Your post Dreamforce AI action plan

Billed as ‘The World's Largest AI-event’, this year's Dreamforce did not fail to deliver on AI news and updates. In fact you would be forgiven for thinking the sheer volume was somewhat overwhelming! Help is at hand. In this article not only will you find a summarized overview of the need-to-know points from the conference, we also leave you with a plan of action to begin your own journey to AI-powered productivity. 

Familiar with Dreamforce? Skip the next para! 

For those unfamiliar, Dreamforce is Salesforce's annual flagship event held in San Francisco, bringing together the Salesforce ecosystem in one three-day mega event. This year, the 40,000 attendees, and millions more watching online, were able to choose from over 1,500 sessions. We heard from over 100 of the world's leading AI experts and visionaries - to give you some context, Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO was on the agenda.

If you hadn’t already got the message, Salesforce is going all in on AI!

According to the data points highlighted in CEO Marc Benioff’s keynote address, the business case for AI seems pretty clear.

• 30% of employee time estimated to be freed up by 2030 due to AI.
• 84% of business leaders believe that General AI significantly enhances customer service.
• $2T+ net business revenue gain forecasted between 2022-2028.

Given the impact on productivity and profitability, it comes as little surprise that 75% of companies are projected to adopt AI by 2027.

However, Salesforce firmly acknowledges that in order for businesses to move forward with AI, there are two main obstacles:-

#1 Trust

52% of consumers are skeptical about AI’s safety and security - the ‘Trust Gap’. Businesses are, rightly, very wary of exposing any of their customer data to large language models (LLM). How can they be sure that their valuable proprietary information and customer details will remain confidential, and secure within the confines of their own Salesforce Org?

In addition, there’s the issue of truth. At present, AI is prone to hallucination, bias and toxicity. Not a good look.

#2 Fragmented Customer Data

On average, organizations use 1,061 different applications, 71% of which are disconnected. The result is siloed islands of customer data that cannot be used to form a full picture and therefore to drive accurate results from AI.

How Salesforce will address these issues

Their solution is the Einstein1 Platform. This integrated system, with the Einstein1 Data Cloud at its core, promises businesses the capability to connect their entire data landscape.

What's more, soon Einstein Copilot will be available to every Salesforce user, assisting with work flow, and operated by natural language prompts. These capabilities will be rolled out in Copilot Studio, offering AI, automation, and analytics solutions, in an accessible format.

All of this functionality will come under the safeguard of the Einstein Trust Layer for data privacy and security.

How to get started with Einstein1 Platform

#1 Get hands on with your data

Salesforce recognizes that organizations need to familiarize themselves with this new landscape. Therefore they have provided FREE Data Cloud and Tableau licenses to allow companies to get hands on. Check out this link for the T&Cs, and how to get started

#2 Start skilling up

Trailhead is the Salesforce free training platform. It’s not just for the super-techies; there are trails for every persona in your organization, and our recommendation is that you take a look at the latest AI training modules. They are quick to complete and you’ll pick up a ton of info. Who knows, you might even be inspired to take an AI Salesforce certification! Get started here. 

Final Dreamforce takeaway

The world of enterprise systems is moving on and the opportunity is huge. While we all may have some trepidation about AI, there is no doubt, this is the future of business and there is no time like the present to begin the journey.

There was a great quote in the keynote from the Harvard Business Review, which should give us all pause for thought.

“AI won’t replace humans — but humans with AI will replace humans without AI”

If you would like to speak with the Endiem expert team about bringing AI functionality into your Salesforce processes, please get in touch and let’s talk.