Everything that you consume on a day to basis be it food, clothes or any other finished product has to cover a long journey before it reaches the customers. Besides the outlet where you go and make a purchase, there is a network of interrelated elements known as the ‘supply chain’ that works on getting these products at your disposal. However, increased globalization has led to a more complex supply chain ecosystem, which has allowed issues related to trust, speed, and accuracy to penetrate through it. However, the biggest impediment to fixing the otherwise broken supply chains is to find out a way of consolidating data across all the supply chain entities that usually work in silos. The solution lies in integrating disruptive technologies like Blockchain and Salesforce, which can be made possible by partnering with a reliable Salesforce consultant. Role of Blockchain in Streamlining the Supply Chain:                                                  To understand the role of Blockchain in streamlining the supply chain ecosystem, let’s quote the example of temperature-controlled logistics (perishable food and pharmaceutical) that require to be stored and transported within a certain temperature range to ensure they remain preserved till they are delivered to the end-users. However, managing the integrity of the cold supply chain has become challenging with most of the products either getting lost or contaminated during transit as a result of exposure to unsafe temperature ranges. This happens because of the inefficiency of the current track and trace system that fails to provide sufficient supply chain visibility. Blockchain – a distributed ledger technology can help resolve issues pertaining to the supply chain ecosystem by reducing inconsistencies, increasing visibility of products during transit through the supply chain and streamlining processes. This becomes possible as every physical asset that is a part of the supply chain ecosystem is represented as a digital asset on the Blockchain network. This is also known as tokenization of assets, which enables increased traceability of products in the supply chain by helping identify the point where food/drugs have been tampered with so that product that is either tampered with or gets contaminated is removed before it reaches the store shelves. This track and trace feature of Blockchain allows customers to track the journey of a product right from the point of origin till store shelves. With an IoT powered Blockchain system in place, data attributes such as the temperature of food/drugs, location, etc. could be gathered and stored. Since data once uploaded on the Blockchain is immutable, errors could be minimized and quality of products can be ensured.   How does Salesforce fit in?  While Blockchain promises to resolve issues related to trust and transparency within the digital economy, Salesforce offers much more than a robust CRM solution. By offering solutions for streamlining information, task automation, analytics, and enhanced communication, this robust CRM platform has transformed the way businesses operate. Just like Blockchain, Salesforce places the power in the hands of the buyers by increasing transparency through tailored solutions and empowering the sales representatives to provide customers with a better quality of service.   When it comes to supply chain, the Salesforce CPQ that stands for Configure, Price, quote provides the necessary tool-set to transform the complex and bulky Sales process into a streamlined one. By providing a consistent process for quotes, Salesforce CPQ can be leveraged for tracking orders and renewals concerning quotes. By allowing buyers to directly see the status of their orders, trust and transparency are enhanced.    How Does the Integration of Blockchain and Salesforce Work?   The integration of Blockchain and Salesforce paves way for a solution that enables information (regarding orders) to reside on Blockchain. This establishes better visibility, security, immutability and most importantly assurance that all the entities will be operating on the shared data across different organizations. Apart from this, all the existing supply chain actors can access their profile from their individual Salesforce orgs along with with product-related details (quality certifications, etc.).   So, what enables the integration of these two technologies? It is to be noted that the product suite (Blockchain ledger, Ethereum app manager and the Hyperledger app manager) created by Salesforce enables the distributed app suite available on Salesforce instance. While the app fixes a listener on the Blockchain, as well as the Salesforce platform in a way that any data that is uploaded on Salesforce gets added as a transaction on the Blockchain platform and vice-versa, the Hyperledger Fabric is built on components such as the consensus mechanism, smart contract functionality, and oracles. The data gathered by these agents are then utilized by Blockchains smart contract functionality.  In the context of the supply chain, a sales rep can create a new quote while generating a proposal by using Salesforce CPQ. Once the opportunity is won the sales reps can create an order including a list of items to be supplied. The DApp(Distributed Apps) suite is set up in a way that the data gets sent to Blockchain after the order receives a specific status. As data regarding the temperature, location, humidity, etc gets recorded on the Blockchain, it gets redirected to Salesforce following which historical details regarding the product’s journey from packaging till delivery can be observed on Salesforce instance. Such reverse integration allows sales reps to validate the exact location of the order on the supply chain.   Conclusion: Besides the above-mentioned benefits, the integration of Blockchain and Salesforce also enables creation of reports and analytics basis the shared Blockchain data. This will generate new revenue models besides improving supplier/buyer logistics significantly. To sum up, it can be said that the promising integration of Salesforce and Blockchain will not just substitute rigid supply chains but will create a roadmap for the future by working across industries. It’s prudent to get in touch with a reliable Salesforce implementation partner to ensure seamless integration of Salesforce and Blockchain.

