Manufacturing Cloud features: what is in the box

Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud contains three groups of features: sales agreements, forecasting, programmes, targets and visits for sales; warranty, service campaigns and two consoles for service; rebates and partner features for the dealer channel. Most of them are switched on one by one, so “we have Manufacturing Cloud” tells you little about what actually runs. Some capabilities that Salesforce lists right next to them are sold separately, among them ship and debit and Connected Assets. Before a quote is signed, I want every feature the business case depends on named in it, together with the licence that covers it.

What does Manufacturing Cloud contain for sales?

Manufacturing Cloud is an industry cloud on top of Sales Cloud and Service Cloud, with its own data model for manufacturers. Whether it pays off at all is covered in Manufacturing Cloud: is it worth it?. Here the question is narrower: what is in the box. The product page for sales1 and the Trailhead quick look2 name five sales features:

Feature	What it does	The question it answers
Sales agreements	Run-rate agreements with planned quantities, price, cost and margin per period; actuals from the ERP or order management	Which customer is behind on committed volume?
Account forecasting	A forecast across new and run-rate business, with a formula builder and a hand-over to demand and financial planning systems	What will each customer take per product and month?
Program-based business	Market size per manufacturer and programme, third-party demand data, component forecasts	How many components will an OEM programme need?
Account manager targets	Top-down targets by volume, revenue or a custom measure	Is the team on track per customer, product and region?
Visit management	Visits planned from action plan templates, tasks and metrics captured on mobile	What did the rep check at the customer or dealer?

Forecasting exists twice: the settings have one switch for account forecasts and one for advanced account forecasting. The Trailhead quick look lists only the advanced version. How it works and where it stops is in account forecasting for sales volume planning, programmes are in program-based business for suppliers.

Trailhead also lists product catalog management, which keeps product definitions and pricing structures in one place. A quoting system with configurator, approvals and contract generation does not appear in any of these feature lists. In this masterclass, quoting belongs to Revenue Cloud.

For service, warranty, campaigns and two consoles come on top

The product page for service3 names three blocks:

• Service console. A timeline of customer interactions, alerts on warranty renewals, asset problems, order delays and open cases, and actions such as creating a warranty claim or selling an extended warranty.
• Asset service console. One view per asset with milestones, serial number, related accounts and contacts, warranties, cases, work orders and claims.
• Warranty lifecycle management. Warranty programmes by duration, usage limits and covered parts, business rules that approve claims, and claims submitted by partners and customers through portals or the API.

Trailhead adds three more: product service campaigns for recalls and upgrades on a defined set of assets (the object exists since API 51.0, according to the object reference4), prework estimation of labour, parts and cost before work begins, and inventory features for parts availability and replenishment.

The pricing page sells service as its own edition, Service Core at $275 per user and month, and combines both sides only in Sales & Service Max at $700. Which service features a Sales Core user may use is not stated there. Scheduling technicians and the mobile app for the field are Field Service, with their own licences, as described in is Salesforce Field Service worth it?.

What is in it for dealers and the channel?

This is where the feature lists get confusing. Trailhead groups the channel features under two headings:

• Rebates: rebate management, ship and debit process management, price protection, and Agentforce for channel revenue management.
• Channel Revenue Management: partner visit management, an actionable relationship center and a distributor performance dashboard.

The ship and debit module5 is clear: “Ship and Debit Process Management is a feature within Channel Revenue Management.” And the add-ons page6 sells Channel Revenue Management for Manufacturing separately, at $30,000 per org and year. So a capability on the Agentforce Manufacturing feature list is an add-on in the quote.

Partner visit management is the opposite case. It has its own switch in the Manufacturing settings, next to partner lead management and partner performance management, but Trailhead lists it under the Channel Revenue Management heading. Which licence covers it is not written down anywhere I could find.

Rebate management itself is covered in part 5 of the series. Whether it needs extra licences is another open point; the prices that contradict each other are collected in Manufacturing Cloud add-ons: what costs extra.

