All anyone can talk about these days is artificial intelligence – and with good reason. With major announcements this year from Salesforce in conjunction with Accenture and Deloitte about accelerating generative AI-powered applications, many businesses are eager to explore AI. Including how it can boost their productivity, innovation, and revenue, both inside and outside the Salesforce ecosystem. But while AI technology continues to grow and shape the business landscape, it’s easy for organizations to become overwhelmed with the prospect of enabling AI within their existing infrastructure. This is where Salesforce consultancies come in.
How Salesforce Consultancies are Upskilling for AI Success
Though it’s tough to say that anyone is an “expert” in AI, given the rapidly changing technological developments, the role of consultancies is to keep a pulse on the tools that can make a difference for your business and guide you along the way to successful adoption.
Salesforce consultancies’ hands-on expertise can be a valuable resource when determining areas of your business that could benefit from existing AI technology, mainly to ensure that your solutions solve a problem or increase efficiency in a cost-effective manner.
In testing various AI technologies, Aquiva Labs’ AI Task Force developed a toolkit that documented their experience and provided specific use cases for certain tools. By doing so, they could guide both their internal team and their clients on the pros and cons of available tools.
The Aquiva team is given ample time during the work week to experiment, learn, and get creative with AI as a means of garnering excitement, knowledge, and familiarity with the tools their clients may want to implement. In fact, during the interview for this article, we used an AI tool that automatically created a transcript, summary, and action items from the conversation.
In addition, the company has invested in online courses and webinars, training programs, and certifications across its employee base, which has a direct impact on client success. Consultancies that prioritize educating their team and fostering a community of exploration are more likely to think outside of the box regarding solutions for your organization, and the services they can provide to you.
Essential Services for AI Adoption
While AI is touching many aspects of business in the Salesforce ecosystem, much of the technology is new or ever-changing. Some essential services that a consultancy can provide in this area are:
- Strategic planning
- Data preparation and analysis
- Model selection and development
- Deployment and integration
- Ongoing support
- Performance monitoring
- Compliance management
While some salesforce consultancies simply source existing AI for their clients, others take developing the technology into their own hands. Aquiva Labs’ Principal Salesforce Architect, Robert Sösemann, has had significant exposure to code analysis in the last decade and is well-known for having brought the static code analyzer PMD to the Salesforce ecosystem to identify issues within code.
With his guidance, Aquiva Labs created the Document Mess Detector (DMD), a Salesforce-based app that uses Generative AI to enable users to review documents for compliance against predefined business rules written in natural language. Most recently, this tool has been enhanced to write its own rules based on an organization’s compliance documentation as well, and the team is working on the ability to ask document questions in a natural language chat interface.
Whether a consultancy develops these tools in-house or outsources solutions, the result is supplying the client with options that meet their business’s complex and varying needs.
Addressing Organizations’ AI Questions and Concerns
Many questions arise when businesses consider adopting AI. The most common of the non-technical is how it will impact the company structure and the roles that exist.
An organization’s structure needs to reflect the state of digital transformation. In order to realize the full potential of AI, companies need to take a global approach, rather than focusing on discreet use cases that deliver incremental value and require more effort in the long run to scale up. This includes looking for opportunities to automate and streamline.
When an organization has successfully eased concerns about the future of its workforce and seeks to adopt AI to enhance the work experience, the next questions are often related to data privacy, ethical considerations, and compliance requirements. A consultancy can help determine which of these areas to focus on as it relates to your business, and how to integrate them into your business practices.
Final Thoughts
In the end, choosing one among the several Salesforce consultancies that can act as a partner along the path to implementation is crucial to success.
Consultancies are well-positioned to guide clients in embracing AI, address their concerns, offer comprehensive services, and provide innovative tools, unlocking the transformative power of AI with the support of an experienced team. Just remember:
- Seek out a consultancy partner who has demonstrated working knowledge and experience with AI development and implementation and who is keeping tabs on trends.
- Work with consultancies that are not only researching and sourcing the best AI tools but are also developing their own to meet clients’ needs.
- Look for opportunities to implement end-to-end AI technology within your business for optimal efficiency and value.
- Integrate AI into your workflow so that it is natural and straightforward to use, and treat it as an assistant that can accelerate your work.
- Listen to the AI Innovation Meets AppExchange podcast, hosted by Aquiva Labs’ Jakub Stefaniak, with new episodes dropping bi-weekly.
Plus, Salesforce users attending Dreamforce can also take advantage of this introductory session on Prompt Engineering for Salesforce Developers with Aquiva Labs.
If you’d like to chat with one of our AI experts, reach out to me at jdufresne@aquivalabs.com. We’d be happy to help.