Let’s face it: these days, everyone’s trying to squeeze more out of every dollar. And when it comes to cutting costs, technology often takes a hit. But to stay ahead of the curve, you need to think twice. Especially now that AI is changing the game.

Harnessing AI and Technology for Long-Term Success

When a business embraces AI and technology, it undergoes a digital transformation that fundamentally alters its operations. The digital age, now increasingly driven by AI, has reshaped customer interactions, leading to heightened expectations for seamless, personalized experiences. To remain competitive, businesses must leverage AI to meet and exceed these expectations by being accessible online, providing self-service options, analyzing customer data for insights, and more.

Leveraging AI and Tech to Stay Competitive

Despite the perception that technology is an easy area to cut costs, the reality is that AI and other technologies are becoming more affordable and more powerful. Consider the following ways your company can leverage AI and technology to remain competitive:

• Workflow Automation with AI: Are we using AI to automate routine tasks and workflows, freeing time for critical business operations and innovation? A recent study shows that AI-powered automation can reduce operational costs by up to 30% (Deloitte, 2022).
• AI-Powered Chatbots: Have we implemented AI-driven chatbots to handle customer service tasks, such as answering routine questions and routing calls? These chatbots can enhance customer satisfaction while reducing costs. Gartner predicts that by 2027, chatbots will be the primary customer service channel for a quarter of organizations (Gartner, 2024).
• Social Media Management Tools: How do we manage social media? AI-driven tools can optimize social media management, reducing the time spent on repetitive tasks and increasing effectiveness. According to a recent report, AI can boost social media ROI by 30% or more (McKinsey, 2024).
• Online Project Management with AI: Should we adopt AI-enhanced project management tools that streamline communication and task tracking? These tools can increase project success rates by 15% (LinkedIn, 2023).
• Cloud-Based Accounting Systems: Do we need opportunities by not using cloud-based accounting systems with AI integration to manage invoices, track expenses, and generate financial reports? Cloud-based systems can reduce accounting errors by 90% and save businesses significant time (WifiTalents, 2024).

These are just a few examples of how AI and technology can transform your business processes, reduce costs, and enhance your competitive advantage. The potential benefits are significant—what are you waiting for?

Summary

Cutting technology, especially AI, to save costs is a short-sighted approach that can undermine your competitive edge. Instead, businesses should invest in AI and digital transformation to streamline operations, enhance customer experiences, and ultimately, drive growth. The question isn’t whether you can afford to invest in AI, but whether you can afford not to.

How AdVic Can Help

Businesses must carefully consider the challenges associated with AI and GenAI before implementing these technologies. But do not worry, AdVic’s Team is well-equipped to design your personalized AI roadmap to success. If you have any questions or are ready to start today, book a meeting with us now.

Related Resources:

Boosting Sales with AI & GenAI: The Game-Changers for Productivity

Enhancing Data Security: The Role of AI

Meet Salesforce’s Einstein Copilot: Revolutionizing Business with AI

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It’s no secret that fostering positive relationships with your customers out-of-the-gate can help to transform those customers into real brand supporters and long-term partners. 

Such is the case with AdVic and a recent high-tech customer that provides cloud-based business solutions to their customers. 

The Initial Project

In need of a solution for their rapidly growing business, our customer called on AdVic® to assist with staff augmentation for their Salesforce® org. While their business adjusted to growth, they were in need of “run-the-business” work to set revenue goals and implement the right technology for their strategy. 

Enter AdVic’s Salesforce consultants, who were dedicated to leading this customer’s technology to victory by optimizing and rebuilding their system with Sales Cloud, CPQ, and Conga. 

In the midst of the initial project, our customer acquired another company. and needed to merge orgs. Along the way, AdVic’s consultants found gaps in their technology infrastructure that needed to be filled. The most outstanding was their lack of process for requirement gathering. AdVic’s consultants understand every aspect of Salesforce CRM. With this knowledge, they were able to help our customer collect various offerings to implement the best functions into our customers’ Salesforce org throughout the implementation. 

