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Remember the digital platform subscription you changed mid-cycle but still received the upgrade, or those recurring subscriptions? It’s all handled by Revenue Cloud. A smooth, easy revenue process drives growth and scalability for businesses.
From the customer’s first interaction to final reporting, Revenue Cloud, along with Sales and Marketing Cloud, optimizes the business operations. Salesforce Revenue Cloud focuses on the quote-to-cash and configuration processes within the customer journey. This guide will help you understand the software, its features, uses, and the major career options.
What is Salesforce Revenue Cloud?
Salesforce Revenue Cloud is part of the Salesforce ecosystem and supports the Customer 360 platform, which integrates revenue management. The software enables large and small businesses to manage their revenue lifecycle, from CPQ through billing, including partner sales and subscriptions, in collaboration with Sales Cloud.
The Salesforce Revenue Cloud is designed to automate the revenue management process for mid-sized and large enterprises within the Salesforce ecosystem. The software simplifies the CPQ process for sales representatives and finance teams. Overall, Revenue Cloud focuses on bringing sales, finance, and operations teams together to work from a single data source.
But what does Salesforce Revenue Cloud do? It handles your revenue lifecycle management for better user experience and business improvements for mid-sized and large enterprises. It creates a seamless purchase experience by integrating with ERP systems such as SAP, Oracle, or NetSuite using APIs or middleware like MuleSoft.
Features of Revenue Cloud
Salesforce Revenue Cloud offers multiple features that help improve the revenue process for any business. The Salesforce Revenue Cloud Billing might differ based on the revenue model or organization size. Before understanding who uses the revenue cloud, let us highlight a few features:
Revenue Lifecycle Management
Revenue Lifecycle Management is one of the core functionalities of the revenue cloud. It focuses on the entire revenue lifecycle: generation, pricing, contracting, billing, revenue recognition, and reporting. It does not focus on simple invoice creation but on more complex tasks, such as money and data flows across the customer journey.
It aligns the business pricing, contractual terms, billing schedules, and revenue recognition. It is mainly used in subscription or consumer-based business models.
Quote to Cash Solutions
QTC (Quote-to-Cash) is the backbone of Revenue Cloud and lifecycle management. This feature is based on Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ), which is the start of the revenue cycle. The sales representative can configure products and services, apply discounts and pricing, and create professional quotes.
Once approved, quotes can be converted into orders and contracts based on configured business rules. This contract covers the customer’s assets and terms. All of these are covered in the Salesforce Revenue Cloud Documentation, which provides guides and resources for managing these processes.
Revenue Cloud Billing
It is a component that supports the entire billing process, including invoice generation, tax calculations, consumption management, and more. The Salesforce Agentforce AI capabilities can be leveraged to enhance automation and insights to offer a streamlined experience.
Salesforce Revenue Cloud Advanced includes a built-in billing system that can be customised to meet business owners’ needs.
Lightning App Builder
Salesforce Customer 360 focuses on providing a unified view of customer data across clouds. Lightning App Builder is a tool for creating custom interfaces for the Salesforce platform. These tailored interfaces ensure relevant information is displayed to specific users, such as the revenue schedule to the finance team and the price waterfalls to the sales team.
The tool’s efficiency increases as it streamlines tasks such as managing used data submissions and displaying billing information. The customizations can be made without complex coding.
Now that we have understood the features, the question is: Who uses Salesforce Revenue Cloud?
Use of Salesforce Revenue Cloud
Salesforce Revenue Cloud is primarily used by large enterprises operating in SaaS, technology, telecommunications, and manufacturing. They use Revenue Cloud to manage the scalability, compliance, and complexity of the sales channels (direct, partner, e-commerce).
Let us understand it like this. Imagine you are a software vendor with a mix of services, including subscription models, one-time consultancy, and volume-based licensing, operating worldwide.
To manage the multiple revenue-generating processes, what can you do? It is where Salesforce Revenue Cloud comes into play. It ensures consistent pricing and segmented models for different revenue-generating processes, including pricing insights, forecasting, and recommendations.
Benefits of Using Revenue Cloud
Before you start using Salesforce Revenue Cloud, let’s take a look at the benefits you get from using it.
- Increased Revenue Efficiency: With Revenue Cloud integration, the quote-to-cash process has become faster. From creating a quote to collecting cash and managing cash flow, everything has become more efficient.
- Financial Governance: With regulatory compliance, ERP, and legal process support, the revenue cloud ensures security and provides clear audit trails for transactions across any business. It also minimizes revenue leakage.
- Customer Experience: Revenue Cloud allows a seamless switch between sales channels. Customers can add items to their shopping carts and then contact sales representatives with questions or for discounts. A sales representative can now process the request based on the customer’s purchase and interaction history.
- Unified Data: Salesforce Revenue Cloud enables businesses to consolidate all sales, billing, contract, and revenue data into a single source. It improves decision-making and forecasting across revenue processes and the customer lifecycle.
- Streamlined Functions: Using the revenue cloud, businesses can bridge the gap between sales and finance teams by automating workflows and enhancing data consistency. Overall, reducing manual labour saves time and resources.
Now that you know the platform, its features, and benefits, it is high time you knew your future.
Career options in Salesforce Revenue Cloud
The revenue cloud offers multiple job opportunities that require a few major skills.
| Job Roles | Required Skills |
|---|---|
| Salesforce Revenue Cloud/ CPQ Consultant | Expertise in Revenue Lifecycle Management, QTC, Billing of Subscriptions, and accounting principles. |
| Salesforce CPQ specialist | Master CPQ configurations, including product bundling, discount schedules, pricing rules, and approvals. |
| Salesforce Billing Specialist | Completed understanding of Revenue Loud Billing components like scheduling, usage, payment gateways, and more. |
| Salesforce Revenue Cloud Developer | Proficiency in Apex, Lightning Web Components (LWC), Flows, and API integrations. |
Tip: Before you start preparing for jobs, there are multiple Salesforce Revenue Cloud Certification Courses that you can do to prepare yourself for a better career.
Final Thoughts
Salesforce Revenue Cloud, a revenue management platform, is seeing growth in modern subscription- and commerce-based business models. By integrating Quote-to-Cash and Revenue Lifecycle Management into a single cloud solution, the software enhances efficiency and scalability.
Also, automating the revenue cycle with Revenue Cloud billing and integrating Salesforce Agentforce AI enables the enterprise to deliver a seamless experience for customers, partners, and internal revenue processes.
Finally, Revenue Cloud bridges the promises made by the sales team to the financial statements. As a business owner, adopting Revenue Cloud will not only improve your revenue process but also help you achieve better sales results.
