Salesforce Is a Wild Mustang in the AI Race
In the bustling world of artificial intelligence, Salesforce Inc. has emerged as an unsurpassed and true leader. “Salesforce?” one might wonder. The company known for its customer relationship management software? How can it be an AI leader if it is only focused on each department or division (or horse) is only focused on its own survival? AI Leader Salesforce.
Herds of horses have structure, unique and important roles they each play. While they survival depends greatly on each members’ independece they must remain steadfast in the roles and responsibilities they carry to the entire herd. The lead stallion must be the protector. The lead mare must organize all the mothers and foals into obedient members of the herd. But they must all collaborate.
AI Leader Salesforce
To stay strong and competetive Salesforce is making bold strides in AI as well.
Recently, the company became the first major tech firm to introduce a new class of generative AI tools known as “agents,” which have long been discussed by others but never fully realized. Unlike its competitors, Salesforce is upfront about how these innovative tools might impact employment. This audacious approach could be the key to propelling the company ahead in the AI race, particularly as newer players like OpenAI and Anthropic make their moves.
Marc Benioff, Salesforce’s dynamic CEO, is driving this change. Known for his unconventional strategies that helped propel Salesforce to the forefront of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) revolution, Benioff has secured a client base that includes 90% of Fortune 500 companies, such as Walt Disney Co. and Ford Motor Co. Salesforce profits from subscriptions to applications like Sales Cloud and Service Cloud, which help businesses manage their sales and customer service processes. At the recent Dreamforce conference, Salesforce unveiled Agentforce, a new service that enables customers to deploy autonomous AI-powered agents.
If Benioff himself is the alpha herd leader, Agentforce may well be the lead mare.
Salesforce distinguishes itself by replacing traditional chatbots with these new agents. While chatbots, powered by technologies from companies like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, typically handle customer inquiries, agents can perform actions such as filing complaints, booking appointments, or updating shipping addresses.
The notion of AI “taking action” might seem risky, given that generative models can sometimes produce erroneous results. Imagine an AI mishandling a booking.
However, Salesforce is confident that this won’t be an issue. “Hallucinations go down to zero because [Agentforce] is only allowed to generate content from the sources you’ve trained it on,” says Bill Patterson, corporate strategy director at Salesforce. This approach is touted as more reliable than models that scrape the broader internet, which can include inaccurate information.
Salesforce’s willingness to confront a typically sensitive issue — the potential job displacement caused by AI — is also noteworthy. Unlike other AI companies that avoid discussing the impact of cost-cutting on employment, Salesforce openly addresses it. For instance, education publisher John Wiley & Sons Inc. reported that using Agentforce reduced the time spent answering customer inquiries by nearly 50% over three months. This efficiency meant Wiley did not need to hire additional staff for the back-to-school season.
In the herd, the leader must acknowledge some of his own offspring will have to join other herds, there is a genetic survival of the fittest factor. I would suspect Benioff will re-train and re-purpose as many of the Salesforce family as he can, rather than seeing them leave the herd.
Benioff highlighted this in his keynote, asking, “What if you could surge your service organization and your sales organization without hiring more people?” That’s the promise of Agentforce. And what if? Imagine the herd leader having to be always the alpha, always on guard, always in protective mode. When does he slngeep, eat, rest, and recuperate? Definitely not by bringing in another herd leader. The two inevitably come to arms each excerting their dominance until one is run off by the other, to survive on his own.
The herd leader needs to clone himself, create additional herd, or corporate, assets to help him do his job better. Enter the power behind Salesforce’s long history with Artificial Intelligence.
The effectiveness of Salesforce’s tools in delivering a return on investment remains to be seen, especially as many businesses struggle to evaluate the success of generative AI. Nonetheless, Salesforce poses a significant challenge to newer firms like OpenAI and Anthropic, which have privately acknowledged their use of Salesforce’s CRM software. For many chief innovation officers, it’s easier to continue leveraging Salesforce’s existing platform rather than adopt new technologies. Like the healthiest of the band of Mustangs, the most skilled and aggressive will thrive and survive.
Salesforce’s established presence and broad distribution put it in a strong position at a time when large companies are often hesitant to embrace new tech. Its fearless approach to job displacement suggests the company is poised to profit significantly from its AI venture. As a result, Salesforce may well become a formidable competitor in the AI world. Furthermore taking its own investment in AI education to new heights, one can believe that Salesforce has an eye on people and not just profits. Much like the lead stallion in a wild herd, Salesforce is protecting itself and its biggest asset, its people!
By Tectonic’s Salesforce Solutions Architect, Shannan Hearne
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