Salesforce – the seemingly unstoppable CRM supergiant – is now 26 years old. It has transcended from its humble beginnings at the birth of SaaS, broken into the mobile market, lost a co-CEO, acquired its way up, and now has placed itself at the heart of our latest technological revolution: artificial intelligence.
Leonard Sweet, American theologian, famously said: “stagnation is death; if you don’t change, you die”, and for Salesforce, this has always been true – especially now. But when you’re facing a community that is both bigger and more critical than ever, you’re suddenly faced with a dilemma – how do you continue to beat stagnation and keep your community happy?
Ohana or Nothing
For many, Salesforce is exactly what it appears to be on the surface – a software solution. However, for hundreds and thousands of Trailblazers – Salesforce’s dedicated community – it is much more than that.
Community focus has been an important part of Salesforce’s onus since its inception, with CEO Marc Benioff preaching Hawai’i’s “Ohana” messaging for his company for years. The picture appears seemingly clear to anyone looking in: a big part of Salesforce’s success comes from its community’s continued unwavering support.
However, rising tensions in the ecosystem have been building over the last couple of years, with concerns that the CRM giant was beginning to forget or even neglect the community and what it was asking for.
Salesforce’s push for Agentforce – its all-encompassing artificial intelligence solution – became something you couldn’t ignore. Although an impressive product, with many ecosystem members genuinely excited about what it could do, it quickly became the topic of every event, update, release, webinar, earnings call, and more. Over the course of less than a year, it was no longer a case of when you would hear about Agentforce – it’s when you wouldn’t.
For an ecosystem full of partners, ISVs, end users, and freelancers at varying stages of org health, Agentforce was not a viable solution to many. Because for Agentforce to work efficiently, it all starts with your data, and if that isn’t clean, organized, and ready to go, Agentforce will not give you the results you want.
Research on alternative solutions or different ways to approach a business’s AI journey has only just begun to circulate a year after the tool’s release, too, meaning that before then, it felt like a case of getting on Agentforce or getting left behind.
True to The Core Reveals All
“If we don’t go all in, we’ll go obsolete.”
These were the words of Salesforce’s Co-Founder, Parker Harris, during this year’s True to The Core session at Dreamforce. Alon Waisman, a Salesforce Architect, had asked Harris what events like Dreamforce – as well as others – had to show for other Salesforce tools and products.
“I came to Dreamforce to learn, and for two years, I’ve heard nothing but Agentforce,” he said. “I know you’re doing other things, and I want to know more about them, Flow Builder, for example. What we use every day, I can’t learn about these because you won’t talk about them. It seems like Agentforce is the only thing you want us to know about.”
Waisman’s words were nothing new. The community and Salesforce had been hearing echoes of the same sentiments ever since Agentforce began gaining traction, and even for a company that is insistent that Agentforce is its number one priority, questions over how much it could be pushed had become impossible to ignore.
“We just have to,” Parker Harris answered. “AI is so complex and demands so much investment – if we don’t go all in, we’ll be obsolete.”
What makes Harris’s answer so pertinent is that, although for some, this is likely hard to hear, it is nothing short of the truth.
The current AI race is a cutthroat one, and Salesforce finds itself up against some of the meanest, hungriest dogs in the game. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Oracle, and even ServiceNow – all companies poised and fighting to deliver the strongest, fastest, and most intelligent AI tools to a market that may not be ready for them yet.
Even though Salesforce has partnerships with a number of companies in the running, the competition to create the AI toolkit of choice for customers remains as brutal as ever.
Robert Sösemann, an AI expert in this space, agreed with the Co-Founder’s words, reinforcing the statement that this is something Salesforce has to do, not just chooses to do.
“That really resonated with me,” he wrote on LinkedIn. “I’ve believed for a while now that AI isn’t optional – it’s all or nothing.”
Has Salesforce Lost Its Way?
Parker Harris’s response to the big Agentforce question was interesting in and of itself, but what stood out for many was actually a statement of admittance. The admittance of acknowledging that Salesforce had “lost its way” recently, in regard to the community, Agentforce, and more.
“I don’t know why we keep losing our way,” Harris said. “There have been budget cuts. Absolutely. And we have had to ruthlessly prioritize certain things, but we did reinvest in things like relaunching the Military Program, which was really important.”
“Relaunching that and the Architect Program – all of those things take funds. It takes headcount. So when you see headcount coming in those places, that is money, that is investment. It may not be the investment you want, but it’s an investment in a program that has been serving our wider community.”
Amongst a sea of polished, PR-perfect replies and statements, Harris’s words almost felt like a breath of fresh air. Almost. Salesforce – one of many tech companies with growing YoY profits – had experienced budget cuts, and the perceived low-hanging fruit had to be cut. A tech landscape that was thundering full-steam-ahead with AI, pressure from investors, and likely a whole number of hidden factors had urged Salesforce to perceive the most viable path forward.
In its simplest form, profit remained the focus. But does this make Salesforce’s decisions right?
Should the Community Accept This Response?
At a surface level, this situation seems clear-cut. Without a focus on profit, Salesforce risks regression and losing Wall Street’s trust. Without Salesforce, there is no Salesforce community.
Parker Harris’s words are a stark reminder of this, and it does highlight some of the work the company has done to put focus back on the community in spite of this. The Salesforce Military Program and the Salesforce Architect Program are back in action. This year’s Dreamforce featured a Community Keynote, and Salesforce has promised to attend various Dreamin’ events in the near future.
However, with the Agentforce situation, there are still two distinct sides. Is the onus now on the community to buckle up and prepare for Agentforce, however they choose to do that, or does Salesforce still have a responsibility to shift some focus back to the core functionality, whilst helping its customers get to grips with Agentforce at their own pace?
Like I, the other writers at Salesforce Ben, and community members have consistently said: Agentforce and AI are not going away. Dreamforce only solidified this. If there was any uncertainty before this, the picture is now crystal clear: it is not a matter of if your business gets on board with AI – it’s a matter of when.
As DevOps Evangelist Jack McCurdy put it, the way forward is diverged into two paths of responsibility: one for the community to take the time to become AI literate, and the other for Salesforce to now focus on the “how” rather than the “why”.
He shared that a lot of value would come out of Salesforce sharing its own experiences with building with Agentforce, including the struggles it faced, allowing Salesforce to connect with its community and share relevant, real-life advice.
“It would be a smart play for Salesforce to share all of those learnings as publicly as possible,” he told Salesforce Ben. “If they can provide that knowledge and understanding, then people are going to take it and run with it. That transparency and leadership from Salesforce leading that charge could be the make-or-break for Agentforce.”
Final Thoughts
Whether you believe AI solutions like Agentforce have escaped their hype cycles or not, one thing remains true: Salesforce has a dedicated, inquisitive community behind it who want to be on board with the company’s future, and need to feel supported – no matter if they’re AI-ready or not.
However, Salesforce is a for-profit company through and through. Faced with the almost impossible task of trying to appease a vocal community and remain in the running of tech’s global AI race, it has never been clearer that the two sides need to meet in the middle.
Lately, Salesforce has been consistently showing that it listens and responds to feedback – the most important sign that the community should keep doing this. Do not be afraid to ask Salesforce for what you think the community needs. Agentforce remains a core part of Salesforce’s mission – but it will need the community’s support to help it thrive.
