Inside Salesforce’s New Trends in Manufacturing Report
For many manufacturers, the destabilizing force of the pandemic exposed weaknesses along the entire value chain. It also highlighted opportunities to justify larger-scale change.
For Salesforce’s Trends in Manufacturing report, we surveyed 750 manufacturing leaders around the world to identify the pandemic’s lasting effects on the industry – and find out what it takes to succeed in the coming decade.
Below are some of the key takeaways on how manufacturing leaders are driving business agility in the wake of 2020.
Manufacturers adapt to a new landscape.
Changes to customer-facing roles are here to stay.
Manufacturers felt the pandemic’s effects ripple across their lines of business. More than nine in 10 manufacturers reported impacts to their customer demand, production capacity, distribution lines, and more.
Yet the most long-lasting changes centered around customer-facing roles. As in-person meetings and factory visits were replaced by video calls and virtual inspections, customer-facing teams were forced to adapt overnight. While these new ways of conducting business were implemented quickly, they’re not going away any time soon. Over half of manufacturers consider the changes to customer service and sales capabilities to be permanent.
Customer-facing roles have changed for the long run.
Manufacturers rate the extent of the COVID-19 impact on the following:
The C-suite focuses on optimizing processes and adapting demand planning.
Manufacturers prioritize improving operations amid an evolving landscape.
Top five priorities over the next two years, C-suite executives say the following is critical or high priority over the next 24 months:
Legacy tools and siloed operations are among the biggest hurdles.
Lack of data transparency and siloed teams are significant barriers to accurate forecasting.
Manufacturers rate the following impediments to creating sales forecasts and production schedules:
Profiles of Future-Ready Manufacturers
Future-ready manufacturers have more systems in the cloud.
Manufacturers who feel “very prepared” for the next decade are already mostly in the cloud.
Sales and Operations System Location
Future-ready manufacturers are able to react rapidly to market changes.
Manufacturers who say their organization reacts rapidly to market, product, or customer changes compared to the rest of the industry:
Future-ready manufacturers exhibit a “services as a revenue center” mindset.
Future-ready manufacturers are already delivering on servitization.
Manufacturers describe servitization as part of their company strategy:
The adoption of such new business models, coupled with their progress migrating service systems to the cloud, have positioned future-ready manufacturers ahead of their peers. How are you preparing for the decade ahead?
This is only a partial summary of our findings. For more insights, download the full report. For country or subsector specific data, check out our interactive tableau dashboard.