process. CPQ allows enterprises to configure products, set prices, and generate quotes quickly and accurately, which can improve the customer experience and help close deals faster.
- Keeping Track of Revenue: The Revenue Recognition component of Salesforce Revenue Cloud helps businesses keep track of their revenue and ensure compliance with accounting standards. This component automates recognizing revenue and provides detailed reports and analytics to help companies to understand their revenue streams and make informed decisions.
Salesforce Revenue Cloud Cycle
The Revenue Cloud cycle refers to the process of managing revenue operations using the Salesforce Revenue Cloud platform. Here are the steps involved in the Revenue Cloud cycle:
- Pricing and Product Management: Businesses use the Salesforce Revenue Cloud platform to manage their product catalog and pricing strategies at this stage. This includes creating and managing product SKUs, setting pricing rules, and creating price books.
- Quoting and Contracting: Salesforce Revenue Cloud to generate accurate and timely customer quotes, negotiate and finalize contracts, and manage contract renewals.
- Order Management: Businesses use Salesforce Revenue Cloud to manage the order fulfillment process once a contract is finalized. This includes creating and managing sales orders, order fulfillment, and inventory.
- Billing and Collections: In this stage, businesses use Salesforce Revenue Cloud to manage their billing and collections processes. This includes generating invoices, managing payment collections, and processing refunds.
- Revenue Recognition: Companies use Salesforce Revenue Cloud to manage their revenue recognition process. This includes ensuring compliance with accounting standards, recognizing revenue appropriately, and managing revenue forecasting and reporting.
How Salesforce Revenue Cloud behaves with other Salesforce tools
Salesforce Revenue Cloud is designed to integrate seamlessly with other Salesforce products and tools, allowing businesses to manage their entire revenue lifecycle in one place. Here are some ways Salesforce Revenue Cloud can work with other Salesforce tools:
#1: Salesforce Revenue Cloud Integration with Sales Cloud
Integrating Salesforce Revenue Cloud with Sales Cloud can help sales teams to manage the entire sales process, from lead to cash.
Steps to integrate: This integration can be done in a few simple steps.
- Connect Salesforce Orgs: The first step is to connect the Salesforce Orgs for Salesforce Revenue Cloud and Sales Cloud.
- Configure Data Mapping: The second step is configuring the data mapping between the two orgs. This involves mapping the fields in Salesforce Revenue Cloud to those in Sales Cloud.
- Configure Workflow: The third step is to configure the workflow. This involves setting up the business processes in Salesforce Revenue Cloud and Sales Cloud. For example, a sales rep can create a quote in Salesforce Revenue Cloud, and it will automatically create an opportunity in Sales Cloud.
- Testing and Deployment: The final step is testing and deploying the integration to production.
What use cases this integration solves: Let’s take an example of a company that sells a software product that requires a license. When a sales rep creates an opportunity in Sales Cloud, they can automatically generate a quote in Salesforce Revenue Cloud, which includes the license fee. When the customer accepts the quote, Salesforce Revenue Cloud will create an invoice and send it to the customer. When the customer pays the invoice, Salesforce Revenue Cloud will update the opportunity in Sales Cloud, and the sales rep will be notified that the deal is closed.
#2: Salesforce Revenue Cloud Integration with Service Cloud
Integrating Salesforce Revenue Cloud with Service Cloud can help service teams to manage customer contracts, renewals, and subscriptions. This integration can be done in a few simple steps.
Steps to integrate: This integration can be done in a few simple steps.
- Connect Salesforce Orgs: The first step is to connect the Salesforce Orgs for Salesforce Revenue Cloud and Service Cloud.
- Configure Data Mapping: The second step is to configure the data mapping between the two orgs. This involves mapping the fields in Salesforce Revenue Cloud to the fields in Service Cloud.
