The plant runs on the ERP. The sales side runs on somebody's inbox.
Most manufacturers we meet run production on a serious ERP — and run quoting, dealer relationships, and multi-year pursuits on Excel exports, email threads, and one person's memory. We build the Salesforce side so the commercial half of the business is as disciplined as the shop floor. We're from the Quad Cities — John Deere's hometown, its supplier ecosystem, the fabricators and machine shops around it — and this is who we build for.
Built here, for companies that make things here
The Quad Cities is a manufacturing region. Moline is John Deere's world headquarters, and around it sits an ecosystem of suppliers, fabricators, machine shops, and equipment dealers that most software consultancies have never set foot in. We have. We're an independent Salesforce studio based here — Davenport, Bettendorf, Moline, Rock Island — and we work with manufacturers locally in person and nationwide remotely.
Manufacturing sales isn't SaaS sales, and generic CRM setups show it. Deals run for years, not weeks. Revenue flows through dealers and distributors, not just direct accounts. Quotes carry real margin math, not list prices. And the ERP — not the CRM — is the system of record for what actually ships. We build Salesforce around those realities instead of pretending they don't exist.
What it looks like when the commercial side runs on spreadsheets
If more than one of these sounds familiar, the problem isn't your people — it's that nobody ever built them a system.
Quoting lives in Excel — and nobody sees the margin.
Every estimator has their own spreadsheet, their own multipliers, their own version of the price book. Quotes go out the door with no approval step and no margin visibility, and when a customer calls about a quote from eight months ago, someone goes digging through email attachments. CPQ chaos isn't a personality problem; it's a missing system.
Dealer and distributor relationships live in people's heads.
Your revenue flows through a network of dealers, distributors, and reps — but there's no single record of who covers which territory, which contacts actually move product, what was promised at the last visit, or which relationships are quietly going cold. When the rep who "owns" a dealer leaves, the relationship walks out with them.
The ERP and the CRM don't talk, so people type things twice.
An order closes in Salesforce and someone re-keys it into the ERP. A customer record changes in the ERP and the CRM never hears about it. Double entry breeds errors, errors breed distrust, and pretty soon the sales team stops updating the CRM at all — because why maintain a system nobody believes?
Multi-year deal cycles, and nobody can see the pipeline.
Capital equipment and program pursuits run eighteen months to five years. Over that span, a forecast built on gut feel and a monthly spreadsheet roll-up isn't a forecast — it's folklore. Leadership can't see which pursuits are real, which are stalled, and what production should actually plan for next year.
What we build for manufacturers
Not a generic Sales Cloud rollout with your logo on it — the specific machinery a manufacturer's commercial side needs.
Quote-to-cash pipelines
One pipeline from inquiry to quote to order, with structured products and price books, approval steps where margin demands them, and quote documents generated from the system instead of rebuilt in Excel every time. Estimators keep their expertise; the business gains visibility and a record.
Account hierarchies for dealer networks
Dealers, distributors, territories, and end customers modeled as an actual hierarchy — so you can see a dealer's whole book, roll revenue up by territory, track visit history and commitments, and keep the relationship in the company instead of in one rep's head.
ERP integrations that end double entry
We connect Salesforce to the ERP you already run — via REST APIs or middleware, whichever your systems support — so orders, customers, and product data flow one direction of truth instead of being typed twice. Entered once, correct everywhere. This is developer work, and it's the work we do best.
Production-aware forecasting
Pipeline stages that match how your deals actually progress — long cycles, milestone gates, program pursuits — with dashboards that give leadership a real forward view. A forecast production planning can actually use, instead of a spreadsheet everyone quietly discounts.
Agentforce for order status and dealer inquiries
The calls that eat your inside-sales team's day — "where's my order," "what's my price on this part," "is this in stock" — handled by an AI agent grounded in your Salesforce data, fenced in by real permissions, with a human escalation path that always exists. See how we build agents →
The rest of the Salesforce practice
Everything on our main Salesforce page applies here too — setup, cleanup, Flows, custom Apex and Lightning Web Components, and ongoing support once things are built. Manufacturing is a focus, not a separate company.
CRM work that doesn't scare your compliance team
The Quad Cities sits next to Rock Island Arsenal, and the region is full of private suppliers, subcontractors, and machine shops whose customers include defense primes and government programs. Those companies need CRM like anyone else — but every software decision runs through a compliance filter that most consultants have never heard of.
We have. We speak the vocabulary — CMMC, NIST 800-171, CUI — and we design around the realities it creates. That means understanding what data can and cannot live in a given system, why your compliance lead asks where the servers are and who can see what, when Salesforce Government Cloud is the right conversation to have with Salesforce, and how to architect record access, field-level security, and integrations so the person who signs off on your compliance posture can actually sign off. We build the CRM so it fits inside your compliance boundary instead of fighting it.
To be plain about what we are and aren't: we're an independent Salesforce studio, not a certified assessor, not a Salesforce partner, and we hold no government contracts or clearances. What we bring is CRM architecture that understands the compliance world defense suppliers live in — designed so your compliance team, not us, makes the call.
Start with a free look at your org.
The free Salesforce Org Health Assessment is the honest first step: we look at what you have — or what you're starting from — and tell you plainly what's solid, what's risky, and what's worth building first. No obligation, and you talk to the senior developer who'd actually do the work. Ready to build instead? Go straight to a scoping call.
Questions manufacturers actually ask.
Do you work with our ERP?
Probably — but the honest answer depends on what your ERP exposes. Modern systems with REST APIs integrate cleanly; older systems usually integrate through middleware, scheduled file exchange, or a database layer. On the scoping call we'll ask what you run and how it's hosted, and tell you plainly which integration path fits and what it involves. If your ERP genuinely can't be integrated sensibly, we'll say that too, instead of selling you a science project.
Do we need Sales Cloud or Manufacturing Cloud?
Most manufacturers we talk to are well served by Sales Cloud configured properly — custom objects for the things that make your business yours, real pipeline stages, dealer hierarchies. Manufacturing Cloud adds purpose-built features like sales agreements and account-based forecasting, and it costs more per seat. It earns its keep for some businesses and is overkill for others. We'll tell you which you are before you buy anything — we don't get paid more if you buy the bigger license.
Can you work with our existing Salesforce admin?
Yes, and it usually goes better that way. Your admin knows your org, your users, and your business; we bring the development work — integrations, Apex, complex Flows, agent builds — that a solo admin typically doesn't have bandwidth or tooling for. We document what we build and hand it over so your admin can own it, not so you're dependent on us forever.
We're a defense supplier. Can you even touch our systems?
That depends on your compliance boundary, and we treat that question with the seriousness it deserves. We're not a certified assessor and we don't hold clearances — what we do is design and build CRM architecture that respects CUI-handling rules, works within GovCloud where that's the right call, and gets structured so your compliance lead can review and approve it. In practice that starts with a conversation that includes whoever owns compliance on your side, and we're comfortable being told what we can and can't see.