Every feature has its own switch

Salesforce built it that way. The IndustriesManufacturingSettings metadata7 has one boolean field per feature, all false by default:

Setting	Feature	Since API
enableIndManufacturing	Sales agreements	47.0 (component)
enableIndustriesMfgAccountForecast	Account forecasts	47.0 (component)
enableIndustriesMfgAdvForecast	Advanced account forecasting	47.0 (component)
enableIndustriesMfgTargets	Account manager targets	49.0
enableIndustriesMfgProgram	Manufacturing programs	54.0
enablePartnerLeadManagement, enablePartnerPerformanceManagement, enablePartnerVisitManagement	Partner features	56.0
enableFleetManagement	Fleet management	59.0

For the first three fields the page gives no version of their own, only the component’s 47.0.

A licence and an active feature are two different things. An org can pay for Manufacturing Cloud for years and use only sales agreements. On top of that, features depend on each other: program-based business needs advanced account forecasting, Data Pipelines and its own permission sets, according to Trailhead8. And the switches are metadata. They belong in version control and the release process like every other setting, not in a click in production.

Manufacturing Cloud and Agentforce Manufacturing are the same product

Both names count. The pricing page sells “Manufacturing Cloud Sales Core”, its footnotes speak of “Agentforce Manufacturing for Sales”. Trailhead calls the whole product Agentforce Manufacturing. It is one product with two names.

The name causes a practical problem. Trailhead lists “Agent-powered sales agreements”, but the description is about long-term agreements on prices and products, with no agent action named. “Agentforce for sales planning” is a real agent template with three documented subagents, as described in what the Sales Planning agent really does. And the automatic forecast for new products, which Trailhead attributes to Agentforce Manufacturing, is a scheduled calculation.

In every vendor workshop I would ask the same question: which subagent, which action, which licence? For Core, the pricing page lists Agentforce via Flex Credits and Salesforce sells the Agentforce for Manufacturing Cloud add-on; the full Agentforce for Industries suite is only in the Max editions.

Worked example: a quote for a hydraulics maker

Assume a maker of hydraulic components receives a quote for 120 Sales Core and 40 Service Core users. The business case names six things: sales agreements with distributors, targets per account manager, quarterly visits at 60 dealers, warranty claims from dealers through a portal, price protection for distributors and an agent for agreement questions.

Checked against the feature lists:

1. Sales agreements and targets: in the sales feature list, each with its own switch.
2. Dealer visits: switch in the Manufacturing settings, but listed under Channel Revenue Management. Licence open.
3. Warranty claims: a service feature, so the adjudicators need Service Core. The dealers need portal licences on top.
4. Price protection: Channel Revenue Management, $30,000 per org and year.
5. Agent: add-on for Core users or a Max edition.

Only two of the six points are settled by the edition in the quote. The other four need a line of their own.

What should the quote name explicitly?

1. Every feature from the business case by name, with the edition or add-on that covers it.
2. Sales or service per user group, so warranty adjudicators do not end up on Sales Core.
3. Channel features: rebate management, partner visit and partner performance management, included or Channel Revenue Management.
4. Portal licences per external user group.
5. Agentforce: add-on or Max, and the unit it is billed in.
6. Platform limits: Flex Credits, Omnistudio and Business Rules Engine calls in the edition.
7. The price basis: the pricing page footnotes contradict each other on Enterprise and Unlimited Edition.

This list is the first half of chapter 1 of the Manufacturing Cloud masterclass. Weighing the features against a custom build is part of my work on make-or-buy and licence forecasts.

Sources8

1. 1product page for sales (opens in a new tab)salesforce.com
2. 2Trailhead quick look (opens in a new tab)trailhead.salesforce.com
3. 3product page for service (opens in a new tab)salesforce.com
4. 4object reference (opens in a new tab)developer.salesforce.com
5. 5ship and debit module (opens in a new tab)trailhead.salesforce.com
6. 6add-ons page (opens in a new tab)salesforce.com
7. 7IndustriesManufacturingSettings metadata (opens in a new tab)developer.salesforce.com
8. 8Trailhead (opens in a new tab)trailhead.salesforce.com