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Salesforce Launches Revenue Cloud To Simplify B2B Functions

At the beginning of November, Salesforce announced the launch of Revenue Cloud, its latest cloud vertical aimed at helping businesses create a single point of reference for customer transactions.

According to the company, Revenue Cloud will work to simplify B2B purchasing for customers. Revenue Cloud is a combination of several existing Salesforce products, including CPQ, its software that generates quotes for orders, and Billing, its system for usage-based pricing, flexible invoicing, and automatic contract renewals. Revenue Cloud also includes the company's Partner Relationship Management (PRM) software and B2B Commerce.

There are also several new services included in Revenue Cloud, such as multi-cloud billing and the CPQ-B2B Commerce connector, which lets businesses customize digital storefronts for B2B selling and add configurable pricing to digital carts for self-service buying. It also integrates new technology from Salesforce's acquisition of Vlocity, including industry-specific workflows related to revenue.

Pascal Yammine, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Revenue Cloud told Forbes that, “Salesforce had been looking at how to automate their customers’ revenue cycles before the pandemic, yet the current conditions accelerated its development.”

Automation removes the burden from teams who are tasked with manual approvals, data reconciliation, and transcriptions of orders from one system to another. Automatically validating sales orders and consolidating invoices prevents issues such as underbilling for services or incorrectly tracking changes to a contract, which can lead to lost revenue in the sales cycle.

Instead of manually downloading outdated order forms, the new Customer Asset Lifecycle Management tool shows a simple, visual dashboard of everything a customer has purchased, keeping track of all contract amendments over time and open balances to provide a deeper understanding of the customer relationship.

Podium, the business communications and customer engagement solutions provider was an early adopter of Revenue Cloud. With Salesforce’s new offerings, the company simplified its product catalog from several hundred down to 30 products and reduced the time to develop quotes by 80%. With Salesforce, Podium saw the average deal size increase by $45 per month. And when COVID-19 hit, Podium was able to create a new product SKU in less than a week.

According to experts, the move is a well-timed one from SaaS giant, Salesforce as it shows potential to bring greater revenue visibility and control while improving customer experiences.