Innovate and Succeed With Your B2B Company Using The Power of Salesforce and the Internet of Things
From your thermostat to alarms, fridges, child and pet care devices, and cars, more devices are being connected to the Internet every day. Connection between devices is a trend that will continue to rise. In fact, the number of connected devices worldwide is expected to reach 30.73 billion in 2020; and by 2025, it’s expected to grow to 75.44 billion devices. This presents possibilities for B2B businesses as we have never seen before.
The necessity of optimizing processes, improving communication, standing out from the competition, and — in some cases — reconsidering current business models, are some of the reasons to see technology as a valuable resource to achieve these goals. The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of those resources more companies are using.
“Machine-to-machine communication is also widely used in the manufacturing and energy sectors to track machinery operations, report faults and raise service alerts.” — Salesforce
According to McKinsey, the economic potential of IoT could be between $4 — $11 trillion a year by 2025. That’s not all: “Business-to-business applications will probably capture more value — nearly 70% of it — than consumer uses.”
So if you’re considering to use IoT to achieve company goals and provide an enhanced customer experience, you’re on the right track. Below are some opportunities you could be missing out on if you’re still not using the power of IoT and Salesforce to innovate and succeed with your B2B company:
Optimized Processes
Saving time is saving money. That’s why more businesses are including integration apps and automation as part of their day-to-day operations and processes. For example, if you connect Salesforce with your ERP, updates made in either of the systems are automatically reflected in the other, in real time. This saves time in manual data entry and avoids the risk of human error.
There are countless apps that can be connected with each other, depending on which processes a business has to optimize. These include marketing, sales, invoicing, scheduling services, inventory management, and many more.
Increased Productivity
Have you considered how many hours you and your team invest in tasks such as manual data entry, coding, mapping, and fixing human errors could have been used in more strategic ways? Like nurturing leads and acquiring more business? Or serving your current customers, providing the answers they need, and resolving their issues faster?
That’s where IoT comes in. It allows you to automate tasks such as data entry, sending confirmation emails when a customer places a new order or generates a new invoice, and many other tasks that might seem “easy,” and need to be done, but in the long run take more time than your business can allow to pay. With these tools, your employees can make better use of the time, working on strategic tasks, and increase their motivation.
The Aruba IoT Research Report by Hewlett Packard Enterprise states: “Over three-quarters (78%) of enterprises say the introduction of IoT into the workplace has improved the effectiveness of their IT team, while 75% find it has increased profitability.” IoT pays off.
Customer Behavior
Demographics, preferences, routines, shopping patterns, and more information is available now. Businesses can have a better view of their interactions with customers, before and after the sale. If your company serves businesses (B2B), including IoT in your processes and operations could mean you will better understand your customers and their needs.
According to the report “Top 10 IoT Technologies for 2017 and 2018” by Gartner, the need of data compilation and analysis will increase. “IoT business models will exploit the information collected by “things” in many ways — for example, to understand customer behavior, to deliver services, to improve products, and to identify and intercept business moments.”
The Future Is Now
IoT is quickly becoming a mainstream phenomenon. So as a B2B company, if you want to stay competitive, provide a better service to your customers, improve processes, and achieve business goals, don’t miss out on the power of IoT. And why not start with one of the most innovative companies in the world, integrating Salesforce with your ERP?
About Commercient
Commercient’s mission is to help growing companies run more efficiently by seamlessly connecting their ERP and CRM software. Through SYNC, ERP and CRM data integration is simple, quick, and efficient. We connect Salesforce with over 65 ERPs (Acumatica, Sage, SYSPRO and others) with 16 published apps in AppExchange. Connect your data to both systems in real time without the need for manual data entry, or the risk of human errors.