Our customer’s initial assignment quickly transformed into a multi-product operation when they acquired the new company. On the surface, this seems like an effortless process, however, combining two orgs into one, including different processes, objects, and automation, requires a deep reflection of future business goals. Together, AdVic and our customer combed through data, gathered insight, and began the process of building the perfect CRM for our customer.

Another gap in our customer’s technology was the lack of flexibility in their CPQ functionality. That is when AdVic applied multidimensional quoting to their org. 

With the flexibility provided by multidimensional quoting and the efforts of the AdVic team, a number of common deal blockers were systematically resolved. This allowed our customer’s team to close deals in record time. 

Relationship Formation

Once the go-live of our customer’s CPQ rebuild was complete, AdVic remained close to our customer to tend to any changes, new projects, or quick fixes that may have been needed to be done… and they did. Our customer needed to push to Production on their org on a weekend. 

According to our customer’s’s Salesforce Platform Manager, “The timing of this push was perfect since the Revenue Accounting team would be ramping up Opportunity review starting on Monday, January 31. This fix reduced 90% of the work that one full-time Sales Ops employee was doing to manually fix rejected Opportunity data. It also drastically reduced the Revenue Accounting team’s time spent working back and forth with Sales Ops (and IT) on the fixes. As a result, the Revenue Accounting team was able to complete all Deal reviews and successfully sync January Opps to NetSuite by February 2 at 2 p.m. PT.”

The Salesforce Platinum Manager added, “This is the fastest their team had ever completed deal review at Month End. In addition to improving close velocity, we are restoring trust in the system and creating light at the end of the tunnel for the teams that have suffered from these bugs for 15 months.”

Relationship Turns to Partnership

AdVic’s relationship with our customer began as just a simple Staff Augmentation for their Salesforce org. However, that relationship has since transformed into a partnership that empowers our customer across all departments. Initially, our customer’s platform lacked processes, automation, and multidimensional elements. AdVic assisted our customer with systematic requirement gathering, built-out custom CPQ quoting, along with a custom Conga form that accelerated closing, increased productivity, and merged Salesforce orgs as needed. Today, AdVic maintains a close relationship with our customer’s leaders, and keeps a close eye on their Salesforce platform to ensure their platform continues to align with their business.

If you’re looking for a Salesforce consulting company with vision beyond an initial project, talk to a member of the AdVic Team today to learn why we’re not interested in a relationship with you…. we want a partnership with you!

Read More Successful AdVic Customer Relationship Stories 

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In the world of technology, things are ever-changing. From automation, updates, and discoveries, there are constant advancements to benefit businesses across all industries. 

During a recent AdVic® “Salesforce Simplified” podcast – titled “Talking Tech Trends with Salesforce Ben” and featuring Salesforce Ben’s Ben McCarthy and AdVic President Brian Mize – we discussed top tech trends that may impact the industry and business practices in the near future.

AI (Artificial Intelligence) in 2022

When the pandemic swept in over two years ago, there was an influx in the use of AI, not only in the Salesforce® world, but through the technology space. AI has been a huge benefit to organizations, as it caters to employees and customers alike. For employees, it provides the flexibility to work remotely. For customers, AI provides personalized experiences, and it provides insights to businesses that allow them to make actionable and better decisions that improves the overall quality of their business.

Artificial intelligence is integrated into all of Salesforce’s clouds, meaning no matter the industry, vertical, or business size, there is a cloud that can provide business intelligence that satisfies customer expectations.

“AI, at the end of the day, people still aren’t fully comfortable with it for a number of reasons. They want to know that they have a person on the other end, and I think with what Salesforce is doing with AI, and bots, and a number of other avenues, they’re still able to deliver that.” – Brian Mize

AR (Augmented Reality) and VR (Virtual Reality)

Although the Metaverse is still in development with AR and VR, Meta Platforms (Facebook’s parent company) will be pushing it in the near future. If their predictions are accurate, we may see this coming into remote work life and frequent meetings as it offers more of a personable experience. 

