Salesforce Revenue Cloud is an incredible addition to any company’s underlying Salesforce Sales Cloud. It allows customers to have a streamlined Quote-to-Cash experience.
Salesforce is the world’s most popular Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software. The foundation of Salesforce is called Sales Cloud. It is where companies can store all their deal-related information, from leads to opportunities.
Revenue Cloud = Salesforce CPQ + Salesforce Billing
In November of 2020, this particular term started being used to describe a collection of Salesforce quote-to-cash products. It primarily comprised two products — Salesforce CPQ and Salesforce Billing. It also includes CPQ for Experience Cloud and CPQ & B2B Commerce Connector.
CPQ, combined with this product, provides an end-to-end solution for businesses to get from the quoting stage through invoicing to payment collection.
Take a look at some of our packages:
Salesforce CPQ
Let’s define what Salesforce CPQ is and how it works. It is a tool for businesses to prepare and generate highly customized and accurate quotes for their customers. Typically a salesperson will generate multiple quotes to represent a variety of unique offerings. For example, a salesperson may create a quote with all the add-ons, a high price and a less comprehensive quote at a lower price.
From there, the end customer can review the options and select a Salesforce revenue breakdown of quotes to move forward with. Now the salesperson will indicate which one the customer chose, and all the information from it will transfer over to the opportunity.
It is a best practice to use the Orders object to track the fulfillment cycle, but some companies may choose to set this up as the initial part of their Billing implementation.
Salesforce CPQ also provides the ability to make contracts from quotes to store information about subsequent quotes in one time-based location. For example, a $100 monthly quote for twelve months will have a contract with a start date, an end date, and the total contract value.
If the customer wants to double the amount purchased six months later, it will provide an easy one-click option to build that amendment or change the order. Then that second quote will be saved to the contract as well.
Lastly, Salesforce Revenue Cloud CPQ will allow you to check a box to make a renewal. The renewal already knows the duration is twelve months, the current total of products monthly is $200, and the line items are included on the quote already.
Take a look at these examples below:
Salesforce Billing
Salesforce Billing picks up right where Salesforce CPQ leaves off. With Billing, you can quickly turn your quotes into invoices. Each and every quote line item can be specified and aligned to meet your business requirements. For example, is the product taxable? Should it be billed monthly? Do charges happen based on usage? These factors and more are taken into account to ensure your invoices are perfect down to the penny.
Better Together
When combined, the synergy of these products and solutions provides incredibly robust Salesforce revenue operations reporting. Additionally, Salesforce analytics will be able to provide revenue forecasting in Salesforce across a variety of revenue-based Key Performance Indicators (Revenue KPIs).
KPIs regarding which products are best sellers? Are winning quotes the more or less expensive ones? Which customers are paying on time? What is the total customer lifetime contract value?
Here’s one of our success stories from Iron Mountain.
Considerations before you begin
If you are interested in getting started with Salesforce Revenue Cloud, begin with the following steps:
- Document your products, how much they sell for, what discounts you allow, and if they are sold in combination with other products (bundles)
- Collect some examples of the documents you send customers, your terms and conditions, and when those should be displayed or hidden.
- Prepare financially for the cost of licenses from Salesforce ($75-$150 per user per month) and implementation fees ($20k and up for CPQ)
- Plan your timeline – at least three months for an implementation with little customization, six months for several customizations, or longer for a very advanced implementation.
Final Thoughts
We hope you keep us on top of your mind when you decide to implement Salesforce Revenue Cloud, CPQ, and Billing. Our team has been implementing them since 2017, when Salesforce acquired Steelbrick CPQ and re-launched the product as Salesforce CPQ. Please reach out to our sales team for more information about how ITequality can help you get the most value from your investment!
