Last week, Salesforce and Workday launched their industry events, showcasing a shared vision for the future of AI. Both platforms focused on the transformative role of AI agents, highlighting advancements that promise to reshape how businesses operate. The excitement around these developments underscores a broader trend toward intelligent automation, setting the stage for further innovation in enterprise solutions. Here are the two major themes from both events for CIOs.
AI Agents
Workday’s introduction of Illuminate AI is a shift in enterprise AI, moving beyond simple efficiency gains to enabling full-scale transformation across business processes. Illuminate aims to optimize critical tasks such as hiring, managing expenses, and handling contracts. By integrating AI in these areas, Workday’s platform streamlines operations and empowers enterprises to achieve deeper insight and automation. A key differentiator for Illuminate is its contextualized AI, tailoring responses based on specific business and user data, delivering more accurate and relevant outcomes. This level of customization elevates AI’s role in decision-making, allowing organizations to unlock new operational potential.
Salesforce’s Agentforce announcement is very similar. Autonomous AI agents can take independent action within an enterprise’s ecosystem, making decisions and automating processes across various Salesforce clouds, including Sales, Service, and Marketing. The main advantage of Agentforce is its integration with Salesforce’s unified platform, eliminating the need for piecemeal AI systems. This unified approach enables a seamless flow of data and business logic, resulting in fast, accurate responses and greater operational efficiency.
Partner Commitment
Both Workday and Salesforce reinforced their commitment to the partner ecosystem. Workday announced the launch of 12 new industry accelerators with pre-built products on the Workday platform focusing on specific industries such as healthcare, banking, higher education, and retail.
Salesforce also has Agentforce partners, including companies like AWS, Google Cloud, Workday, and IBM, which contribute by developing agent actions and industry-specific agent templates. The partners aim to integrate third-party apps with new agent skills and offer pre-built templates for various industries. Customers can access and customize these through Salesforce’s AppExchange, empowering businesses to build and deploy AI agents tailored to their unique needs.
What is Next?
AI agents face several challenges, particularly with large language models (LLMs), which raise concerns about bias and accuracy.
Using a platform can mitigate some concerns, but AI governance becomes a significant challenge as organizations build their own AI agents. Establishing effective governance frameworks is complex, with no straightforward solutions to ensure compliance, accountability, and ethical AI deployment.
Cost plays a significant role in AI adoption. Workday includes its Illuminate AI in the subscription price, while Salesforce has introduced a unique pricing model for Agentforce, charging $2 per conversation. This pay-per-conversation approach frames AI as a valuable tool for enterprises, but its adoption will ultimately depend on how businesses evaluate the return on investment. Companies must balance the cost with the potential benefits of AI.
In conclusion, CIOs must carefully evaluate their platform and AI strategies, especially if their organizations rely heavily on legacy custom apps. Leveraging platforms like Workday or Salesforce could help modernize operations and improve efficiency.
As AI agents evolve, it will be crucial to watch how other technology vendors introduce their AI agents to enterprises. CIOs must embrace these innovations, which can position their organization to stay competitive.