“If the Metaverse does happen, instead of Google Meets, instead of Zooms, we could be having VR-, AR-type meetings in the Metaverse where we’re walking around, we’re shaking hands with people, and talking to people with really good graphics that makes it seem like real life.” – Ben McCarthy

Cybersecurity 

As AI continues to transform and businesses rely more and more on data, many organizations have made an intentional effort to protect their cybersecurity investments and customer data. Whether it be data breaches or cyberattacks, businesses are persistent in maintaining their technology against cyber threats. 

During the podcast, AdVic’s Brian Mize talked about data laws and how they differ from place to place. “We have borderlines that data can’t cross from one country to another, one geo to another.” This gives customers the confidence that the data that they are sharing is protected. 

Salesforce Shield offers many ways to protect data. A couple are multi-factor authentication, and making sure that you can lock down access to your systems where they are, these are all designed to take measures to enhance cybersecurity, making sure that your data is safe wherever it is a huge piece in a cyber security strategy. 

“As AI continues to increase, so will cybersecurity because, again, you have more data, you have more data flowing back and forth, which gives more potential for data breaches, more potential for exploiting weaknesses and systems. These two things are going to grow together as we look into the future.” -Brian Mize

Low- to No-Code 

Low- to No-code allows marketers, customer service reps, human resources, and other end-users to add automation, fields, and other customizations to their tech without using code. With low-code capabilities, non-developers are empowered to customize apps with drag and drop functionality or point and click. 

Salesforce Ben’s Ben McCarthy describes Low- to No-Code as an “exciting feature, especially in the Salesforce world as they are phasing out workflow rules and process build or automation tools in favor of flow.” He predicts that a substantial amount of code in the future will be done with declarative low-code/no-code tools, and that can accelerate development times and reduce the need for expensive developers. 

One of the most popular products that provides this is MuleSoft’s Composer,  which connects apps and data quickly and easily with clicks, not code.

“I think a huge amount of development could be done using declarative, no-code/low-code tools,” – Ben McCarthy

Distributed Cloud Computing

Distributed Cloud Computing is the ability to take computing needs, resources, and storage cycles, and distribute them across a broad region of public and private clouds. In essence, it’s getting data close to the end-users so the internet can function and scale for businesses and users alike. 

“As we look ahead, Salesforce takes advantage and offers some edge computing, certainly some distributed cloud. And the goal of it all is to take the data, to take the processing, to take the need, and get it as close to the end user as it can be so that you have faster response time, and you have quicker throughput on what you need.” – Brain Mize

Not sure if your business can benefit from these trends, or already know it can? Let’s discuss your thoughts, we’ll share our experiences, and we’ll make a plan that is best for your business. And we can start as early as today! 

Related Resources

Talking Tech Trends with Salesforce Ben (Podcast)

MuleSoft’s Composer Ease of Use Reduces the Need for IT

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It’s never uncommon to hear that businesses need to cut costs to remain competitive. And when that is the case, it is also not uncommon that technology is the first line-item expense for cutting costs for many businesses. So, what’s a business supposed to do? Well, if you want to keep any competitive edge you may have established in the marketplace, it’s time to stop looking at technology as merely an operational expense. 

Using Technology to Establish a Long-Term Competitive Advantage

When a business leverages technology, that digital transformation makes a fundamental change in the way that business conducts every aspect of its operations. In addition, the digital age has changed the way people interact with one another, including customers, who expect to have seamless experiences with the brands they buy from. Being responsive to customer expectations is a critical factor in meeting that challenge, so to improve customer experiences – to remain competitive – your business has to be accessible online, providing self-serve capabilities, collecting and responding to customer information, and much more.

