Manufacturers are increasingly turning to technology to improve productivity, streamline processes, reduce costs, and enhance product quality, much of which involves automation. Think automated assembly lines, quality inspections carried out by robots, and CAD/CAM. However, it’s worth bearing in mind that, as well as taking the initiative on the factory floor and in the R&D labs, there’s plenty that can be done to optimise the necessary back-office administrative tasks.
Getting your paperwork in order
Salesforce is already leading the way in revolutionising the ways businesses run both behind-the-scenes and customer-facing functionalities, automating day-to-day tasks and maximising the value that can be extracted from data to help manufacturers to make better-informed decisions, without having to put in any extra effort.
One key area where a small change can reap huge benefits is document generation. Like pretty much every business in the world, manufacturers produce piles and piles of paperwork every year, whether communicating with suppliers, distributors or customers. As well as the hours spent preparing the documents, not to mention the cost of paper and ink, the reams and reams of print outs also need to be securely stored, efficiently managed, and made accessible, often at a moment’s notice.
Enter: Docomotion, the Salesforce app that takes care of all your document generation needs, enabling you to create order forms, customer contracts, invoices, shipping documents and more, with just a click.
How a Document Gneneration App works
Docomotion takes the effort out of creating documents. Simply select a pre-prepared form from within the app, and instantly populate it with all the relevant data from your Salesforce CRM. With no time-consuming cutting and pasting between screens, checking (and double checking) details, and endless rounds of revisions, this can add up to a time saving of as much as 60% compared to creating documents by hand – time that can be better spent doing more profit-oriented work.
What’s more, Docomotion has an interactive element, so the recipient of the document can comment on the text, input data, make any necessary corrections and even insert their electronic signature, before sending the document back to you. Their input is then automatically worked into Salesforce when you receive the document back, ensuring that your internal records are kept up to date at all times.
But that’s not all…. if you ever need to attach a document that is not held in Salesforce – perhaps something from your external ERP or CRM system – you can do this quickly and easily from within the app, with our convenient External Data feature.
Finally, a new Live Editor functionality allows you to make one-off changes to documents, tailoring them to a particular recipient. Let’s say your normal payment terms are EOM, but you’ve agreed to net 60 for a highly-valued repeat customer. When you prepare an invoice for this customer, you can change the terms of your standard template just for them, while leaving the template itself intact for future use.
The bigger picture
As well as all the usability and functionality benefits already mentioned, zoom out on Docomotion and you’ll find: all documents stored centrally, instantly accessible to all your staff, all the time; no in-house IT support required; built-in scalability as your company grows.
If you’re considering ways to automate your manufacturing business, make sure you look further into the benefits of automated document generation, with Docomotion.
