Where Manufacturing and Logistics Companies Fall Short With Salesforce (+ How to Fix It)

For manufacturers and transportation companies, Salesforce isn't just a CRM: it's the front door to your entire organization.

Sales activity directly feeds into supply chain and operational execution (i.e. available-to-promise inventory, production capacity, order lead times, warehouse throughput, etc.), yet too often it's handled in isolation.

Your other systems, such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions like NetSuite, SAP, and Infor, can exist completely separately from Salesforce. This leads to quoting errors, broken promises, and a lack of visibility across the business.

We’ve worked with companies where sales reps are promising delivery dates without knowing if there’s inventory available. Or where project managers are building implementation schedules in spreadsheets disconnected from what was actually sold!

That’s why smart Salesforce implementations don’t stop at sales stages and pipeline dashboards. They bring ERP data forward, create repeatable quoting models, and give teams a real-time view of operational constraints. The result: faster quoting, more accurate delivery promises, and fewer surprises down the line.

Overextending Salesforce into ERP Territory … or vice versa

Too many organizations are trying to force Salesforce to do something it was never meant to do: act like an Enterprise Resource Platform (ERP).

Salesforce says they aren’t an ERP and specifically calls out these differences. But too many companies, eyeing a new way of doing business or migrating to a cheaper platform, try to leverage CRMs like Salesforce for more than they’re intended.

I get it: leaders want sales teams to have visibility into inventory, vendor relationships, production timelines, and average costs. But modeling bills of material, tracking purchase orders, or replicating full inventory logic in Salesforce is both expensive and ill-advised.

Is it feasible? Yes. But should you? No.

The opposite is true, too. I’ve seen companies try to build their sales function in ERPs like NetSuite and Microsoft Dynamics 365.

But those systems aren’t purpose-built for what a CRM provides. This slows your sales teams, giving competitors an advantage when their quote-to-cash processes look like lightspeed compared to yours.

A better path:

Successful companies start with the right underlying questions about what’s best for the business.

For example:

• What information does the sales team need to know when they’re building an opportunity?

• What information do they actually need? What would be in the way?

A sales rep should know a product’s average cost, lead times, and shipping information.

They don’t need information around which warehouse has certain quantities of product going out - nor does Sales Operations or IT need to be building integrations around any data that isn’t truly necessary for its recipient.

And if Finance is using this data, it has to be trustworthy.

Mapping a healthy ERP-CRM integration leads to a more effective business for all parties involved.

Salesforce’s role is to complement the ERP. Having them work in harmony is your best path forward.

Bloated and Broken Data Models

The second issue? Salesforce orgs in manufacturing and transportation industries tend to suffer from data overload.

We’ve seen organizations with more than 160 fields on the Opportunity object. 160!!! Most of which were inconsistently used, poorly governed, or completely ignored by everyone involved in selling.

That kind of sprawl kills adoption, slows down sellers, and creates more technical debt, leading to three issues:

• Lack of trust in reporting, whether it’s finance, sales pipeline, marketing impact, or customer support.

• Slower deal velocity, leading to lower cash flow

• Difficulty innovating with new technologies, such as Agentforce/AI or layering on new automations, processes, or modules

Data architecture begins with ruthless prioritization. So ask:

• What maps to the overarching business goals and desired outcomes for the next 12-24 months?

• Which opportunity fields truly drive sales decisions?

• What’s required for clean handoffs to post-sales teams?

• Who needs what data … and doesn’t need particular data options?

Under-Resourced Admin and RevOps Functions

This is a near-universal challenge, but we’ve seen it with a lot of manufacturing and transportation companies: there’s simply not enough resources to unlock the full value of what Salesforce offers to their companies.

It’s every client’s issue. Because you can’t just hire more people, you also need:

• Internal admins and operations specialists

• Executive sponsors who prioritize strategic CRM initiatives and ensure alignment to company goals

• Time and budget to enforce process rigor and user adoption

IT teams are already stretched thin across ERP, supply chain systems, and compliance tools. As a result, Salesforce often becomes a Frankenstein of half-baked automations and abandoned custom objects.

It’s not IT’s fault. They’re prioritizing what will run the business and what’s seen as mission-critical vs. what happens all too often with the CRM: it’s a nice to have.

Salesforce is actually mission-critical

Treat Salesforce like the mission-critical system it is. That means investing in enablement, governance, and iteration.

It also means empowering cross-functional teams - especially sales, finance, and IT - to align around what Salesforce should and shouldn’t do.

Because it's so important, taking the time to build out a Salesforce roadmap that aligns it to your business goals and builds an action plan around your influences, changing needs, market conditions, and more is an excellent recalibration that brings strong immediate value.

Know Your Entry Point(s)

Most manufacturing and logistics companies we’ve worked with don’t start with lofty CRM ambitions. In fact, it was a far smaller problem: slow quote processes.

When we first began, we worked with one transportation company and two manufacturing companies and all needed to move their quote-to-cash process out of Excel and into something much more modern that was faster.

This reflects a broader truth: sales is often the catalyst for modernization. One way sales hasn't changed over the past 15 years!

When revenue growth gets faster, more accurate, and easier to analyze, the rest of the Salesforce stack becomes inherently more valuable because there’s a direct link to critical business outcomes.

But your needs may revolve more around customer service with case resolution or a simplification of your tech stack, trying to bring more into a single platform.

No matter what, you need to understand how it impacts your business as a whole and map out the long-term strategy for resourcing and growth.

Your Next Step

The most successful companies keep their ERP and CRM integrated, but with clearly-defined roles and roadmaps.

In addition, simplifying their data models with a bias towards “what can we actually do with this data?” is the next competitive landscape. After all, we all have data … but how many have the right data that leads to fast, accurate decisions?

Here’s where you should focus:

Strategy. Is there a clear roadmap for your technologies mapped to your business goals? How does this trickle down into Salesforce?

Data quality. Every Board of Directors has the same question: how can you leverage AI to become a more effective business?

Start with your data quality and then evaluate your best use cases for a tool like Agentforce.

Evaluate how you’re using Salesforce today. Are you getting everything out of the platform that’s currently available to you? The answer’s probably “no” and we find that’s the norm. Use modern objects and data flows, automate more using out-of-the-box functionality, and more.

Then, accelerate from there with your quote-to-cash processes in modules like Revenue Cloud.

In manufacturing and transportation/logistics organizations, Salesforce can absolutely be a competitive advantage - but it has to be intentional, not aspirational.

That’s where we come in as a trusted Salesforce Partner. Ask us about it!