- Configure Workflow: The third step is to configure the workflow. This involves setting up the business processes in Salesforce Revenue Cloud and Service Cloud. For example, a service rep can view the customer’s subscription status in Service Cloud, and use that information to provide personalized support. Similarly, a sales rep can view the customer’s billing and payment history in the Salesforce Revenue Cloud, and use that information to create tailored sales pitches.
What use cases this integration solves: Configuring the workflow also includes setting up automated processes and triggers, such as creating an invoice when a subscription is renewed or sending a notification to the customer when their payment is due. These processes and triggers can be customized to fit the business’s specific needs.
#3: Salesforce Revenue Cloud Integration with Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Integrating Salesforce Revenue Cloud with Salesforce Marketing Cloud allows businesses to create personalized marketing campaigns based on customer data in Salesforce Revenue Cloud. For example, a business can use information about a customer’s purchasing history to create targeted email campaigns promoting related products or services.
To integrate Salesforce Revenue Cloud with Salesforce Marketing Cloud, businesses need to set up data synchronization between the two clouds. This involves mapping the fields in Salesforce Revenue Cloud to the corresponding fields in Salesforce Marketing Cloud to share customer data between the two clouds.
#4: Salesforce Revenue Cloud Integration with Analytics Cloud
Once Salesforce Revenue Cloud is integrated with other Salesforce Clouds, businesses can use Salesforce Analytics Cloud to analyze the data and gain insights into customer behavior and business performance. Salesforce Analytics Cloud allows businesses to create customizable dashboards and reports that show key performance metrics, such as revenue growth and customer retention rates.
By analyzing the data in Salesforce Analytics Cloud, businesses can identify trends and patterns in customer behavior and use that information to improve their marketing and sales strategies. For example, suppose a business notices that a particular product is selling well among a specific demographic. In that case, they can create targeted marketing campaigns to further promote that product to that demographic.
What use cases this integration solves: Here are some common use cases for integrating Salesforce Revenue Cloud with other Salesforce Clouds:
- A business wants to provide a seamless customer experience by giving service reps access to the customer’s subscription and billing information in Service Cloud.
- A business wants to create personalized marketing campaigns based on customer data in Salesforce Revenue Cloud by integrating it with Salesforce Marketing Cloud.
- A business wants to gain insights into customer behavior and business performance by analyzing the data in Salesforce Analytics Cloud after integrating Salesforce Revenue Cloud with other Salesforce Clouds.
Salesforce Revenue Cloud features in a nutshell
The Salesforce Revenue Cloud has many amazing features, making it an incredibly powerful tool for growing your company. Some of them are:
- Create new revenue streams: We can implement consumption pricing, launch a subscription product, or simply create a new product or service we have always wanted to offer.
- Upsell and cross-sell: We can empower our team to make seamless contract amendments for add-ons, swaps, and upgrades so they can upsell and cross-sell confidently.
- Manage revenue: The Salesforce Revenue Cloud makes it easy to identify when a sale has been made, which reduces the risk of revenue recognition errors and ensures that your financial statements are always accurate.
- Gain better customer insights: With Revenue Cloud, We can track customers’ activities with our subscription products and use insights to improve their experience with us—and our bottom line.
- Powerful analytics: Get insights into our business that help us make more informed decisions by combining data from across your organization.
Discover the potential of Salesforce Revenue Cloud for your business
Integrating Salesforce Revenue Cloud with other Salesforce Clouds can provide businesses with a comprehensive solution for managing their revenue streams and customer transactions, from purchase to renewal to revenue recognition. Following the key steps outlined above, businesses can configure their Salesforce instance to fit their specific needs and create a seamless customer experience. And as a trusted Salesforce partner, our team of certified experts can guide you in analyzing data and gaining insights into customer behavior and business performance to make informed decisions and continuously improve their sales and marketing strategies.
Sumit Saini
Senior Software Engineer
With a focus on Salesforce Sales and Service clouds, Sumit has demonstrated a comprehensive understanding of Apex and extensive experience in customization, debugging, and analysis. His contributions have been instrumental in driving success for many clients in the Salesforce ecosystem. Connect with her on LinkedIn.