The business ecosystem has become extremely complex. To sustain themselves in a competitive landscape, it becomes extremely important for retailers to keep growing, innovating and diversifying. This would require them to understand and fulfill customer demands while provide them with a superior customer experience. Unfortunately, the retail marketplace is riddled with slow economic growth and high costs. The problem is further compounded by new age customers who seek personalization, and promotion based pricing, which has made it extremely difficult for retailers to sustain let alone expand and attract new customers. However, disruptive trends associated with retailers, as well as customers have resulted in massive explosion of data, which when processed and analyzed can provide retailers with a sizeable opportunity to understand customer behavior and other valuable insights that can be leveraged for informed decision making. However, processing such humongous and voluminous sets of data has become a tremendous challenge for companies, and will continue to grow in the years to come. According to report shared by Gartner, data volume is set to grow by 800% in the years to come, 80% of which will reside as unstructured data. To make sense of this wealth of big data, retailers require a robust data management solution that can help them retrieve and process data from multiple places. This will help them draw real-time insights for quick decision making while generate true business value. Predictive analytics has emerged as a sure shot solution to all the data woes faced by businesses. By anticipating customer needs based on post-interaction, historical and real-time analysis of big data, customer requirement can be fulfilled in a quick and efficient way. According to statistics shared by Forbes, there has been a whopping increase in number of companies adopting predictive analytics i.e. from a mere 17% in 2015 to a massive 53% in 2017. A combination of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI), predictive analytics is growing all the more accurate and insightful. However, several businesses continue to assess this technology with certain degree of skepticism considering it to be too complex, disruptive and expensive to incorporate.  Listed below are few ways how businesses could achieve sales goals and increased customer satisfaction by leveraging this smart technology: Uncover Qualified Leads: Though, the entire practice of lead scoring has been in place since quite some time, they were largely based on guesswork and were extremely time-consuming. With a predictive analytics solution in place, businesses can make their sales and marketing teams more efficient by allowing them to access information such as whether your offering matches a potential customer’s needs, how convinced is your potential client to make a purchase, and similar other details that too in a precise way. This would allow your marketing and sales teams to better determine whether or not a customer is likely to convert and if yes what would be their potential lifetime value. This helps your sales team focus their efforts on the most rewarding areas. Measure Call Outcomes: Till date, many companies rely on manual assessment of data in order to determine the success of a new product campaign or sales strategy. Since, data is manually recorded, it is subjective and prone to inaccuracy. This doesn’t leave much scope for precisely evaluating campaign success. With an automated system in place, calls and activity are appropriately tracked. This allows the sales team of a business to accurately measure their sales performance. Reduce Customer Churn: Predictive analytics is extremely useful in identifying issues and trends that has a large impact on your business operation. This would help you predict when and why customers might consider abandoning you. Such important details will allow businesses to take proactive action to enhance customer experience and serve their needs in a better way. The altering demands of technological forces have influenced the retail sector in the biggest possible way. Predictive analytics has the potential to transform businesses and industries in a way that will make them more productive, competitive and efficient. Used effectively, this technology can turn out to be the key to your outbound sales success and customer satisfaction. In a nutshell, it will act as a magic bullet that may lead to improved profits and better business outcome. As a reputed name in the IT space, Girikon offers robust

IDC Whitepaper Salesforce.com is #1 in Fortune’s list of ‘100 best companies to work for’. New customers are signing contracts for Salesforce licenses every day, and this indicates the popularity of Salesforce CRM worldwide.  Salesforce CEO Benioff once said, “Salesforce reached $5 billion in annual revenue faster than any other enterprise software company and now it’s our goal to be the fastest to reach $10 billion.” Currently, businesses are stepping forward to adopt the Salesforce technology with the intention of customer satisfaction as well as enhancing their current sales operations process. To implement a Salesforce solution, a company needs Salesforce geeks who helps them to achieve their business goal.  Currently, Salesforce Consultants and professionals are in huge demand due to Salesforce being adopted by small to large business organizations worldwide at rapid rate. The market has a demand for Salesforce Administrators and Salesforce Developers. To implement Salesforce as a CRM solution, there are various roles required to fulfill the business need such as Administrator, Developer, and Salesforce Architects. A recent research by G2 Crowd found that:    Customers are crediting Salesforce when it comes to overall CRM functionality 85% higher than the industry average of 75%. The Salesforce CRM has an 80% better scalability than any other CRM vendor outside the leader category in Gartner’s quadrant and 23% better scalability than vendors present in the leader’s category. It is always believed that referred customers are always a bonus for any business. More than 80% Salesforce customer has recommended Salesforce as CRM solution to their peers.   85% of Salesforce users believe that Salesforce is headed in the right direction.    Do your dreams include succeeding in Salesforce? Salesforce is aggressively acquiring companies (small to mid-size) across the world, that provides a competitive edge over other CRM players in current market. More than 2 million companies are using Salesforce as a CRM solution to boost their current sales process and successful customer support. Due to the high adoption rate of Salesforce demand for Salesforce professionals such as Administrators and Developers to manage the Customer’s Salesforce CRM has also increased. To achieve a business goal, Salesforce consultants assist businesses to fully exploit the full potential of Salesforce by having an in-depth knowledge and experience relating to a Salesforce implementation.  To have a career in Salesforce, Consultants need a focused effort in right direction and with level of passion and dedication. Salesforce is like an ocean and consultants do not know how far they can reach. If you are looking for a relatively high paying career, then Salesforce is the right path to proceed with the added ability for work opportunities in this field. The key is to completely understand the elements of your responsibilities and what is required for the job.  Now let’s understand the difference in terms of responsibilities and the earnings achieved by Administrator vs Developer: Key activities for Salesforce Administrators: The key areas that are being considered for Salesforce administrator are as follows:  User setup and permissions Data accessibility  Account modifications  Moreover, Salesforce Administrators are also involved in some other activities such as page layout setup, data deduplication, picklist values configuration, workflow & rule configuration, reports & dashboard creation and many more.   Key roles for Salesforce Developers: Salesforce developers create  Triggers Visual force pages as well as custom functionality to support the business processes defined by organization.  Moreover, developers are responsible to establish interface with third party applications to Salesforce through custom APIs integration to accomplish the business need.  To create a Salesforce Solution, both administrators and developers are required, and it is totally depending upon the business requirement.  Salesforce administrators and Salesforce developers are like the two sides of a coin.  Girikon a Salesforce Consulting Partner based in the USA, Australia and India and has a team of Certified Salesforce Consultants including administrators and developers. The Salesforce Consulting Services team have proven expertise with over 400 projects delivered. For further information about Girikon contact us on +61 1300 332 888 or email sales@girikon.com and discuss your current business challenge. We guarantee we will have a solution for you.