There is no subtler way to say it: Asset Management has received a MASSIVE, MASSIVE upgrade in Sales Cloud R13.
Until now, assets existed in the context of an account only. E.g. you could only search for assets after having selected an account first and then only search for the assets within that account.
R13 Asset Management
In Release 13, the asset object has been upgraded to a first class object and more: it can be fully extended, has its own reporting subject area, can directly be approached from the homepage …
… and a list of assets across accounts is now available too.
Asset Calendar
In order to get a better view on the appointments related to an account, contact or opportunity, deal calendars were introduced back in Release 11. As additional new asset functionality in Release 13, we now can also create asset calendars giving insight in all appointments related to an asset.
New Asset Attributes for Sales Predictor
All the above is not bad … nice … pretty good … fantastic actually, but the following is actually what will make asset management completely amazing in Sales Cloud!
Sales Predictor is in my opinion one of the best, and probably most underestimated functionalities available in Sales Cloud. If you are not using Sales Predictor, I highly recommend to revisit and reevaluate it. Sales Predictor can provide tremendous value in generating recommendations and leads, as a reward for all the hard work your sales reps did by entering all their information into Sales Cloud.
As of Release 13, we can now also use asset information (combined with account, product and opportunity data) to generate recommendations and leads. Imagine the possibilities:
- Generating leads to replace assets with newer versions X years after accounts purchased the assets
- Generating leads on existing assets to renew service contracts X months before the warranty date on assets is expiring
- If you would log competitive assets also, you could generate leads and recommendations for them also to replace them over time or take over their service contracts
I think all of this opens up a whole new world of possibilities in Sales Cloud !