Technologies To Remain Competitive

Earlier we talked about technology as being the first thing many businesses cut when they determine that they need to tighten their belts. However, the truth is, the price of technology is falling and its capabilities are increasing. Here’s some questions to ask to yourself about ways your company can leverage technology to remain competitive:

– Are we using technology to integrate workflow automation in an effort to get back crucially-needed time to focus on our critical business operations and foster innovations?

– Have we ever considered a chatbot to take over our customer service tasks that include interacting with customers, answering routine questions, and routing telephone calls?

– How do we handle social media management so it becomes much less time consuming and more effective? What software can we use to eliminate many of the time-consuming and repetitive tasks associated with our social media presence, which we need to have in our competitive toolbox?

– Should we be looking at an online project management tool to track our projects and would also create a platform for communication among team members?

– Are we missing opportunities by not having a cloud-based accounting system for producing invoices and then sending them via email, and also keeping track of revenue and expenses? 

That is just a partial list of the technologies you could leverage to transform many of your business’ processes to save time, reduce costs, and improve competitive advantage. The results that are produced could truly be impressive. What are you waiting for?

So, there’s the case for leveraging tech – not abandoning it – to remain competitive. Are you unsure where to start your digital transformation for responding to internal and customer expectations and developing a strong competitive advantage? 

Relax! Ad Victoriam’s innovative, trusted and experienced team of certified Salesforce® consultants will commit themselves to maximizing your platform’s capabilities, giving you the peace-of-mind that your business is competitive today and into the future. We’re ready to help starting today!

Related Resources:

Transform Technology Headaches into Successes
Innovative Technology that Drives Manufacturing Sales
Pharma Productivity Advances on Salesforce Maps Mobile

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Technology now exists so companies no longer have to be held back by the old ways of doing things. Manufacturers can replace legacy tools and siloed spreadsheets so sales teams can better serve customer needs and compete in the current landscape. An independent survey by Confirmit found organizations that adopted a CRM solution saw a 39 percent improvement in forecast accuracy, a 32 percent boost in sales productivity, and an overall 23% increase in sales. 

Cloud CRM

A cloud customer relationship management (CRM) solution allows sales reps to create deeper, more meaningful relationships with each and every customer. Real-time information and interactions can be carefully tracked, so quick decisions can be made and reps are better equipped to close deals.

Integration with ERP

An Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) locked in a legacy back office system does little good when it comes to driving efficiency. The right integration tool unlocks and connects back office ERP to front office systems, so manufacturers can better manage distribution and supply chains and meet product demand. This access is also key to building a rich customer profile.

Data & Analytics

In manufacturing, sales teams not only need customer data to be accurate, but they also need to be able to successfully interpret it so they can make better decisions. Adopting an analytics tool can help reps uncover new opportunities and better sell to customers.

Related: Watch the on-demand webinar for manufacturers: Harnessing Data & Automation to Drive Sales Performance. 

Sales Benefits for Manufacturers

Once the old, outdated process and systems are out and the new ones are in place, manufacturers can expect numerous benefits. In fact, companies that adopt cloud technology to coordinate and collaborate with their sales teams, and across their organizations, enjoy a big advantage as a result.

Improved Relationships

Salespeople have better relationships with customers due to a 360-degree view of their history and needs, leading to more opportunities. Salespeople have access to clean data and are able to ensure supply is in place to meet demand for additional orders. It’s also a great way to stay ahead of customer expectations.

Better Efficiency

Reps waste less time on non-productive, manual tasks, are more efficient, and can spend more of their efforts improving the bottom line. Employee frustration from working in complex systems is minimized. This helps manufacturers retain staff longer, with less turnover, particularly key during this time when talent is especially needed.

Increased Sales

When it comes to Salesforce CRM specifically, a 2014 independent third-party survey by Confirmit found organizations that adopted the solution saw a 39 percent improvement in forecast accuracy, a 32 percent boost in sales productivity, and an overall 23 percent increase in sales.

Related: Watch a complimentary on-demand manufacturing focused webinar today. 

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